Checkout Maturity Index
Measure your checkout capabilities across 5 key dimensions.
Take the 5 minute assessment. See how your checkout stacks up, and receive a customized report to improve your checkout experience and unlock more sales.
5 Dimensions of Checkout Maturity
With the growth in digital commerce, delivering a remarkable customer experience is critical. Yet despite significant investment across stages of the shopper journey, many brands have opted for checkout avoidance instead of checkout optimization across these 5 dimensions.
Payments Flexibility
Measures your ability to provide shoppers with flexible and convenient ways to pay.
Checkout Experience
Measures your ability to deliver a frictionless shopping experience.
Delivery & Fulfillment
Measures your ability to meet shopper expectations for delivery and fulfillment.
Customer Lifetime Value
Measures your ability to maximize AOV and LTV during checkout.
Checkout From Anywhere
Measures your ability to serve up checkout wherever shoppers interact with the brand.
Are experience gaps in checkout costing you revenue?
Dimension #1
Payments Flexibility
The moment of truth in the shopping journey is the transaction. It marks the consumer's willing exchange of money for a product or service. Yet 17% of shoppers abandon checkout because they are not able to find the right payment method. It is paramount for brands to offer convenient payment options to meet shopper expectations.
When it comes to flexible payment methods there are several options for a brand to consider:
Digital wallets are among the fastest-growing payment methods in ecommerce. In North America, they account for 29% of online transaction payments and are expected to overtake credit cards as the most popular payment method by 2025. Apple Pay leads the pack with over 40 million users, while Google Pay claims 25 million users. Digital wallet adoption is especially common among younger consumers with over 45% of those 18-23 years of age using them.
Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services have established a solid foothold in the payment ecosystem. In 2021, over 55% of shoppers used BNPL payment options, up from 37% in the year prior. PayPal Credit is by far the most popular offering with more than 34 million users, while Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay have grown significantly with 7.9 million, 5.6 million, and 5.6 million users respectively.
Alternative Payment Methods (APM) go beyond digital wallets and BNPL to include payment methods such as bank transfer, prepaid cards, debit cards, and crypto. In the US, debit cards are by far the most popular with more than a fifth of all shoppers using this payment method. While it’s tough to predict whether crypto payments will become an important option, there may well come a time when brands need the flexibility to enable this payment option as well.
Dimension #2
Checkout Experience
To maximize checkout completion rates, brands need to deliver an easy, intuitive experience. Any sign of friction will negatively impact the bottom line. For example, 18% of US online shoppers have abandoned an online order solely due to a “too long or complicated checkout process”.
When it comes to optimization of the checkout experience, there are several factors to consider:
Mobile optimization. Overall, mobile traffic exceeds desktop traffic, AOV is lower on mobile compared to desktop, while checkout abandonment is higher. Delivering an optimized checkout experience for mobile, that includes digital wallets, social logins, and responsive navigation is key to closing the gap and capturing more revenue.
Load speed. Website performance is critical for conversion rate. The impact of the page load speed on conversion rates has been widely tested by many independent parties, with similar conclusions. According to Walmart test results: for every 1-second improvement in page load time, conversion increased by 2%. A blazing-fast checkout is table stakes to maximizing conversion rates.
Personalization. Today’s consumers demand more than a one-size-fits-all approach. Their behaviours and ideal experience also vary by device type, channel and type of shopper. To be successful, omnichannel brands need to be able to tailor their checkout flow depending on product and shopper context.
Dimension #3
Delivery And Fulfillment
Almost one quarter (23%) of all shoppers abandon the checkout due to high shipping costs or lack of shipping options. Increasingly, order fulfillment has come under scrutiny, with delivery service levels continuously improving and same-day delivery becoming the norm. In this environment, brands must adapt and evolve the delivery and fulfillment capabilities available in checkout to meet changing shopper expectations.
