While it may be simple to the experienced online shopper, the checkout process can be a bit of a stumbling ground for some. There are a number of failures which can occur during the checkout process, and each and every one of them could potentially be affecting your business and your profits. Simple issues like the design of your shopping cart software and the amount of time it takes a customer to input their delivery information can have dramatic and on-going effects. I will go over 15 of the most common failures in the checkout process.

The failure of a customer to complete the checkout process is also known as abandonment in the e-commerce industry.

• 1. One of the reasons a customer may abandon their purchase is if the correct delivery information is not made available to them easily.
• 2. Another is because an error is made when inputting an address, and the software does not easily allow editing to take place.
• 3. Failure also occurs if a customer is not allowed to enter the checkout process due to not being logged in to an account, and the software does not allow for anonymous entry.
• 4. An incorrect or unavailable payment method can also cause a failure,
• 5. as can the inability for a piece of software to self correct a payment mistake.
• 6. If a retailer is using a third party payment gateway such as paypal then problems can also occur with data transfer between the parties.
• 7. Credit card errors are a big reason for failure as well, with incorrectly input card numbers and security codes often to blame.
• 8. The default credit card option can also be a source of frustration as many users fail to change it to the correct setting.
• 9. Trying to up-sell and cross-sell at the checkout can also lead to abandonment,
• 10. as can the springing of last minute shipping charges.
• 11. One common failure during checkout occurs due to the unavailability of stock, that’s right some software leaves it up till this stage of the transaction to inform a customer of a stockout.
• 12&13. Insecure page errors by browsers can also cause a failure, as can other warnings issued by the checkout software that are often unecessary.
• 14&15. The two last failures I will list include the inability of some software to deal with different ways of inputting both dates and currency information correctly into the database. There are multiple ways to enter this information into a computer, and a smart piece of software will be able to warn the customer to edit the data, or even better, will be able to do it itself.

What to Write

How do I know what to write about? How do I fill the pages of my website with the useful and unique content that will keep my visitors coming back for more? If you are selling products, then this might seem a moot topic to you, but pay attention, this affects all who wish to retain loyal customers as well as bring new visitors from the search engines.

Textual Content

Textual content is the written word. Textual content is one of the most important aspects of website marketing. Textual content is like bait on a fishhook. You wouldn’t throw an un-baited hook into the water and expect to catch anything. You might get lucky and pull in some debris, but you likely won’t be catching that trophy fish. The same is true for website content. It is very difficult to market a website that has little or no textual content.

Finding out what textual content is important for your site is as simple as asking your visitors. Find out what it is they were looking for when they found your site. To accomplish this, look at your long tail.

Most websites have a relatively long list of keywords and phrases visitors use to find their site. Sometimes this “long tail” contains enough information to keep a webmaster creating content on a full time basis. Some webmasters create entire pages based on a single keyword they found in their long tail. Find out what search terms are used to find a particular page, and incorporate those terms into that page. If the search term is too broad to incorporate into that page, and needs its own page, then create a new page, and provide a link to it from the original page.

Where to use this information

The obvious choice is to use your long tail keywords in the paragraphs on your page.. However, you should also include, keywords in heading tags, the title of your page, links to other similar pages, incoming links (links pointing at this page), in img alt attributes, inside of image headers in the URL of the page (separate by hyphens(-) instead of spaces), in lists, etc…..

By creating new textual content based on what your visitors are searching for, you are effectively giving your visitors what they want, which is fresh, unique information.