Have you ever made an online purchase via smartphone? You most probably have. And if you haven’t, you can rest assured that you’re looking at the future of eCommerce, as well as browsing, in general.

Your Magento checkout process for desktop may be spotless, but this doesn’t mean that it’s going to work well on mobile devices. In fact, responsive design for mobile pages is completely different from desktop design. Here’s how to optimize your Magento Checkout process for mobile.

Why focus on the checkout page

Many decision-makers wrongfully believe that all they need to do is create a great product and advertise it properly. Although these truly are key aspects to having a successful product, the importance of the checkout page is often neglected.

If you think that a customer would go through whatever it takes in order to purchase your product, you’d be very wrong. Sure, this may be true for those who fall in love with what you’re selling, but chances are that the majority of your potential buyers are just going to like it.

This makes them prone to simply turning away and carrying on with their browsing if the checkout process is slow, confusing, or too long. Additionally, some of your future customers may be reluctant about buying the product and simply give up because of a single checkout page hiccup.

This is to be expected on mobile platforms, as mobile users tend to buy impulsively most of the time. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that you focus on your checkout page for mobile.

Incorporate one-page checkout

Multi-page checkouts on desktop aren’t trending right now for a reason. They take more time to complete and drain the user’s focus quikcly. However, incorporating one-page checkout pages on mobile isn’t as simple as it is on desktop.

That being said, it is definitely worth your focus and time, if you want to have as seamless a customer experience as possible. The attention span of mobile users is far from impressive, so opting for a one-page checkout for mobile platforms will certainly increase the number of satisfied buyers.

Another great thing about one-page checkouts, from the psychological perspective, is that the users see how many fields they have left to fill out before they complete the process. This certainly helps in encouraging them to finish the purchase.

It is also great for navigation, as nobody likes having to sift through multiple pages only to see they forgot to enter a secondary email address on page three. One-page checkouts are a no-brainer, whether we’re talking about the Magento checkout process on PC or mobile devices.

Keep it short

The fact that you’ve made checkout one page long is great, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s perfect. You can put an almost infinite amount of content onto a single page, which doesn’t make the process any easier.

Keep in mind that the customers don’t like long questionnaires and forms. In fact, they dislike this to a point where they may end up buying the product that they were interested in somewhere else, merely because it takes a lot of time to complete the checkout form on your site.

It’s also easy for a customer to say “I’ll complete it later”, and never actually do it. This is a direct loss for your business and it’s more common than you may think.

So, the best course of action here would be to remove unnecessary checkout fields. This is where Magento is very convenient. Magento stores feature extensions designed for convenient management of the checkout fields.

Add more fields

This may seem contradictory to the previous argument, but it actually makes sense. While removing certain fields is recommended, adding others can appeal to the customer.

For instance, no customer wants to provide their secondary email address. On the other hand, they’ll be happy to have an optional field where they can enter the preferred delivery date and time.

The trick is to always look at it from the customer’s perspective. What would you like to see added to the checkout form and what would you like to see removed? What part of the process is the most tedious for you when you’re buying stuff online?

Chances are that neither your customers are really crazy about things that bother you as a customer. So, don’t be afraid to add more fields, as long as they appeal to the customers. Oh, and definitely remove every field that you don’t find 100% necessary from your checkout page.

Enable guest checkout

You may be used to entering information using your PC. The registration process tends to be a bit tedious, but you get through it, anyway.

Now, imagine registering your new profile on your phone, going to your email app to confirm the registration, and dealing with things such as selecting available usernames. This doesn’t play well with customer retention and it can easily deter them from completing the process on their phones.

Guest checkout is a fantastic functionality that Magento sites offer. It allows the users to complete their purchase with no strings attached. This works wonders for returning customers who may have forgotten their username or password. Instead of having to go through the whole password retrieval process, they can just continue with their purchase as guests.

Make it mobile friendly

Every website can be accessed from a phone, just like it can be accessed from a PC. Given the fact that most websites are primarily designed for PC and then adapted for mobile platforms, many aren’t as user-friendly in their mobile form. This is absolutely unwise, as mobile phones and tablets already account for the majority of worldwide browsing.

Even if you’ve created an incredibly user-friendly website for mobile users, the checkout page has to follow the suit. There is no guarantee that a customer will finish their purchase before they get to the checkout page. Your mobile clients are very slippery and won’t put up with mediocre service.

Is your checkout page mobile friendly?

If you not think that the focus of your online retail business shouldn’t be on the mobile side, you are wrong. Besides, it doesn’t take a whole lot to make your checkout page a great fit for mobile users.

It’s an investment that is well worth your time and resources. Why? Well, because mobile platforms are slowly taking over online retail and you can’t afford to miss out on this.