When it comes to providing an exceptional order fulfillment experience there are multiple factors to consider:
Address validation and Delivery estimates. While address validation and delivery estimates might seem like small features their impact on checkout completion is significant. Address autocomplete and validation reduces manual form field completion - moving shoppers more quickly through checkout. As well, 20% of shoppers abandon the cart because the delivery date provided is not precise enough. Also, the willingness of shoppers to pay for delivery depends heavily on the visibility of the expected delivery date.
BOPIS & Curbside pick up. Buy online, pick up in-store usage surged in recent years and has become a convenience point of difference for many retailers. Its popularity continues to climb with 75% of shoppers reportedly using BOPIS and 8% using it 20+ times in the past year. For retailers, the importance of BOPIS extends to the pickup experience - with over 50% of shoppers reporting they add on to their purchase during “click and collect.”
Split shipments. Split shipments capability allows a single online order to be split and shipped to multiple locations. This offering can be very useful for larger enterprises with multiple offices across different geographical locations. While this is mostly a B2B feature, it can be useful for B2C scenarios such as group buying.
Dimension #4
Customer Lifetime Value
While higher checkout conversion contributes to an overall increase in site conversion, checkout can help drive revenue in other ways. This includes accommodating capabilities to boost Average Order Value (AOV) and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Tools for brands to do this include pricing and promotions, as well as converting one-time purchases into subscriptions.
When it comes to increasing revenue by selling more to every customer, there are several aspects of the checkout to be considered:
Upselling & Cross-Selling. Upselling and cross-selling are great tools to drive revenue through increased AOV. Conversion rates for post-purchase upsell can be as high as 30%, and more than 50% of shoppers report purchasing add-on items recommended at checkout. Upsell at checkout can be implemented as a simple rule-based solution or as part of a more complex, AI-driven recommendation system.
Pricing & Promotions. To maximize LTV, digitally mature brands should go beyond simple discounts and promotions. Offers extended to shoppers can be personalized based on location, what channel they are shopping in, whether a shopper is a first-time or repeat customer, a VIP member, or more. Proper execution of sophisticated promotions and loyalty programs depends on effective orchestration at checkout.
Subscriptions. Subscriptions create value for customers through convenience, savings, subscriber access, or curation benefits. Overall 64% of consumers say they feel more connected to brands they subscribe to, and on average, subscribers result in 172% higher lifetime value compared to one-time purchasers. Because of this, leading enterprise brands are looking to implement recurring revenue models. Modern checkout experiences extend subscription selling and management right through the checkout experience.
Dimension #5
Checkout From Anywhere
According to the State of the Connected Customer, 67% of customers use multiple channels to complete a single transaction, and 40% of customers say they won’t do business with companies if they can’t do so in their preferred channels. On top of this, omnichannel customers are 4x more profitable than those who shop in only one channel. This is why is paramount for brands to meet customers where they are, embedding checkout in any digital or physical channel while having a consistent experience across all touch points.
When it comes to making more moments shoppable, go where shoppers are already interacting most with your brand. Here are a few touch points to consider:
Checkout from social. Research by Global WebIndex shows that 58.4% of the world's population uses social media globally. The average daily usage is 2 hours and 27 minutes. Because of this, social commerce is an increasingly important sales channel for brands and is expected to grow to over 1$ trillion in 2025. A frictionless checkout from social can significantly increase conversion rates from the channel.
Self-Service checkout. Self-service checkout in retail is expected to grow to $5.9 billion by 2025. It allows consumers to make purchases without interacting with staff, shortening the time to purchase, increasing the store throughput, and reducing staff overhead.
Checkout from QR codes. The resurgence of QR codes in the daily lives of consumers has brought checkout from QR codes into the mainstream. According to Statista, 45 percent of respondents said they have used a QR Code in the past three months. Shoppable QR codes shorten consumers' purchase paths while providing new revenue streams from flyers, packaging, stores, and venues.
Looking to level up your checkout experience?
Learn how leading brands create checkout experiences that convert.
- Conditional price rules and offers across online and instore channels
- Launched BOPIS checkout plug in 72 hours
- B2C and B2B experiences combined through unified checkout
- Personalized checkout flows to optimize website and instore kiosk conversion
- Staples Canada
- Harry Rosen
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