Is It Normal to Lose Customers At the Checkout Screen?

[George Chernikov]

Hi all,

I'm dealing with an odd issue here and I'm not sure what might be causing it.

I'm selling a product via PayDotCom, and server logs show several people accessing my site (PPC traffic) and clicking the Buy Now button, usually after spending 5-20 minutes on the site (in other words, they have plenty of time to read the copy).

However, for some strange reason, not a single one of them appears to have checked out - somehow, I lose all my customers after they click the button and get redirected to the PDC checkout screen.

Is this normal - to lose customers upon checkout, even though the price has been stated explicitly on the sales page? I'm starting to worry if there's a technical issue there somewhere, as I haven't made a single sale yet.

[LMC]

This is a normal business conversion expense.

How many people are you dealing with, for example, if you only have had 40 people to the site, that probably is not enough statistical evidence to see conversions.

[nzdealer]

Is your checkout page matched to your site? Are you using the funnel the right way? Is your checkout page optimized?

[Marian Berghes]

just a quick method that increased my clients conversion alot: if you can customize the check out page, add some more testimonials or just simply remind them that they are making a good choice and that they will be getting X, Y etc...

In some cases it cut the amount of people that leave at the check out by 50% or more.
EX: to a customer in the stock market, Ive seen that around 15% of the people that clicked the buy now button canceled at the check out page...after implementing this we got it down to 9%...witch to me was my first big result with this method, and since then it still works very well.

Ofc, there alot of other factors: like what payment you accept, secure signs, not taking too much info etc...

and also the most important thing: TEST EVERYTHING

[Anthony Stillwell]

I believe Marian is right.

What you're dealing with is a disconnect between what people see on your site and what they're expecting to see in your ordering process. If your ordering pages bear no resemblance or connection to your sales page, you're likely to lose a lot of people because what you have to remember is that not everyone is a marketer and many people don't understand what third-party credit card processors are.

You may be attracting non-marketers who are interested in your product who aren't sure why they're not on your site anymore when it's time to order. With all the talk of scams in the news, if people aren't expecting what they see or they don't see that you're the one collecting the payment they will abandon their purchase.

So, as Marian said, find a way to customize your order pages in some way (any small way helps) so that people can see that they're still dealing with the same person and aren't sending their money to PayDotCom who until they clicked your order link may have had no idea existed.

[InternetMarketingIQ]

It's normal to have customers drop off for a variety of reasons. But it is not normal to lose 100% of them.

One of the reasons I drop off is that in order to get to the information I want to see I have to start the process... a lot of companies hide prices, shipping costs, etc. Then they try and spring them on you in the end. And off I go.

What you need to do is sit down with a few people who are not friends so you can get real responses.... have them go through the order process and tell you what concerns them.

Then make changes until you get it working.

[macabhay]

What Marian and Anthony said is very accurate.

But, if you don't have much control over the order page and can't customize it to make it more similar in resemblance to your sales page, what can you do?

One thing that has increased results for a similar situation (checking out through clickbank) is to post a snapshot of the checkout page under the order button of your sales page.

You can have some preceding text like, "order page will look like this".

If people know before hand what they should expect to see, you should have less unpleasantly surprised customers and more sales.

[bminor]

I think the clue to this is what LMC said.
How many are "several people"? If only 3 or 4 clicked the Buy Now button and then did a bunk this might still be an unfortunate accident but no evidence yet that there is really something wrong with your payment page.

How about checking with a PayDotCom representative. They will have some experience with this problem and help you out.

[George Chernikov]

Hi folks,

Thanks a lot for your valuable feedback - I'll try to tweak the PDC order page, since it does look very disconnected from the rest of my site.

And there was me thinking I was done with the coding on this baby...

[charlesburke]

Hi George,

One biggie is how visible your price is. I'll usually read the first part of a sales letter, and if I'm definitely interested, I"ll drop down to the end and try to find the price. If it's hidden or hard to find (happens more than half the time), I'll click the order button to check it. Then if it's in what I consider my price range, I'll back up and re-start reading from where I left off. Once I go back to the letter, my idea of "appropriate" price is now open for readjustment.

A hard-to-find price will usually account for up to 25% of the order page price checkers. But not 100%.

A second-level "yes I really want to order" page that reviews benefits and guarantee above the order button (and easily visible price below it) are usually extremely effective for boosting sales.

If you try that and still get all quitters, then the most probable causes are unrealistic price or a glitch with your order link.

An effective involvement technique for your second level order page is to write it all from the visitor's viewpoint:

Headline: "Yes, George, I want to boost my ________ 85% in 7 days!" or whatever your best benefit may be.

Somewhere in Body: "I understand I'll receive... (followed by brief bullet ponts reminding about major features and beneifits or a list of bonuses included)

Review of Guarantee.

Prominent order button or order link clustered with:
* credit card and paypal graphics,
* the price, easily visible.
* "Your order will be processed by secure server"

Text on the order button - avoid saying "Submit" or "Order" or "Buy". Iinstead encourage involvement with "Yes, I want my _____ too" or "I deserve better!" or "Yes I'm ready to start right now!" or something else to help them express their own feelings of wanting change and improvement.

