How to optimize your buying tunnel

The buying tunnel is the customer’s purchasing path, from the arrival on the e-commerce site to the act of purchasing. In other words: the confirmation of an order. A bad optimization of the purchase tunnel is the main problem of e-commerce sites. It is important to know that between 70 and 80% of transactions are not completed on the Internet. Here are some pointers on how to optimize your buying tunnel.

Make it easy

Facilitate the entry of the customer’s payment data: allowing the customer to validate his payment without having to enter his payment data makes the purchase more “instinctive”. This ease of entry is made possible by allowing the payer to store his payment information or by proposing the use of electronic payments which avoid any entry of payment, billing and delivery data.

Optimize your buying tunnel: Be quick

In recent years, mobile browsing has become part of the daily life of Internet users. They don’t hesitate to place orders from their smartphone. So, the loading time of your pages must be fast. 75% of Internet users consider this factor to be essential during their browsing, both on computer and on mobile. To make sure your store displays in less than 3 seconds on these devices, use Google’s Pagespeed.

Give breadcrumbs

To guide your visitors, don’t hesitate to display a breadcrumb trail at the top of the order tunnel. This offers the possibility to visualize all the steps of the order process and allows visitors to understand where they are in their purchase process. If possible, think about making each step displayed clickable so that your visitors can go back to a previous step quickly, with one click.

Is the ID process necessary?

The creation of an account represents 31% of shopping cart abandonment. It is therefore important to simplify this process as much as possible, by only asking for the information necessary for the sale. This will avoid discouraging the user, who will be invited to complete the information later, once the sale is completed.

Optimize your buying tunnel: Manage the errors

Whatever the error encountered, it is essential to display the most explicit messages possible to the customer so that they can identify the source of the rejection and replay the transaction as easily as possible.

Remember: your buying tunnel is the path taken by Internet users before making a purchase. So you must keep it simple and reliable.