By Max Roberts, UK Country Leader, Stripe

All ecommerce businesses face a common challenge: How do you remove unnecessary friction so that a consumer is more likely to make a purchase? One of the final and most crucial steps in this conversion journey is often neglected: the checkout flow.

As companies scale to new global markets, they need to consider the regional preferences of their consumers. Not translating your checkout to the language of your customers, or failing to offer popular local payment methods, could cut off entire countries from their addressable market, leading to lost sales.

As an example, when three Hong Kong-based businesses selling into the Netherlands enabled iDEAL, the most popular payment method among Dutch customers, payment volume from the Netherlands increased by 79%.

When we conducted a detailed review of 450 of the top ecommerce websites in Europe we found 58% had at least three basic errors, adding unnecessary friction for customers.

Here’s a snapshot of our findings.

Checkout form design

More than one-third of ecommerce companies added unnecessary friction to their checkout flow, preventing customers from checking out.

• 42% did not automatically verify the card number as it was entered, increasing the likelihood of customers submitting inaccurate payment information
• 39% let customers attempt to pay with an expired card date
• 19% did not allow card numbers to be entered without spaces, adding friction by forcing customers to enter data in a certain way
• 45% did not confirm card type when a card number was entered, missing the opportunity to validate payment details in real time

Mobile optimisation

Ninety-six percent of checkouts were designed to adapt to mobile screen sizes, but only 12% supported mobile wallets.

• 4% did not adapt to mobile screen sizes
• 29% failed to surface a numeric keypad to enter card information on mobile
• 88% did not support either Apple Pay or Google Pay

Localisation

The majority of checkouts were not translated into other languages and did not offer the most relevant payment methods for international customers.

• 74% of checkouts were not translated into local languages when customers elsewhere in Europe attempted to make a purchase

• 81% did not offer local payment methods such as iDEAL, EPS, P24, or Bancontact in markets where they are widely used

You can read the full report on the common errors and why they matter in our State of European checkouts in 2020 report.

About Stripe:

Millions of businesses of all sizes — from startups to large enterprises — use Stripe’s software and APIs to accept payments, send payouts, and manage their businesses online.

Stripe updates its payments infrastructure an average of 16x a day. This velocity helps us continually increase conversion rates, reduce abandonment rates, and optimise checkout experiences.

To find out more contact us at https://stripe.com/gb/contact/sales.