The report that there's been an uptick in "late night drunk shopping" has been seen everywhere recently, from NBC to the Today Show and Buzzfeed. Shopping authority Racked confirmed this by revealing that "the average order value at midnight is over 30% higher on a Friday night compared to a Monday night. Past 1am, the average order value increases to over 40%." (source)
And believe it or not, ecommerce companies can learn something from drunk people: how to optimize their checkout process.
Now, we're not saying that you should hire someone to get hammered and then navigate your store's checkout process. But, you should take a good look at your checkout user experience (UX), with particular attention to the pain points that you run into. After all, your checkout should be so easy a buzzed person could do it if you want to rake in any "late night drunk shopping" profits.
The key to making an simple, pain-free checkout process is visibility. You want everything to be so obvious that it's almost painful - and almost impossible for your customers to get lost. When a customer is able to easily recognize what actions they are taking, conversion rates skyrocket.
There are two key things you can do to improve visibility for your customer:
Go Big
Make things like the "add to cart" button big, obvious, and borderline "in your face". My team and I recently did a case study of Topshop, the leading UK fashion retailer, and how they make 4 simple design changes to improve conversion rates by 11%. You can download that case study here.
On both mobile and desktop, the add to cart button on each and every product page is large and well-placed. There's no mistaking any step of the purchase process.
Additionally, after adding the item to the bag the customer is presented with a pop-up confirming the item has been added to the bag. Shoppers can even edit their cart without leaving the product page they were on, and also gives them the option to go directly to the checkout or to continue shopping.
Having visual elements like this allow the customer to get to the checkout itself much easier: they're presented with the opportunity to go there every time they add something to their bag. This results in higher conversions for your store.
Show What's Left
Progress indicators are a great step to not only show your customers where they are in the checkout process, but to show them from the beginning of the checkout process how many steps they have to complete.
One of my favorite ecommerce brands, Bonobos, has an amazingly simple checkout process that features a progress indicator. There are three sections that the customer needs to complete: Shipping, Billing, and Review.
Each section has minimal information required (which makes the process faster), and a green that mirrors the color used on calls to action on their site appears when each section is complete. By visually "calling out" how far along the user is in the checkout process, they are encouraged and motivated to complete the process.
- Easily visible.
- Simple wording.
- Bold, stripped-down design.
- Visuals that fit your brand.
- Obvious indication of which step the user is on, which have been completed, and how many are left to go. (source)
Audit Your Checkout
Now it's time to make your checkout great. If you're not sure where to begin or how you can implement visibility into your store's checkout process, start by testing your own site as a customer. What was difficult? What was annoying? Take note of these items, then consider how your observations could be improved by a "visual element".
If you're still struggling, approach your internal development team or an ecommerce development agency. They can perform a full checkout audit with a focus on improving visual indicators. Make sure their recommendations are impactful, yet simple.
Or, you can just hire a drunk person to go through your site for you.