One of the initial problems merchants encountered when they first started to sell online was offering a hassle-free checkout experience. We have come a long way since the days of sending checks by mail, money orders, and other ways to inconvenience our customers. Today, one-click checkout is what most users expect when visiting our stores to offer a seamless shopping experience no matter the sales channel we operate in.

That being said, adopting any online checkout platform always requires making certain sacrifices in the long run. One thing to consider is that your target audience must also be willing to use your platform of choice. The problem is that they tend to have more than one preferred payment method.

In general, it isn’t bad practice to have multiple payment options available for your customers. The more options you offer, the fewer excuses your users have for leaving items abandoned in the shopping cart.

However, the urge to accommodate the needs of the many led to checkout pages so cluttered with fill-out forms and payment options they now resemble a tax filing form. Moreover, it made devs jump through a lot of hoops to satisfy the demands of eCommerce SEO strategists and target audiences while dealing with the limitations of the platform they are based on.

General Considerations Before Choosing a Checkout Provider

Before even starting to draft a checkout process, merchants must take into account elements such as order management procedures, internal policies, order modification options, logistics, established privacy policy terms, platform integration options and restrictions, and many other factors that, in many cases, lead to endless iterations of implementation and regression for fine-tuning.

It is not uncommon to have bitter internal struggles between different in-house departments for this very reason. Trying to make sure they´re all on the same page is sometimes the most challenging part of running an eCommerce SEO campaign. And failing to do that is the main reason we still see websites with unexplainably high bounce and shopping cart abandonment rates.

If your website requires customers to create accounts, fill out endless forms with shipping and payment information, and suddenly adds unexpected costs along the way, you´ll always have below-average conversion rates. More than two-thirds of online shoppers will abandon their shopping cart if the checkout process wears their patience out.

If you´re going through any of this, contact our eCommerce developers right now and get your sanity back.

One-click checkout features are now a common sight, and many merchants are adopting them as they now tend to integrate checkout, payment, and logistics into one easy-to-use feature.

The idea is not new, however. It was invented more than 20 years ago by online sales giant Amazon, allowing Jeff Bezos to completely dominate the market and take space rides when he pleases.

Their magical one-click checkout button allowed their customers to bypass the whole checkout process, making it extremely easy for customers to make purchases on impulse.

However, they patented the feature and did everything in their power to keep most merchants out of the loop for 17 years. This legal protection expired in 2017, and soon many eCommerce platforms, like Magento and Shopify, started offering the feature out-of-the-box.

Now, before you start yelling at your dev team to start installing any of these miraculous features, you need to understand that they require some serious thinking before implementing.

For example, one-click checkout generally prevents users from building a shopping cart. That means that you might be leaving money on the table by taking cross-sell or upsell opportunities out of the equation, hence lowering your average order value and increasing shipping costs.

These features also come with fees that can get out of control quickly. Most typically charge 2.9% or $0.30 (whichever is higher) per transaction. Others charge merchants a percentage of their annual revenue, risk coverage fees, or a flat fee to use the platform. So it is always wise to ponder all these elements in order to choose the best option for your store.

If you want to have a clear idea of which platform will give you the best ROI, try out our Free Audit Tool.

The Best One-Click Checkout Options

Amazon Pay: More than 50% of Americans are Amazon Prime members. That means that they are permanently logged in and keep their payment and shipping information up to date. For those who are regular shoppers, just seeing the Amazon Pay button gives them peace of mind knowing they’re working with a platform they trust.

PayPal One Touch: This only works for sites already using PayPal. It works more like a digital wallet and has great features, such as same-day payout. It does open a new window to continue to check out, but PayPal users are more than used to it and they trust the brand.

Shop Pay: This Shopify fast checkout feature is only available for those already using the platform. However, most people have purchased something from a Shopify store in the last few years, saving their billing and shipping information in the Shopify network. Now that they have partnered with Google and plan to use their cloud services, we wouldn’t be surprised to see more and more stores using Shop Pay for checkout.

Bolt: This relatively new fintech startup offers lightning-quick one-click checkout features. It is easily integrated into most eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento, but it also offers custom integration options. The platform has proven to be safe, reliable, and fast, yet it does not offer same-day payout options.

These are all solid one-click checkout options for your eCommerce. However, you must bear in mind that each one of them will have different operational costs and fees. Moreover, you have to make sure that your process takes into account logistics and shipping costs associated with potentially reduced shopping cart sizes.

If you need a comprehensive analysis of your eCommerce SEO strategy and business model, get a free SEO audit today and let us create a comprehensive strategy for sustainable growth.