Why slow data entry could be killing your conversions
When your ecommerce store is attracting visitors, products are going into carts, but sales still aren’t landing, it’s time to take a closer look at the final step. You’ve already checked the big issues - page speed, pricing strategy, shipping options - but what about the moment that matters most?
The checkout.
All too often, what feels like a small UX detail ends up becoming a major conversion killer. And one of the biggest culprits is slow, manual data entry.
What's the hidden cost of manual data entry?
In
retail and ecommerce, where speed equals sales, every unnecessary click or keystroke is potentially a dropped checkout and a lost customer. If it requires too much typing, confusing form fields, or any guesswork, this adds unnecessary frustration for the customer, especially on mobile devices. In fact,
86% of shoppers on mobile fail to make it to checkout, making it the highest card abandonment rate of all devices.
Here’s how all this friction adds up and how it directly impacts your business:
More typing means more customer frustration
Checkout is meant to be the finish line, so when a customer has to pause and think about how to add their address, retype an error, or endlessly scroll on a small screen, they’re more likely to just give up entirely.
Typos and errors cost you later on
When customers manually type in their details, mistakes happen. A wrong digit in a postcode, or a misspelled email address, may seem harmless, but the ripple effects that follow can mean failed deliveries, undeliverable order confirmations, increased pressure on your customer service team, and negative customer reviews - all leading to depleted trust in your brand..
Unclear formatting increases drop-off risk
When your checkout form doesn’t communicate clearly - or adapt intelligently - it slows users down and creates uncertainty. Your customers don’t want to guess. They just want clarity. So if they have no choice but to trial-and-error their way through the checkout process, it undermines confidence in your brand at a critical moment.
Eliminate the possibility of typos or errors
Mistakes happen, especially when we type information manually. If, for example, a customer accidentally adds an incorrect digit to a postcode, this will not only cause operational issues but can have an impact on your customer support team and your brand’s reputation, not to mention lost revenue.
By adding a Postcode Lookup tool to your checkout that pulls data from a reliable source, you can make sure that human error is eliminated. It will pull a list of ready-verified addresses from the customer’s postcode so that they can easily select the correct address and carry on to complete their purchase.
Time to get in the fast lane to sales
When it comes to slow, manual data entry, your potential customer isn’t just comparing your ecommerce checkout to your competitors - they’re comparing it to every other frictionless digital experience they’ve ever had. And the slower or more awkward your checkout process feels, the more likely they are to bounce.
But the good news is that you don’t have to completely overhaul your site to speed things up and increase checkout conversions. Most of these friction points are down to small inefficiencies - the kind that smart data validation tools will eliminate.
Here’s how they work:
- Address Auto-Complete suggests accurate details as users type, speeding up form-filling and reducing dropped checkouts.
- Postcode lookup returns full addresses from a UK postcode, cutting down on typing and errors.
- Email and phone validation checks data in real time to prevent undeliverable order confirmations and missed opportunities to re-market to customers.
These small changes make a proven impact on your checkout journey, your conversion rate, and most importantly - your bottom line.
Want to optimise your checkout?
See how these data verification tools will speed up data entry and use our step-by-step plan to optimise your checkout. It’s all here in our free guide - The fast lane to sales: reducing dropped checkouts with data validation, and fixing the friction points that are costing you conversions.
