In ecommerce, one-click checkout solutions are aimed at reducing friction and shortening the path to purchase by minimizing the number of form fields and clicks required to place an order. Savvy online shoppers expect easy, intuitive experiences, with an increasingly lower tolerance for too many steps in the process, or lack of preferred delivery and payment options.
Despite ongoing investment in improving the end to end online shopping experience, overall cart abandonment rates continue to sit around 70%, according to Baymard Institute. A major contributor? Checkout abandonment.
According to The Checkout Benchmark, almost half of all shoppers who proceed from cart into checkout, don’t complete their purchase. That’s a staggering volume of lost sales potential from shoppers that demonstrate strong intent to purchase but drop off during checkout.
“While there will always be a certain amount of checkout abandonment — because some shoppers will start a checkout as part of their consideration process or simply to see if discounts are available — brands should strive to minimize friction in the checkout. Any extra friction in the checkout will increase checkout abandonment,” says Anatolii lakimets, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Bold Commerce.
One-click checkout shortens the path to purchase in an effort to minimize friction by moving shoppers through checkout with fewer clicks. For a basic one time, one item purchase on a website, the concept of a shortcut through checkout with one-click is pretty straightforward. But with the shift in shopper interest to purchase in different channels like social or blogs, on a mix of devices, or without clicking at all (in the case of voice assistants), the requirements of a one-click checkout increase.
Reducing friction isn’t about getting to one click at all costs, when some clicks are valuable ‘conversion boosters’. Shoppers expect BOPIS and other delivery options, payment options, the ability to collect loyalty points, or apply discounts during checkout.
“Checkout used to be about taking payment, but in today’s world, checkout has become the orchestration point of all of these elements in a shopping experience. Exceptional customer journeys continue right through checkout,” says Deanna Traa, Chief Marketing Officer at Bold Commerce. “Brands need to think about the data and checkout logic they require through their checkout experience, especially when they are selecting a one-click solution. When you think about it, checkout is a critical moment of truth in a shopping journey to reinforce your brand experience.”
5 ways to tell your brand needs a customized one-click checkout
Not all one-click checkout solutions are created equal. Many options, including digital wallets, require brands to make sacrifices to the shopping experience and the checkout logic in order to implement a one-click solution. This can mean serving up payment methods, delivery options, subscription offers, or the ability to collect or redeem loyalty points.
For brands with simple business models and one item baskets, these sacrifices are smaller. For others, the effectiveness of a one-click checkout experience relies on the ability to customize it based the business model while also delivering brand consistency across every channel.
Here are five indicators your brand would benefit from a customized one-click checkout solution:
#1: Your shoppers are embracing alternative payment
A recent McKinsey report found that more than three-quarters of U.S. shoppers used some form of digital payment during the pandemic. Plus, the share of consumers using two or more digital payments methods is on the rise — jumping to 58% from 45% year over year. According to The Checkout Report, 38.7% of buyers chose PayPal as a payment option when offered.
If your brand has a large number of users opting for alternative payment methods to credit cards, it could be a sign they are looking for a simpler, streamlined checkout experience. Digital payment methods like PayPal, ApplePay, GooglePay, or BNPL offerings make for a smoother experience because shipping details and default payment information are pre-populated, says lakimets. “It becomes much faster than filling in all the shipping and billing information. A shopper doesn’t have to go find their wallet or rememer usernames and passwords.”
In a one-click checkout, the ideal experience allows customers to select from a menu of digital payment options without overwhelming them.
“Brands do need to ask themselves: how many payment methods are too many? When more options are added, friction is introduced and abandonment increases. Yet when payment options are narrowed, abandonment can increase too if shoppers can’t find their preferred method of payment,” says Traa.
“Shoppers want optionality around which payment method they want to use. A one-click solution that allows for checkout logic customization means brands can present multiple options or pre-fill an option based on shoppers’ past behavior,” she says.
For brands facing this question, a one-click checkout that can be customized to serve an experience with multiple payment options or determined by customer segment, device type or past behavior of shoppers is a way to address this — and reduce checkout abandonment.
#2: BOPIS drives a big portion of your revenue
Shoppers like options when it comes to getting their merchandise. According to McKinsey research, 60% of consumers plan to continue using BOPIS and 47% still want curbside pickup in the post-pandemic world.
