By Peter Karpas
Bold Commerce
Plenty of businesses would agree that checkout is one of the most pivotal touchpoints in the customer journey. After all, it's the moment when money changes hands from the customer to the company they're buying from.
Despite its importance, however, businesses have long viewed checkout solely for its transactional purposes, rather than as something that has a direct influence on the entire ecommerce experience. And as a result, most aren't considering the many opportunities that checkout creates to do more than just process transactions.
Of course, these opportunities are easy to miss when checkout is made to happen as quickly as possible with speedy, one-click features that focus on nothing but driving conversion. While beneficial in some shopping scenarios, such as high-value carts on mobile devices, these types of checkout experiences neglect, and even eliminate, valuable real estate for features that can offer far more than higher conversion rates.
Checkout's purpose is more than transactional; it's a strategic touchpoint that can not only drive revenue, but also build lasting relationships between businesses and their customers, who will then multiply that revenue through their brand loyalty for years to come.
Here are just a few of the things that can, and should, happen at checkout for businesses to create value that goes beyond the checkout itself.
Curated recommendations will in turn increase transaction size. Businesses have mastered the art of personalization in ecommerce—or so they think. Companies are now investing heavily in personalizing things like advertisements and email marketing campaigns, but more often than not, that's where it ends.
That's because there's a common misconception that checkout is the step after the shopping journey, rather than an extension of it, and therefore it isn't worth investing in. The good news is that checkout is ripe for personalization in more ways than one.
For example, it provides a place to integrate personalized recommendations in the form of upsells (higher-end versions of the product being purchased), as well as cross-sells (additional, but highly relevant, offerings) at the exact moment a purchase is taking place.
New technology offerings have even gone as far as making these suggestions after an order goes through as a last chance to add an item—and increase purchase amounts—after a transaction takes place, without having to go back through checkout. The point in all of this is that businesses are short changing themselves and hurting revenue when checkout is simply a "Complete Purchase" button and nothing further.
Do this with memberships, subscriptions and other long-term offerings. While being laser focused on conversion at checkout might be an effective short term strategy, it neglects long-term opportunities to increase customer retention and create lasting relationships.
Checkout is the ideal touchpoint to introduce memberships, subscriptions and other long-term offerings to customers that will keep them coming back again and again.
For example, take a customer who is about to purchase a new skincare product. Rather than pushing them straight from cart to payment, a business can instead offer a monthly refill subscription directly within the checkout interface, increasing their chances of converting a one-off purchase into a recurring revenue stream.
And while focusing on one-off purchases is important, it shouldn't come at the expense of loyal customers, especially since they account for 65 percent of business revenue (see smallbiztrends.com/customer-retention-statistics). So rather than treating frequent shoppers like strangers, businesses should reward them for their continued purchases.
One way to do this is through loyalty programs. Businesses can reward customers for their repeat business (and encourage frequent shoppers to buy more regularly) by providing opportunities to earn points and other rewards that can be cashed in for discounts.
Similarly, memberships reward a business's most loyal customers with all the benefits of loyalty programs plus access to exclusive perks such as early access to new products, invitations to local events, special offers and more that make them feel like a brand insider—all while generating additional revenue streams with the fees paid by each member, and incentivizing customers to shop with them more regularly.
When it comes to choosing payment methods at checkout, consumers want options. Businesses are well aware of this and, as a result, are making an effort to integrate as many different options into checkout as possible.
But checkout should be a place where consumers see a curated selection of the payment methods that are most relevant to them, not an endless array of options that can be overwhelming and may ultimately lead shoppers to abandon their cart altogether.
One-click payment options have become a popular choice of shoppers in recent years. But in many cases, businesses have integrated so many of these options at checkout, from PayPal to Apple Pay to Amazon Pay and more, that they've forgotten to actually pay attention to the ones their customers are using.
By offering something like Apple Pay as their primary payment option, for instance, brands will never know which of their customers would have benefited from a cross-sell, or signed up for a membership, during the checkout experience.
Payment methods should be tailored in the same way as everything else in the ecommerce journey. For example, customers shopping on their phone may prefer to make a purchase with their digital wallet since their physical card may not be readily accessible. On the other hand, customers who like to use their desktops for larger purchases, especially for big ticket purchases, are more likely to opt for pay-by-bank or another traditional payment method.
Checkout doesn't have to be a one-size-fits-all payment processor. Instead of offering every payment method under the sun and hoping for the best, businesses can create personalized checkout experiences for each of their customers, providing them with only the options they know they'll use.
By looking more holistically at checkout, rather than simply viewing it as an opportunity to secure a purchase, businesses can optimize checkout to not only boost revenue, but also increase transaction value and build a loyal customer base in the process. 
Peter Karpas is CEO of Bold Commerce, the technology company that powers personalized checkout experiences for leading omnichannel retailers and direct-to-consumer brands. A payments industry veteran, he previously held executive positions at Intuit, PayPal and First Data. Contact him via LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/peterkarpas.
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