Landing Page Optimization & Web Design

Should you use one page checkout? Here are 5 reasons not to.

1. I have found mostly complaints from website owners than anything good about one page checkouts as you can read from the selected forums below:

• http://www.webproworld.com/
• http://www.magentocommerce.com/

2. Gap.com is the only top 500 online retailer using a one page checkout but according to econsultancy.com posted in January 2009  Gap.com saw some decrease in conversion rates in their one page checkout. Gap.com is still using the one page checkout till now. NOTE: as we all know, TOP 500 retailers are very quick in implementing new things, especially if those things increase conversion rates. Apart from gap.com I can’t recall any other stores using one page checkout.

3. According to this post from getelastic.com, three step checkout process convert the best at 6.2% whereas one page checkout converts at only 2.5% as you can see in the table below.

4. I found one study talking about anthropologie.com website. It says that they have seen an increase in conversion by 24%, but anthropologie.com isn’t using one page checkout as shown in the picture below anymore, apart from outside USA transactions. For outside USA, they use this checkout module from third party fiftyone.com, also used on overstock.com only for overseas transactions.

5. All these 5 stores, iBitStore.com, Myakka.com, BuyCosmetics.com, BagsDirect.com and PastTimes.com, used to have one page checkout according to this screen shot from a website, but as of writing no one page checkout there anymore.

Clearly, there is not much talk in favour of one page checkout. So how come some shopping cart vendors like magento, corecommerce or prostores offer one page checkouts? What is it about one page checkouts then?

Multi step checkout is more complex, requires knowledge and money (for testing) to get it right. And this is probably why one page checkout appears to make life simpler because one page checkouts are easier and cheaper to have, especially if you don’t have resources for website testing, because you deal only with one page.

We would like to hear from website owners who switched from multi page checkout to one page checkout and vice verse, so you all can learn and possibly avoid costly mistakes.