“If you’re a brand that drives a lot of revenue through omnichannel purchases, presenting delivery options, like BOPIS or store availability, during a buy now experience is a critical part of shopper conversion,” says Traa. “A customer might have checked for store availability while on a website, but typically the shipping decision is made in checkout. In a buy now experience, shoppers want to see delivery options in that flow.”
With Bold Checkout: Buy Now, brands can leverage APIs, web-hooks and plugins to build a one-click checkout experience that integrates with order management to ensure options, like BOPIS or store availability, are presented as part of the checkout experience.
A customizable Buy Now checkout can provide a radio button in the flow that offers ship to address, BOPIS with nearest store availability, or other delivery and pick up choices, says lakimets. “Whatever information needs to be served to a customer can be customized and expressed in the checkout,” he says.
#3: Promotions, discounts and offers are part of your business strategy
Promotion and pricing strategies are important in driving conversion rates. MarketingProfs reports that 57% of U.S. online shoppers who used a coupon code said that if they had not received the discount, they would not have made the purchase. Plus, upselling to existing customers increases revenue by 10-30% on average and upsells are 68% more affordable than acquiring a new customer, according to sources.
Given the strategic value of promotional offers for some brands’ business strategy, Buy Now or one-click checkout experiences should include the abililty to present discounts and offers, otherwise this revenue is at risk.
“Don’t ask shoppers to forego discounts and offers in favor of your Buy Now experience. Don’t force them to take the longer checkout route when you’ve offered them a quick off ramp. Brands need to embed that ability to use a discount or promo code into the Buy Now experience,” says Traa.
If a one-click or Buy Now checkout experience has low conversion rates — especially for highly promotional brands — one of the reasons for the drop off could be the lack of a promo code widget in the checkout, says Traa. For shoppers who are primed to use codes in the checkout, but then don’t get the opportunity to do so, they’ll be more likely to abandon the purchase.
#4: A loyalty program is integral to your business model
For many brands, a loyalty program is a meaningful part of the customer relationship that deepens engagement and drives higher conversion rates. For customers, it’s another avenue to discounts, offers and more. In fact, 75% of consumers say they favor companies that offer rewards and 58% of internet users worldwide stated that earning rewards or loyalty points was one of the most valued aspects of their retail shopping experience.
“Your customers want to collect, redeem or see their loyalty points when in a one-click experience. You may also see a higher likelihood of customers’ logging in because they want to see their points. Not letting customers access their loyalty program in checkout risks leaving customers aggravated or seeing them turn to customer service to ensure they get the points owed for a purchase,” says Traa.
In a Buy Now experience, an integration to embed loyalty program features in the checkout flow can keep customers engaged with your brand and completing purchases.
#5: Your brand is obsessed with the customer experience
In today’s highly competitive ecommerce landscape, customer experience is the path to building loyalty with your shoppers. Surveys have shown that 30% of companies offering digital experiences see improvements in customer lifetime value and 23% see an increase in basket size. Not getting customer experience right in every channel and moment comes at a cost. As many as 45% of customers say they would stop buying from a company after a negative customer experience.
A one-click experience is an opportunity to create a memorable experience for customers that increases lifetime value and order size. Traa says brands should think about the following considerations for their experience:
- The look and feel of the checkout: When a brand has built a unique, immersive shopping experience, it can be jarring to drop a customer into an unbranded, generic checkout. It undercuts the differentiation a brand has expressed throughout the journey to that point.
- Customer aftercare: Post-purchase customer service can be a source of customer churn when it does not meet the shoppers’ expectations of the brand. If a brand hands a one-click transaction off to a third-party, customers may not know who to contact when there is a problem with an order, a double charge, or to handle a return or exchange.
- Owning the customer relationship: Brands that invest in building a loyal, engaged base of customers can use a Buy Now experience to reinforce that relationship. While an account in a network might help to reduce friction in a one-click checkout process, it also lowers the barrier to entry for shoppers to spend with competitors. Offering a shortened path to purchase with a branded one click checkout can be achieved without making this tradeoff.
While one-click checkout solutions all tackle friction in the checkout process, now there is an opportunity for brands to do so while deepening customer loyalty and without sacrificing key elements of the brand experience that shoppers have come to expect.
Learn more about how your brand can customize a one-click experience with Bold Checkout: Buy Now. 
- Topics:
- enterprise
- headless commerce
