E-book Publishing: How To Prevent Checkout Cancellation.

It is inevitable that some of the people who initiate the process of purchasing one of your e-books will change their mind at the checkout stage. For most Internet marketers those customers and their money are never seen again. That is because little or no thought has gone into the process of handling customers after they have clicked the "Buy Now" button. And that means you are losing money.

Let's look at ways to prevent Checkout Cancellation in this article.

Your aim should be to keep as many customers as possible on board through the whole purchasing process. To do that you will want the process to go as smoothly as possible for your customer. There should be no nasty shocks or sudden surprises that may cause the customer to hesitate, have second thoughts and abort the purchasing process.

Just as prospects should be pre-sold before being directed to the sales page, so they should be pre-sold on the purchasing process. In other words you should take care to tell them what is going to happen when they click the "buy now" button. If you reassure your customers that they can cancel the order at any time, it will reassure them and make it more likely they will not do so. Tell them where they will be directed after clicking the button. Tell them how they will access the e-book after they have paid for it.

Try to keep the appearance of the sales page and check out page as similar as possible. If you are using a third-party checkout service such as PayPal, you may want to make the background color and font style of your sales page look similar to facilitate a smooth crossover from your website to the checkout process.

Some people offer their customers an option of purchasing a printed version of the book as an alternative to an e-book download. In that case, where a product will be shipped to the customer, make sure you clearly state the shipping costs on the sales page so that the customer will be prepared for the total cost of product and delivery at the point of purchase.

Incidentally, by offering customers an option of purchasing a print version or an instantly downloadable e-book, you will be able to subtly reinforce the message that an e-book is much cheaper for them. (It will also, most likely, be more profitable for you!)

By considering the checkout procedure from the customer's point of view you should be able to increase the percentage of customers who successfully complete the purchase process.

Also, by offering your customers as smooth and seamless purchasing experience, you will be garnering their trust in you as a competent Internet marketer. This will make it much easier for you to follow up with new offers further down the line, starting with your Thank You.

However, in an imperfect world you will probably never achieve a 100% success rate. There will always be some people who cancel at the last moment in the checkout process.