Hassle-free holidays

We’ve all found ourselves visiting new websites and discovering brands as we look for that one special holiday gift. A daughter may not golf, but she wants to get her dad a set of club covers. Or a thoughtful mom may be shopping for video game-themed merchandise for her teen. The expected flood of online shoppers allows merchants to boost their sales and gain new customers.

However, attracting potential customers to your website is one matter. Ensuring they can easily check out and complete their transaction is another—and one that’s vitally important if you want them to return. Quick Checkout for Adobe Commerce powered by Bolt helps merchants streamline the checkout process and allows shoppers to check out with one click.

“The influx of new shoppers during the holidays means it’s even more critical for merchants to make it easy for shoppers to complete their purchases, especially as online traffic increases,” says Chelsea Gomatam, Bolt’s associate director of product marketing. With Quick Checkout, Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source merchants can eliminate holiday hurdles, provide a seamless checkout experience and turn first-time shoppers into returning customers.

Account creation challenges

Customer accounts offer shoppers and retailers multiple advantages—they can receive personalized offers, save payment methods and streamline their checkout processes. But even so, three out of four customers still check out as guests. And 12% of shoppers abandon their carts if asked to create an account too early in their journey.

Let’s take a step back and look at the typical shopper experience. Many merchants allow shoppers to create accounts only from their home page. But shoppers aren’t usually thinking about creating an account when they first land on a website; they’re already in shopping mode. Shoppers don’t have a reason to create their accounts early in the process, and this leads to low account-creation rates.

Now, if merchants don’t ask shoppers to create an account upon first arriving at the site, they’ll often ask them to make one before completing their checkout. The merchant’s motive is clever — they want to bring new shoppers into their system and make it easier for them next time. But the request adds friction at a perilous point in the process—right when shoppers are getting ready to pay. To type in billing, shipping and payment information only adds to the customer’s burden and further jeopardizes the sale.

“Asking shoppers to make an account in order to check out can deter shoppers from creating an account and even force them to abandon their purchase altogether,” Gomatam adds. And, if your ecommerce site is also struggling with slow loading times, errors or other issues that merchants face as traffic picks up, then the chance that customers will finish their transactions is even lower.

As you prepare for the seasonal shopping rush, consider improving your customer experience and boosting your sales. Adobe Commerce merchants can leverage Quick Checkout to solve their checkout challenges and make it easier for first-time and returning customers to complete their transactions. Merchants can access Quick Checkout via the Adobe Commerce (or Magento) Marketplace.

The Quick Checkout extension allows first-time shoppers to save their personal and payment information and create a Bolt account at their convenience. “This removes any unnecessary friction from the checkout process—there are no additional steps to create an account,” Gomatam says.

Also, with device authentication, customers log in only once using a one-time password. After that, the system automatically verifies their device and logs them into any website that uses Bolt. Once they save their information, returning customers can simply check out with one click.

“That way, shoppers aren’t forced to remember multiple usernames and passwords across different sites,” Gomatam says. “Instead, they use one account across hundreds of brands in the Bolt Network.” What’s more, Adobe merchants using Quick Checkout pay for the transaction only when a customer uses it.

Happy shoppers, happier new year

Holiday shoppers are looking at their lists, checking them twice—and hoping to complete their online transactions as quickly as possible. While capturing seasonal business in the moment is critical, the benefits of streamlining the checkout process can also reverberate across the coming year.

Shoppers who have an easy, quick and enjoyable checkout experience are more apt to:

Complete their purchases
Return when they have additional needs for your product or service
Recommend your product or service to their friends.

“The fewer steps required of a shopper, the more likely they are to complete their purchase,” Gomatam says. With Quick Checkout, Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source merchants have the opportunity to create holiday shopping experiences that are as friction-free as possible. You’ll convert more carts and cultivate new and repeat customers who help grow your holiday sales—and build your business for the long term.