D2C Brands Have the Smoothest Checkout and the Sales to Show for It

Relative to other kinds of eCommerce merchants, direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands are providing the most user-friendly checkout experiences, a key competitive advantage when it comes to driving sales and building loyalty.

By the Numbers

Research from “Building A Better Online Checkout Experience: The Key Features That Matter To Customers,” created in collaboration with Checkout.com, which draws from a survey of 2,030 U.S. consumers, shows only 11% of shoppers experienced a frustrating checkout process for their most recent purchase directly from a brand.

Get the study: Building A Better Online Checkout Experience: The Key Features That Matter To Customers

In contrast, 13% were frustrated with the checkout process when purchasing from a merchant’s app or website, 16% when purchasing from a digital marketplace and a whopping 38% when purchasing from a social media platform’s marketplace.

Why It Matters

A negative checkout experience can not only have a negative impact on consumers’ perception of a given brand — it can even cause them to abandon their would-be purchase partway through the process.

“If you look at the checkout process today, it’s a big point of friction,” Karma Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Friedman told PYMNTS in a recent interview. “You need to put in your input, you need to sign up, you need to add your credit or debit card, which is why [merchants] still experience around 75% shopping cart abandonment.”

Conversely, when the checkout experience is quick and convenient, shoppers can easily see the purchase through and will be more likely to return again in the future.