In the era of online shopping and booming ecommerce, it’s more important than ever to ensure that customers have a seamless and hassle-free shopping experience. In September 2021, Stripe launched a study in partnership with Edgar, Dunn & Company to uncover insights around shopping behaviours, payment preferences, and the different factors that affect the checkout experience. The outcomes of the study can be found here.
Stripe, launched in 2011, has been used by millions of companies in more than 120 countries to start, run, and expand their businesses. With a mission to remove financial complexity online, Stripe is a technology company that creates inexpensive infrastructure for the internet. Businesses of all sizes—from startups to large publicly traded companies—use Stripe to accept payments and run their businesses online.
The study selected the top 100 ecommerce websites in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK (800 sites in total) based on online sales volume from Statista, a leading provider of market and consumer data. The study also analyses the top 200 global subscription companies based on online website traffic, focusing on B2C subscription websites offering digital content. Lastly, the study also surveyed 800 consumers in Europe to get more in-depth knowledge about consumer trends, preferences, and influencing factors.
According to the study, 94% of the top 800 ecommerce websites across Europe make at least five basic checkout errors, which inevitably add unnecessary frustrations and friction for customers.
Over the past year, almost 40% of European customers have doubled or more than doubled their online shopping habits. This accelerated shift to online shopping presents a huge opportunity for online businesses that can’t be overlooked. But according to the study, some of the biggest ecommerce companies in Europe are neglecting the final (and most crucial) step to making a sale: the checkout flow.
The most common issues include poor card information formatting and error handling, not offering popular payment methods, and not allowing customers to save their payment method for future use. While individually these issues might seem small or even trivial, when combined they add up to a needlessly difficult checkout experience and lost sales.
The study also uncovered that 21% of consumers would abandon a purchase if it took more than one minute to check out. At the same time, 44% of surveyed consumers said that on average it takes them more than three minutes to complete online purchases. It’s clear that ecommerce businesses need to make this process more streamlined and effortless.
Stripe offers a payment platform that enables businesses of all sizes to vastly improve the checkout experience for consumers, helping businesses to boost success. Stripe’s recommendations for checkout best practices can be found here.
If you’d like to build your own custom checkout form, you can use Stripe Checkout, a prebuilt, hosted payments page, that was designed with conversion best practices in mind. Stripe Checkout supports 39 languages so your customers around the world can see the checkout form that’s right for them. Talk to a Stripe team member today to learn more about Stripe Checkout.
