We’ve all been there.  You’re online on some site, and it may even be a new one.  You’re looking for something you’ve been wanting to buy, but now you’re trying to beat the clock to go to lunch or home.  You just spent several minutes doing your research.  In internet time, that’s like an hour.  Now comes the moment.  Your friends are at the door, coaxing you to go.  You ask them, “Just one more moment, okay?”  You click the checkout button.  BOOM!  You’re now looking at a 6-step wizard.  You need more time.  Your friends leave without you.  At least you can go through your 6 pages of checkout in peace now.

Don’t Punish Your Customers

When you think about it, the above scenario has played out thousands upon thousands of times over the years.  So much so, that many of us have just grown to accept it – even though it’s so bad, it’s horrible.  If your customers decide to spend money with you, the absolute last thing you should do is punish them for making that decision.  Essentially, that’s what a checkout wizard feels like.  Punishment.

If you have a single-page checkout in your store and your competitors don’t, this says a lot about how much more you care about your customers, and how much they don’t.

It’s More Mobile Friendly

Sure, you can spend some time making a checkout wizard more mobile-friendly, but it will never be as natively friendly as a single-page checkout.  With a checkout wizard, you end up having to use valuable and limited screen real estate to show progress.  A single-page checkout doesn’t need this. 

Also, each step of the checkout wizard tends to leave out critical information.  How many times have you found yourself wondering what you entered in the previous step of checkout?  Now add to that being in a situation where you’re shopping on a phone, and time is moving faster because you’re on the go.  Guess who’s probably not going to be completing their checkout process.  (That’s right.  Checkout wizards are a chief cause of abandoned shopping carts.)

Saving Customers Time

When you have a single-page checkout, it demands that everything be laid out in a very efficient manner.  This ensures that customers achieve the only goal you have for them at this stage – clicking the PAY button.  As a result of this efficiency, customers are left with so much less to do and very little to be distracted by.  They can just fill in a few fields, pay, and move on.

Perceived Time of Completion

We already hit on this earlier in the article.  Saving people time is one thing.  Everyone’s time is valuable these days.  Parents have to get home to kids.  People have to get to meetings.  Jobs just need to get done.  Every second you save your customers will be noticed and appreciated – even if only at a subconscious level.  Not seeing a progress bar, and knowing that this is the only step to take care of, adds a peace of mind that even your customers can’t articulate.  This is a sure fire way to begin building brand advocates. 

You want fans of your brand, right?  Make them feel how much easier your store is over the competition.  Depending on your brand, you might even want to consider highlighting how much time they just saved compared to the competition – right there on the page.