1. Provide checkout buttons at the bottom and top of your site.

Today’s Internet users are more distracted than ever, and one checkout button just isn’t enough. Place checkout buttons at both the top and bottom of your website. That way, customers can begin the checkout process no matter where they happen to be on the page.

Checkout buttons should be in contrasting colors that catch users’ attention. As with most elements related to shopping carts, usability outweighs aesthetics.

2. Allow customers to continue shopping

Some customers want to continue shopping after adding an item to the shopping cart, and you need to make it easy for them to do so. Shopping cart pages should include a visible “Continue Shopping” button.

3. Provide a related products display

By showing customers products related to the items already in the shopping cart, you can increase the average purchase order. There are extensions available for Magento that automatically display products that are frequently purchased together.

4. Minimize the number of steps that customers must take to complete checkout

There’s a reason why Amazon has established a one-click buy feature. It’s an established fact in e-commerce that more steps to complete a purchase means fewer orders. While most e-commerce businesses cannot implement a one-click purchase feature like Amazon does, streamline the process so that buyers go through only one or two screens before finalizing their purchase.

5. Implement proper authentication procedures

However, don’t skirt on authentication procedures. Trust is critical to any e-commerce business, and customers appreciate seeing that basic security measures are in place. A two-factor authentication system is industry standard.

6. Don’t ask for the same information repeatedly

Entering in the same information more than once is tedious, so don’t make customers do it. This means, for example, that you should provide a checkbox for customers who have the same shipping and billing addresses (as most of them do).

Also consider which information is truly vital to collect. While it may be useful to know demographic information about your buyers for marketing purposes, requiring users to enter in too much information is a turn-off. In addition to being tedious, many e-commerce buyers worry about privacy issues and become suspicious when they are asked too much personal information.

7. Give customers a variety of shipping options

When you are able to offer customers more choices for shipping, you increase your business’ credibility. Again, look to Amazon as a model. For most purchases, users can choose from at least three different shipping options, from more expensive selections that allow quick receipt of purchase to more budget-friendly choices.

8. Better yet, offer free shipping for large orders

Studies of e-commerce buyer behavior have repeatedly demonstrated that many customers balk when they discover high shipping fees. In order to remain competitive, more and more businesses are offering free shipping in order to offset the effects of shipping price shock.

Setting a minimum order price for free shipping is particularly effective because it incentivizes customers to buy more items.

9. Show customers their savings

If you’re providing customers with savings via special deals or a rewards program, show them exactly how much they’re saving. Knowing this information will make them feel confident in the purchase and more likely to buy from you again.

10. Allow customers to register for reward programs

The moment of checkout is your best opportunity to gain a long-term customer. Make sure that buyers have the option to register for your site while checking out—and make the process easy.
While many customers are wary of signing up for fear of being spammed, offering future deals and savings provides a strong incentive for registration.

11. Let customers provide feedback at time of sale

Everyone appreciates being heard. Providing an optional comments box at time of purchase starts off the customer-seller relationship off on the right foot by letting buyers know that you care about their input.

12. Use a shopping cart recovery system

Among e-commerce experts, it’s no secret that abandoned carts cut into profits. In 2015, the estimated cart abandonment rate was an astonishing 68%. Implementing a shopping cart recovery system helps businesses to gain back some of this lost business. Sending friendly reminder e-mails to customers who didn’t complete the checkout process gains additional sales. If you can provide a discount to sweeten the deal, shopping cart reminders become all the more effective.

Optimizing the shopping cart is critical for the success of any e-commerce business. All of these tweaks can be made with Magento. Investing in expert-designed Magento extensions makes it easy to create a great checkout experience, thereby maximizing your ROI.

We hope you find these tips useful to enhance the checkout process of your Magento Store, until next time!

Shopping Cart Price Rules Extension Overview

Extendware’s Magento Shopping Cart Price Rules, you can create new promotions that are not possible in default Magento stores. With 24 different price rule actions, you will be able to create much more powerful promotions to attract customers to your store and products. For example, you can create rules like, “Buy a shirt and get a discount on a tie” or “Buy 2 of a product and receive the 3rd for free”. Why wait? Take action now and create much more powerful promotions to make your online business successful!

How to List Products by Newest in Magento

To sort newest just follow these simple steps:

1. Install Product Sorting on your Magento store
2. Go to System -> Configuration -> Catalog and look under Frontend and change “Product Listing Sort by” to Newest if you want this to be the default sort option. Otherwise it will just appear in the sort drop down as an option for customers.
3. There is no step #3. It is that easy!

What else can be done with Magento product sorting?

The product sorting extension that you installed has many more features in addition to sorting by newest. You can also sort by best sellers, most viewed, highest converting, and more. You can even automatically sort out of stock products last.

Quick Overview

Up-selling ability Now the Magento Ajax Cart extension has the ability to list up-sell, cross-sell, related, also viewed, or also bought pages on the success page. This enables you to increase sales by putting products in front of your customers that they are likely to want to purchase.

Mobile / small screen support Before the Ajax Cart would show dialogs in a fixed position on the screen. This works great on a desktop, but on a mobile device or small screen it is possible that the dialog would not be close-able and no ability to scroll the page to close the dialog as the dialog would auto-position. Now the dialog does not auto-position. This way its possible for smaller screens to scroll and close it.

Add to cart on cart page Adding to cart from the cart page is now supported. This is mainly useful if a cross-sell block is shown on the cart page.

Have a look at the Ajax Cart product page and try the demo to see it in action!

Quick Extension Overview

Magento Lucene is a fast and precise search backend that is compatible with shared hosts. It includes lots of features and comes with a 30 day refund guarantee – we are that confident.

How important is fast site search?

A customer will not be able to order products from your store if they cannot find them. Relevant results matter and Lucene Search will make your results more relevant and faster. According to Gomez, every second delay in site load time results in a 7% reduction in revenue. Forrester research has found that 52% of people consider speed to be important to their site loyalty. It is well-established that faster and more relevant search results will improve a stores revenue.

Quick Extension Overview

Extendware’s Magento Lucene Search increases revenue and customer satisfaction with faster, more relevant search results. Lucene Search is a powerful and flexible search solution that helps ensure your customers can always find the products they want. Plug and play configuration and compatible with shared hosting environments.