The success of your B2B eCommerce store for VARs does not depend on the number of people visiting your eCommerce store but on conversions, which primarily depend on your checkout page.
It is the final step that stands between a potential customer and a successful sale. Ensuring a smooth, hassle-free checkout experience is crucial for converting visitors into paying customers.
Most eCommerce businesses opt for one-page checkout, which condenses the entire checkout process onto a single page. It allows the customers to enter their information and complete the purchase all in one go. On the other hand, some choose multi-page checkout, which splits the process up into multiple pages and allows customers to review their order and shipping information.
But with so many different checkout options available, how to determine the most suitable checkout page for your ultimate business processes?
Let’s move forward in the blog to choose the layout that serves your store flawlessly.
Table of Contents
On-Page Checkout: Pros and Cons
With one-page checkout, all the checkout processes are performed on a single page. This way, consumers can complete their purchases swiftly and effortlessly. However, it has the following pros and cons that you need to consider while including it in your B2B eCommerce platform.
Pros
The advantages of one-page checkout are as follows:
Minimized Checkout Time
The attention-grabbing period for a customer is incredibly low. Customers expect the checkout process to be fast and easy. And one-page checkout makes it possible. While multi-page checkout takes 1.40 minutes to complete a purchase, one page only takes 53 seconds.
Simple
In one-page checkout, all the forms and boxes are filled on a single web page. Therefore, online shoppers find this checkout page straightforward as there is less risk of any errors.
Less Cart Abandonment Rate
According to some research, 21% of online users abandon their carts before the checkout process. It is either due to sites taking too long to respond or complicated to understand. On-page checkout reduces this process, thereby further reducing the cart abandonment rate.
Higher Conversion
In terms of conversion rate, one-page checkout is best for your online store. According to Elasticpath’s A/B split testing, single-page checkout has outperformed the multi-step checkout by a 21.8% difference in conversion rate.
Cons
One-Page checkout has different limitations as well. Let’s learn about them in detail:
Overwhelming
Since the billing, shipping, and payment methods appear on a single page at the same time, it overwhelms the customers. For the smooth functioning of the page, you need to optimize the checkout page by removing every unnecessary field to provide your clients with better focus.
Analytics
Tracking funnel data and seeing the point at which the customer quit the purchase process is arduous in one-page checkout. Unlike the multi-step checkout process, it does not constitute an analytics tool that helps them to track customers at every step. Even if it contains workarounds, it is sophisticated and provides less reliable data.
Intimidate Customers
Having all the pages in a single page can intimidate customers, especially when it requires customers to fill in a lot of information.
Multi-Page Checkout: Pros and Cons
A multi-page checkout includes a step-by-step process of filling out forms. These forms are grouped by a certain benchmark on different pages. Before thinking of including this checkout process in your B2B eCommerce software for Office Supplies, let’s learn about its advantages and disadvantages.
Pros
Following are the advantages of the Multi-page checkout process.
Guest Checkout
Customers do not have time or interest in creating an account for the checkout process. Adding multi-page checkout in your eCommerce platform enables you to integrate a guest checkout option.
Clear Layout
When you spread the checkout fields into smaller steps, the amount of content on every page tends to reduce. This way, the checkout page is less overwhelming and clear to customers.
Email Collection
Multi-step checkout process collects customers’ contact details in the first step. Even if they do not complete the checkout process after filling up the first page, you will have their emails, which can later be used to send promotional emails.
Provide Funnel Data in Analytics
Tracking customers’ activities and collecting extra data plays a crucial role in your business to sell products. With multi-page checkout, you can do it with ease. It includes Google Analytics and other analytic tools to peek through your customer’s purchase journey.
Cons
Besides incredible advantages, Multi-page checkout has some disadvantages as well. Move forward to learn about them in detail.
Slow
Multi-page checkout primarily focuses on data gathering. It includes sending data after each page submission. As a result, there is an increase in network requests, further leading to an increase in loading time. Moreover, multi-page checkout forms are only set up to send data after the purchase is submitted, which is the reason for losing pre-purchase data collection.
More Click
In the Multi-page checkout process, customers have to go through several pages to complete the checkout process. It results in clicking more ‘Next Step’ buttons, making it time-consuming for customers.
Difficulty Editing Information
Mistakes often happen while filling up the checkout process form. But in multi-page checkout, customers have to return to the previous page to undo these mistakes. In some B2B eCommerce solutions, customers do have the editing option. They have to fill up the details again. As a result, they get frustrated, leading to an increase in the cart abandonment rate.
One-Page vs. Multi-Page Checkout: Which One To Use?
Both one-page and multi-page checkouts have their own unique benefits and limitations. One-page checkout is quick and efficient, which makes it a popular choice for customers expecting to make purchases as quickly as possible. On the contrary, multi-page checkout provides a thorough review of customers’ orders and shipping information, making it an appropriate choice for larger and more complex orders.
Ultimately the decision between the two depends on your business and customers’ needs. So, carefully consider both options and ensure the best possible customer experience.
