Online forms are part of the e-commerce experience, though some e-commerce providers put much of the form experience behind the scenes with options like one-click ordering.
But even if you don’t offer one-click ordering, you should do what you can to minimize the “friction” between the customer and the “complete order” button. You can minimize much of that friction through your online e-commerce forms. Here’s how.
1. Minimize Typing and Make It Mobile-Friendly
If you design your online e-commerce forms as if they will be used on mobile devices, you accomplish a lot right off the bat. Mobile-friendly forms by definition look great on smaller screens, and because it’s not easy to type extensively on a phone, mobile-friendly forms minimize typing. Sure, your customers may access your e-commerce site in a desktop environment where they have a full keyboard, but even then, minimal typing is appreciated.
2. Make It Dead Simple to Add Items to the Cart
Typing in an item number on an order page feels clunky in an era of bright green “add to cart” buttons. Even if you’re selling square-head bolts or industrial quantities of cooking oil, making it easy to put items into the cart (where the actual form-filling goes on behind the scenes) is expected of online suppliers. The more time it takes to add something to the order, the more time people have to reconsider the purchase.
3. Make the Checkout Page Clean, Simple, and Mobile-Ready
The final page that displays the order before clicking the “submit” button on the order should be a model of clarity and brevity. Design this page with mobile-first in mind too and you can be confident that your buyers will be pleased with what they see whether they’re entering their order from a phone, a tablet, or a laptop. A great looking checkout page heightens the customer’s anticipation of the products they purchase.
4. Save Payment and Shipping Information for Future Purchases
After someone makes their first order, offer to create an account that saves the payment and shipping information they have entered, so that information will already be filled in the next time the customer makes an order. This reduces shopping friction even more, speeding up the order process and making customers feel confident their order has been received as quickly as possible. Not having to spend another three minutes entering payment and shipping information makes more of a difference than you may think!
5. Offer Repurchase / Replenish Options to Bypass Forms Altogether
You can also offer an option that bypasses most forms altogether: implement automatic repurchase/replenishment options. Many e-commerce companies are offering “subscriptions” to products that are consumed regularly, like cosmetics, food items, and cleaning products. Allow the shopper to specify the interval between orders, and give them the ultimate convenience of a standing order that they don’t even have to think about. It’s a win-win situation.
Creating online forms that do exactly what you want requires powerful and flexible form software, like PerfectApps. With PerfectApps, you can create mobile-friendly online forms by dragging and dropping elements into place until they look exactly right. The forms you create with PerfectApps are easy to integrate with web pages, databases, spreadsheets, and other software, so the data collected by your forms is easy to distribute to exactly where it needs to go, whether that’s the warehouse, customer support, or packaging and shipping.
Intrigued? We invite you to watch the PerfectApps demo and see for yourself how powerful and easy-to-use PerfectApps is, no matter how you plan to use your online forms.
