How Checkout Zen Score™ is calculated?

Checkout Zen™ checkout scores are calculated using eCommerce site checkout-funnel metrics. The score is based on five KPIs:

  • Cart Abandonment Rate (30%),
  • Checkout Engagement Rate (10%)
  • Checkout Conversion Rate (25%),
  • Accelerated Checkout Rate (15%) and
  • Mobile Abandonment Gap (20%).

The percentages in the chart above reflects how important each of the KPIs is in determining how your Checkout Zen Score™ is calculated. The importance of these categories may vary from one site to another.

Components of the Checkout Zen Score™

Cart abandonment rate (30%)

Having high percentage of visitors who added product to the online shopping cart and then abandoned purchase does not necessarily mean poor checkout experience with a low Checkout Zen™ checkout score. However, if the site’s abandonment rate is way outside market norms this may indicate that your cart abandonment rate KPI is overextended—and the score may reflect that to mean that you are at a higher risk of losing orders.

Checkout conversion rate (25%)

The first thing any merchant wants to know is about percentage of shoppers who started and successfully completed the checkout journey. This helps a merchant figure out the amount of unrealized revenue due to friction in the checkout steps. This is the most important factor in a Checkout Zen™ checkout score.

To improve this metric one must test with many options to make sure that the pages are fully functional, secure, that the number of data entries is minimal, and that the layout and content are not creating friction.

Mobile Abandonment Gap (20%)

Mobile shoppers behave differently than desktop shoppers. As result the cart abandonment rates are significantly different. The smaller the gap in the cart abandonment rate between two device form factors the higher Checkout Zen™ checkout score.

This metric creates awareness and drives the need for more effective mobile checkout experience. Just having responsive sites that correctly render pages on smaller form factors is not a viable or sustainable solution.

Accelerated checkout rate (15%)

This metric is a leading indicator of use of digital payments in checkout process. Ever since Amazon’s single click checkout patent expired the payment vendors are providing similar payment capabilities. To achieve a full revenue potential the accelerated payment options must be placed higher in the checkout funnel and effectively configured. In general, the higher the ratio of purchases made via accelerated checkout the higher Checkout Zen™ checkout scores. However, even the sites that haven’t been fully utilizing these payment options in all possible locations may have high Checkout Zen™ checkout scores, depending on how effective is that limited use is.

Checkout Engagement Rate (10%)

This metric measures how healthy is user experience at the top of the checkout funnel.

NEXT: Checkout score KPIs explained