A P.S. or two can also be a good place to insert strong emotional points.

Good luck with this, and we all wish you success with your site. Please do let us know your results.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

[George Chernikov]

I suppose as may as well list the site as well as give some numbers.

The site in question is Job Interviews Decoded - Discover the Insider Guide to Acing Job Interviews! - as you can see, the price is easily visible right next to the checkout box. I also used an involvement device above it (a little tick restating the benefits and reminding the reader of the refund guarantee).

I have since gotten rid of the PayDotCom screen and opted to redirect users directly to PayPal to cut down on the amount of clicking they have to do and not to rub the price in their face more than necessary. They've already made the buying decision once - there's no need to ask them to reaffirm it again.

Now for some hard numbers:
I have had 241 unique visitors to the page in the past few days, brought there solely via PPC traffic. Of them, 7 have clicked on the Buy button, meaning a conversion rate of 2.9%.

Of the 7 that have clicked on the button, not a single one has completed the checkout process - despite the price being clearly visible. Of these 7 would-be customers, 6 have spent at least 5 minutes on the site, so it can be concluded that they have more or less read the copy, as opposed to simply scrolling down and clicking the Buy button just to check what the price is.

[ragnartm]

Originally Posted by George Chernikov

I suppose as may as well list the site as well as give some numbers.

The site in question is Job Interviews Decoded - Discover the Insider Guide to Acing Job Interviews! - as you can see, the price is easily visible right next to the checkout box. I also used an involvement device above it (a little tick restating the benefits and reminding the reader of the refund guarantee).

I have since gotten rid of the PayDotCom screen and opted to redirect users directly to PayPal to cut down on the amount of clicking they have to do and not to rub the price in their face more than necessary. They've already made the buying decision once - there's no need to ask them to reaffirm it again.

Now for some hard numbers:
I have had 241 unique visitors to the page in the past few days, brought there solely via PPC traffic. Of them, 7 have clicked on the Buy button, meaning a conversion rate of 2.9%.

Of the 7 that have clicked on the button, not a single one has completed the checkout process - despite the price being clearly visible. Of these 7 would-be customers, 6 have spent at least 5 minutes on the site, so it can be concluded that they have more or less read the copy, as opposed to simply scrolling down and clicking the Buy button just to check what the price is.

Maybe they didn't see the price? I mean people are used to seeing the price and discounts in huge letters at the bottom of the page, I had to scroll up quite a bit to realize what you were selling it for, make it easier to see the price? That's really the only thing that makes sense to me. (Just noticed that theres a small price under the order button but chances are at least some will stop at the order button like i did the first time.) When I read your sales copy it was easy enough to see, but I guess they didn't.

[waken]

It could be something technical with the payment processor and might not be your fault. I sometimes did leave a payment page for a product that I initially wanted to have but the waiting and frequent error page really a big turn off.

And I don't like the following scenarios as well...when I click on the "Buy" button..

1) There's an OTO page asking whether I want to have A + B (where A is the product I wanted) or A alone and when I chose to stick to my initial purchase (A), another OTO page offering A + C. Again, I chose A only and it transfer me to yet another OTO that say,, okay..great discount for you to get A + B + C at a slighly higher price of A alone. WTH!!

2) It asked me to enter my email and other details to proceed. Fine.. and then it pops up some form of OTO. Still fine..but then I was asked to choose the Basic package or the premium package with lots of bonuses...

3) It shows a price that is different from what's on the sales page unless it's cheaper...

4) It shows the price is recurring when that was not stated on the sales page. So, I would normally leave the page to find out the details before proceeding further..

[BurgerBoy]

Ckeck out has to be an easy process.

If you make it too complicated they will say to heck with it and go to another merchant where the process is simple.

[George Chernikov]

At the moment, checking out is as simple as I can make it without setting up a shopping cart of my own.

There are no OTOs, no collecting contact information, no nothing - just a redirect to PayPal. You really can't make it any less complicated than that short of using PP Pro.

[Traffic-Bug]

it is called cart abandonment rate, the rate at which visitors leave without buying anything.

[nipit007]

I do it all the time..The price is often hard to find so I just click buy to see the price, often without reading that long long sales letter. Well I almost never read all the sales letter, just the highlights, then find the price.

[charlesburke]

Frankly, I don't see any particular problems with your letter, your order button area, nor your general layout. This should be snagging a few orders. Can you temporarily change the price to 50 cents or a dollar and have 2 or 3 friends do test purchases?

If you try testing it yourself, you'll have to use your wife's Paypal account or the like because Paypal won't let you sell to yourself. Or go through the rigamarole of the PayPal sandbox for testing.

This case really is puzzling.

One very minor thing you might want to play with and test sometime is to change your subheadlines to red just to see if that changes the response. But first, you need some sales to test this on. Get your friends to try it. If they're able to complete an order, then you'll know for sure that it's not the Paypal link. In that case, you'll have to look at something like how targeted your traffic is.

Again, good luck with it.

Cheers, Charles

[George Chernikov]

Charles,

I did as you suggested and made a purchase of $0.99 with my credit card.

To my horror, everything worked just fine, so credit cards payments, at least, are working as intended.