Data Brief: 76% of Consumers Say Smooth Checkout Very Influential When Choosing Merchants

Checking out should be the easiest part of the purchase, but droves of consumers continue abandoning carts due to lingering frictions in the checkout process and experience.

It’s a fixable issue that’s getting a lot more attention in 2022 as eCommerce sellers move to convert every possible shopper in a year when every transaction is precious.

Exploring this in the study “Building A Better Online Checkout Experience: The Key Features That Matter To Customers,” a PYMNTS and Checkout.com collaboration, we surveyed over 2,000 U.S. consumers to plumb the pain points at the point of sale, looking for areas needing an overhaul.

This comes down to loyalty, as the study notes that two-thirds of consumers surveyed said “a quality checkout experience is very or extremely influential on whether they return to an eTailer. Just 9% said that it has little or no impact. Among the shoppers we identified as loyal customers based on purchasing behaviors, approximately three-quarters said that a satisfying checkout strongly affects their willingness to shop at a merchant again.”

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Many factors — some more tangible than others — combine to create loyal customers, and the same is true when it comes to factors that turn off loyal customers, or those who could be.

The study states, “Friction during the critical final step of a purchase journey significantly influences shopper satisfaction and whether they return to eTailers for repeat purchases,” noting that 76% of respondents who always or usually select their go-to merchant over others offering better deals “consider a satisfying checkout experience to be highly influential to their shopping experience.”

Analyzing responses, we found acute checkout pain in certain areas of commerce having an outsized impact on not just loyalty but overall consumer perceptions of retailers.

Social media marketplaces get the lowest marks, with the study stating, “Among consumers who made their most recent purchase on a social media platform, 60% encountered at least one transaction-related challenge. In contrast, respondents reported a problem with just 26% of purchases at brands’ official web stores and 27% at online marketplaces.”

Social sites aren’t alone in the friction fight, as we found that online marketplaces are too friction-filled for many shoppers, and 16% of respondents saying so.

Per the study, “Merchants asking consumers to create an account or to provide excessive information was the next most popular, at 12%. Consumers who shopped at brands’ digital stores identified the same two top pain points, at 11% and 9%, respectively. Bucking the trend somewhat are shoppers at online merchants. Out-of-stock inventory impacted these shoppers more, creating a marginally more ubiquitous than frustrating checkout process.”

See it now: Building A Better Online Checkout Experience: The Key Features That Matter To Customers