Double check your Checkout
Providing a good buyer experience is key for every Store. It will mean the difference between completing or missing a sale. That’s why it’s important to test your checkout process from a customer’s perspective to ensure you’re Store is set-up to handle the transactions. We’ve come up with guidelines to help you do just that.
To read the complete article, check out our Auctiva Education Section.
- Read your description – Double-check that descriptions are accurate, catchy and don’t have any glaring spelling mistakes—a sign of a less-than-serious seller.
- Test your shipping calculator – Not only will the calculator provide estimated shipping costs; it will also identify if you have a shipping method associated with the product you’re trying to buy. Try the calculator a few times, using different zip codes, to make sure all of your customers can order your goods, or at least those in the shipping zones where you wish to do business.
- Make a payment – If you offer more than one payment option, test all of them to make sure the methods are integrated properly. Most customers will expect you to accept credit cards, so you may want to offer that payment option and test it first.
- Capture the cash – When a customer places an order, you have to go through a process known as ‘payment capture’ in order to actually receive the funds. To do this go into the order’s Summary tab. Become familiar with this page. It tells you how much customers owe, their shipping and mailing addresses as well as the contents of their shipments and their preferred shipping method.
- Deliver goods – Shipping items is essential to good business. Be sure to use Auctiva Commerce’s automated e-mail feature to keep your customers informed about the status of their orders when you ship products. It’s important to test those messages to fully understand your buyers’ experience.
- Refund, cancel and void – After making sure payments work properly, you’ll want to give yourself a refund and cancel and void your order(s). A refund is straightforward: It’s simply the act of returning part or all of your buyer’s money after a transaction has been completed. Canceling, on the other hand, marks an order as having been called off. But it doesn’t prevent payment from being captured on that order. A voided order cancels the order and prevents a payment from being captured.
As a final confirmation, it’s helpful to go through the complete purchasing process a few times to test out every aspect and ensure you don’t miss anything that would leave customers in the lurch. If you don’t have any problems, neither should your buyers. The combination of quality products paired with a wholly functioning site will create a positive customer experience; driving sales and fostering long-term customer relationships and repeat business.
