Malaysia has lately emerged as one of the fastest-growing e-commerce markets in the APAC region. The e-commerce industry is expected to hit $10.9 billion by 2025 at a massive CAGR of 14.84%. While the surge in demand presents a huge opportunity for online businesses, it also piles up a lot of pressure on e-commerce companies to fully capitalize on this potential and enhance the customer experience in times when there’s such cut-throat competition in the market.
Although e-commerce companies spend their time, money, and resources to drive brand awareness, boost their website traffic, and increase ROI, the majority of them tend to overlook one crucial aspect- the checkout flow.
Stripe teamed up with Edgar, Dunn & Company to analyze the top 100 e-commerce Malaysian brands to identify the most common issues in their checkout process. They analyzed the checkouts of the top e-commerce and subscription businesses in Malaysia and listed down the most common checkout errors to categorize them into four sections, namely-
Checkout form design
Mobile optimization
Localization
Buyer trust and security
Here are the highlights of the report.
1. Checkout Form Design
Online buyers in Malaysia expect e-commerce platforms to provide them with a fast, intuitive, and mobile-optimized payment experience. 45% of the shoppers went as far as saying that would abandon a purchase if it took them more than two minutes to check out. However, 48% of the surveyed shoppers admitted that it usually takes them more than three minutes on average to complete their purchase. 29% of the shoppers blame lengthy and complicated checkout processes as reasons for abandoning an order in the past year.
The top five checkout form design errors found in most Malaysian e-commerce platforms are-
66% of checkouts didn’t display an error message in real-time when an invalid card number was entered.
68% of checkouts didn’t show an error message in real-time when an expired card was used to attempt payment.
70% didn’t confirm card type in real-time when a card number was entered, missing the opportunity to instantly validate payment details.
90% of checkouts didn’t support address autocomplete.
96% didn’t allow customers to save their payment information for future use.
2. Mobile Optimization
47% of surveyed consumers admitted to using their mobile devices for more than half of their shopping. 67% of the surveyed shoppers said that it was “very” or “extremely” important for a site to be mobile-friendly. If your checkout flow isn’t compatible with a smaller screen i.e. if the checkout page doesn’t automatically adjust to the size of the device, customers are highly likely to abandon the checkout flow altogether.
In fact, despite over 50% of the traffic on e-commerce platforms coming from smartphones, the rate of abandoned carts is twice in smartphones than desktop.
The top four mobile optimization errors are-
41% of checkouts didn’t offer a guest checkout experience.
96% of checkouts didn’t support Apple Pay and 80% didn’t support Google Pay.
55% didn’t support GrabPay.
23% of checkouts failed to surface a numeric keypad to enter card information on mobile.
3. Localization
Eighteen percent of consumers who were surveyed said that they didn’t complete the checkout process because their preferred payment method wasn’t available. While bank transfers are the most used e-commerce payment method in Malaysia, driving 47% of all online payments, alternate payment methods like digital wallets have gotten much more lately. Across the entire APAC region, digital wallets make up for 46% of online payment volume.
4. Buyer Trust and Security
Most consumers said that a secure website was one of the top two factors that majorly influenced their shopping experience. However, going through multiple security steps after the customer has confirmed their order negatively impacts their experience. Therefore, businesses need to strike the right balance between validating a customer’s identity and not adding unnecessary friction.
The top three buyer trust and security errors are-
28% of checkouts didn’t offer a guest checkout experience.
73% of checkouts didn’t allow customers to create an account by connecting to a social media profile.
24% of checkouts didn’t display an order summary that could be easily adjusted.
Bottom Line
Despite the heavy surge in e-commerce purchases in Malaysia lately, most e-commerce brands are yet to figure out their checkout process, which is often lengthy and complicated. From poor checkout form design and lack of mobile optimization to excessive site security and lack of preferred payment options, the checkout process of many e-commerce brands reel from these issues. Therefore, to succeed in Malaysia’s rapidly booming e-commerce industry, e-commerce platforms need to come up with solutions to these problems. Only then they’d be able to truly capitalize upon the rapidly evolving e-commerce sector in Malaysia.
To delve deeper into the report, click here.