Usability Testing Accordion-Style Checkouts: 2 UX Pitfalls that 75% of Sites Neglect

when benchmarking checkout flows for the primary time back in 2012, we discovered that 14% of the top one hundred US e-commerce websites used an accordion-style checkout. Accordion-fashion checkouts were an ever increasing trend due to the fact that then, and in 2016 we’ve found that 32% of checkout flows are accordion-style.

even as an accordion checkout often is an aesthetically beautiful choice, our beyond 7 years of large-scale checkout checking out have now not determined that accordion-style checkouts consistently carry out higher than both traditional multi-web page checkouts or one-step checkouts. they could truly carry out well, but the accordion format in and of itself doesn’t count number that a great deal to overall checkout performance. What we have a look at to be much extra important to checkout UX performance is what users are asked to do all through the checkout float, and how they're requested to do it.

however, throughout trying out of accordion-fashion checkouts, we observed that this method of “one page with increasing and collapsing sections” often motive 2 usability issues that must be actively pre-empted a good way to obtain a good accordion checkout overall performance. but, our benchmarking of accordion checkout flows among large e-commerce web sites display that 75% of accordion checkout flows have predominant usability troubles as they fail at one (or each) of these  pitfalls. greater in particular, they both:

Deprive customers of an ongoing review (that's the main advantage of an accordion-style design), and / or
spoil consumer again-button expectations (often with information-loss therefore).
at some point of person testing we have a look at each usability problems to critically disrupt the user’s checkout experience, or even being the sole cause for checkout abandonments (that is in particular genuine for the latter).

In this text we’ll present checking out findings from our Checkout Usability have a look at that relate without delay to accordion checkouts, such as:

How some accordion checkout designs deprive users of an ongoing order overview.
two one-of-a-kind strategies found to carry out nicely in communicating the accordion concept of “increasing and collapsing sections” to customers.

Why so many accordion checkouts have a lower back-button behavior that misaligns with users’ expectations, and why this reasons checkout abandonments