The average UK shopper abandons six baskets per year. To keep the number of abandoned baskets on your SaaS or digital software website as low as possible, you need to provide the best checkout experience for every visitor.
How can you improve your checkout experience? In this post, we’ll share some best practices to help you increase your checkout conversion rates.
12 ways to improve your SaaS checkout experience and improve checkout conversions
Here are some great ideas to get your SaaS checkout experience back on track.
Improve your design
If your checkout looks bad and is clumsy to use, potential subscribers are less likely to stick with it until the end of the transaction.
They need to understand each step of the checkout process, and the visuals should be easy on the eye throughout. In particular, you should:
- Keep a clean design, with a limited range of colours.
- Use a design system for fonts, buttons, colours etc... to have consistency
- Implement field validations
- Sweat the details, such as using the right keyboard for mobile depending on field inputs (text for string, numeric for numbers)
Keep things simple
The best checkout experience is short and sweet. Resist the temptation to upsell or collect more details from subscribers than you need to at this stage. You want checkout to be as quick to complete as possible, no matter how much the customer has in their basket.
For example, if you have a large header and footer, use a dedicated one for the checkout. Your header should just be your logo and a link to return to the pricing page. The footer should have minimal, mandatory information, such as your logo, your terms & conditions, and your privacy policy.
For inspiration, check out three of our favourite subscription checkouts.
Don't force registration
Some new subscribers will be happy to create an account with your business before they make a purchase — but not all of them will. Anyone who wants to order without registering may leave your site without buying anything. And that’s an avoidable loss.
Include a guest checkout option to make it more accessible to everyone. This is difficult for software - how can you provision an account if you don't make the customer create their account? Think of it as a light registration. Capture their email and then finish the setup later, post-purchase.
Be clear on extra fees
Subscribers want the best deal they can find. You want to avoid surprises. If you need to charge sales tax on top of your price, make sure to show this as soon as possible.
Add more payment methods
Adding more payment options will improve your checkout experience in a big way. If potential subscribers discover that you don’t accept their preferred option, they’re likely to look elsewhere.
In the UK, Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal are the most popular choices as of 2022. However, Apple Pay and Google Pay are the fastest growing payment methods. With that in mind, your options should include a mix of credit cards, debit cards, and digital wallets. Aim to accommodate as many preferences as you can.
Send abandoned basket emails
Sometimes, potential subscribers abandon their purchase and leave your site. They might not come back to complete the purchase for the rest of the day. But that doesn’t mean they decided against signing up with you completely. They might have been distracted or left to check another option before they committed.
You could bring them back to your site with a simple, friendly, abandoned basket email. Remind them that they have something in their basket and make it easy for them to return to your checkout page again. You could even add an incentive, such as a 10 or 20% discount. Fortunately, setting up an abandoned basket strategy for your website is quick and easy.
Your checkout should feel like it belongs on your website. If it doesn’t match with the rest of your branding, it can negatively impact the overall checkout experience for new subscribers.
Use the same colours, fonts, and general aesthetic you have across your site. And don’t forget to align the language and tone of voice of any copy on the page.
Offer local options
Even if you only offer your SaaS services in one country, don’t underestimate the importance of local currencies and languages. If people can’t complete the checkout process because they don’t understand it or they are worried about exchange rates, that’s a problem.
Make it quick and easy for users to switch country and languages. If you’re unsure which languages to offer, research your target audience to better understand who they are and what languages they speak, then focus on the largest non-English audiences.
Some potential subscribers may not be ready to commit to one of your plans yet, but a good promotion or discount could offer enough incentive to boost checkout conversion rates. For example, you could offer 10% off their first year or a week free.
Make sure your website is mobile friendly
In the UK, 69% of shoppers use smartphones to make online purchases. Your website should be compatible with mobile devices. Crucially, though, your checkout should be exceptionally user-friendly on smartphones and tablets. There's a steep hill to climb: conversion rates are typically 2-3x lower on mobile than desktop.
All buttons, links, text, and images must be easy to see and click on smaller screens. You should also try to minimise as much as possible data input, especially for mobile. Otherwise, you risk losing potential subscribers if they can’t navigate your site and checkout on their preferred device.
Include social proof to inspire trust
Including reviews, awards, and other forms of social proof on your checkout page can increase visitors’ trust in your SaaS company. That should give potential subscribers peace of mind that you offer legitimate services that have helped people like them.
Only use genuine reviews — users may spot fake ones and lose trust in your business.
Keep CTA buttons easy to see and use
Call-to-action (CTA) buttons are vital for guiding visitors through the checkout process. But users can only tap buttons that they can see.
Your CTA buttons should stand out from the surrounding page and be clear about what they do (e.g., ‘continue to payment’).
Deliver the best checkout with Limio
Giving subscribers the best checkout experience is essential to improve your checkout conversion rates and reduce the risk of abandoned baskets. However, understanding how to do that for your SaaS or digital software company can be difficult.
Limio makes it easy to improve your checkout experience and boost conversions. Our Modular Checkout System gives subscription companies a wide range of powerful features to build great checkout, including flexible customisation, user input validation, improved user experience, and much more.
To request a demo and see how Limio can help your SaaS company deliver a great checkout experience, get in touch today.