Everyone working in the eCommerce industry knows that conversion is the most important word for every online business. They are also aware of the fact that even a little mistake on the checkout page can kill the conversion, and increase the cart abandonment. Thus hampering sales. By reading this guide you’ll learn how to sell more by increasing your payment conversion. Are you ready?
One of the key things to keep your conversion rate high is to give customers everything they need to make a decision and complete their purchase. This is easy to say, but how do you hit the target and be on top all of the time?
Conversion is your priority
You’re doing your best to make users visit your online store, but they just come and go without buying anything. Maybe you’re making some mistakes and your website needs a few refreshing touches?
When the page is difficult to navigate, most visitors will go away without taking any action. It is the same with the payment process. If it doesn’t look trustworthy users won’t complete their purchase. Every badly designed element on your website or non-optimized page is a step closer to decreasing your conversion and moving your sales closer to zero.
Think about it this way: with a well-optimized website and payment process you’ll spend less money on each customer. Stop killing your conversion and see what you can do to make the checkout process easier.
Choose the right payment gateway
One of the biggest problems for online business owners is choosing the right payment gateway for their website. Before you find the perfect one, you need to know it’s not all about costs. There are also others factors which are highly important for improving your conversion. Here’s what you should pay attention to.
1. One-click payments
One of the best solutions for online buyers is a “remember me” option, so returning customers can pay with just a one click. Their data is remembered, so they can finish their next purchases without typing in credit card details. It’s possible with token technology, so when a customer returns to your page and wants to buy something again, the token (which is a 16-digit number created to represent a credit card) is used to recall restored data. Clever, don’t you think?
2. No redirections
Keep users on your site and let them pay quickly and conveniently. There is no need to redirect them to an external payment provider. If you do, your customers may be a bit confused when they see a page with completely different design than yours and some of them may not complete the payment process. That’s definitely not what you want, right?
3. Cross sales
With this feature you can increase your sales potential by displaying more offers for your customers right after they complete their payment. It’s a great solution for sellers, because they have full control over what to display.
4. Mobile friendly solution
Provide more convenience for online shoppers and let your customers pay on any devices they want. Leave the competition behind and implement mobile payment on your website, if you haven’t done it yet.
5. High security level
Online buyers are very sensitive about security. When they are not sure if the purchase is safe, they are more likely to back out of sales. To reduce that, find the payment gateway with PCI level 1, which confirms that the technology of the platform is secure. When you choose a payment gateway with PCI Compliance it minimizes your responsibility in securing the payments, and at the same time, your customer’s data is safe.
Seek out a payment provider with an additional level of security, e.g. with token technology. It saves you trouble with those who try to hack your system and protects your customers from card abuse. Also, make sure there is a highly effective fraud protection system with active chargeback management.
6. Well-designed checkout
Choose a solution which allows you to integrate payments with your site with ease, and also with a modern design. Maybe that’s not your main concern right now, but users pay attention to a website’s layout and its look and feel. A badly designed checkout could be an alarm bell for your customers. Your payment form should look like it belongs to the website, so choose a payment gateway with the possibility of making visible changes.
Improve conversion on your checkout page quickly with some actionable tips
Remove all obstacles that may be decreasing conversion, and get your chance to attract new customers to your business. Here’s how:
- Display security badges on your checkout page. It improves your credibility as a seller and tells customers you are trustworthy. Then they are more likely to finish the purchasing process.
- Requiring customers to sign up before purchasing is not a good idea. Most of them want to buy some goods online quickly, so it can lead to loss of sales. Try offering a “Guest checkout” and see what happens with your conversion rate.
- Give your customers multiple payment options. Still, the most popular methods are credit and debit card payments, but people are also looking for some alternatives. So find out what your target customers are using and give them the best solution. Also add regionally preferred payment methods and less popular cards, if needed.
- Use a clear call to action. This one seems obvious, but there are still many websites with hard to understand CTA. Just put a clear message on the buttons so that people understand what exactly will happen when they click on it. Even a simple “Pay” will be better than “Next.”
- Provide transparent information. Your customers need to be sure that the product they ordered is in stock and that they’ll receive it on time. So give them up-to-date information about the shipping costs and time, as well as the products that are out of stock, in real-time. You should also display clear information on how to make returns.
- Ask customers just for the information you need to process the payment and nothing more. To process credit card payments, card number, expiration date and CVV are enough.
- Let the customers pay in their local currency, especially if you run your online business globally. The user’s location should be identified automatically, so then you can display the right currency.
Don’t Ignore Mobile Users
Mobile commerce growth is indisputable. It is growing even faster than eCommerce, and it will be continue to rise with the developments of innovation and new technologies. The biggest brands, such as Google, Apple and Samsung introduced their mobile payment solutions in recent years. So, the future is now.
Mobile users do their shopping in mobile browsers, as well as in mobile apps. Well-designed applications with push notifications are a huge way for retailers to grow their sales. So basically, improving the payment usability on mobile, where there are more and more customers, is a must.
Improve mobile checkout
A simplified payment process is an opportunity for converting browsing into purchasing. All you need to do is to reduce the number of form fields and needless information. No one likes to type in too much information on a computer with full-size keyboard, so it’s even worse to submit all this data on a small touch screen. Simply condense the entire process into one page and make it easy to pay.
So, what are the key benefits you can give your mobile customers?
- Paying with a click
Use payment gateway with a “remember me” option (you can find out more about that in the previous section), and let your customers pay with just a click so that the checkout process is fast and easy.
- Bigger input fields
There is a huge range of mobile devices (smartphones, tablets or wearables), so there are more and more options for displaying content on them. This is a challenge for online retailers, but also an opportunity to provide better design with bigger input fields. Mobile users want to see everything clearly on their screens without zooming in. Give them a simple and modern design without unnecessary elements such as menus or social media links, search bars, and other distractors that can drive users away.
- Essential information only
Typing on mobile is not the easiest thing and thumbs aren’t as precise as mice, so don’t force your customers to fill out forms with useless information. Ask for essentials only and use auto-fill and auto-complete wherever it’s possible. Optimize input for touch keyboards in order to avoid validation errors and use the right keyboard to match the input type (e.g. numeric for credit card number).
There are also some tools (such as card.io) to use in your mobile apps which let customers scan their credit cards. It saves their time because they don’t need to type in card details to the form.
Mobile users need to pay in the most convenient way, so give it to them. An easier checkout process is a key requirement for increased conversion on mobile devices.
What about security issues on mobile?
One of the biggest concerns connected to mobile payments is data security. Not only merchants, but also consumers worry about what happens with their sensitive data. Mobile payments are more secure with tokenization, which means that customer’s sensitive credit card data doesn’t even touch the merchant’s servers.
Mobile payments are still in their early days, but if you’re serious about your online business, don’t wait too long to implement it.
All in all, improving payment usability gives you happier customers, which come with more sales and higher conversion rates. No matter what industry you’re in, sometimes changing just a small element on your website can have a positive effect on your sales performance.
What do you think about the topic? Do you know any other conversion tips? Let me know in the comments section.
header image courtesy of Laura Reen
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