How to Make Payments Easier for Your Online Customers
The main component of a healthy online conversion rate is a streamlined payment process. A problem right at the end of the sales funnel can invalidate all of the previous marketing efforts. As such, the checkout page of your site deserves a lot of attention, because this is where the clients are willing to share their credit card information with you and make the payment. So this article will discuss three ways to make payments easier for your online customers.
- Have multiple payment methods
Many websites offer only a single payment option. This is a mistake, because customers will be turned away if a website does not process payments through their preferred method. The most common payment methods are credit and debit cards, payment gateways, cryptocurrency such as bitcoin, and eChecks through ACH processing.
Of course, it might not be worth it to get every method of transfer onto your checkout page, simply because of some might not appeal to your target audience. Accepting credit and debit cards might be essential, but other payment methods such as cryptocurrency might not be used by many of your customers.
- Allow payments without an account
Registering an account to make a purchase is an inconvenience to most customers. If you have a random visitor to your website who is willing to purchase, he might not be interested in the benefits of having an account. An account should be a complement that allows repeat customers to have their data stored on the website, so they do not have to enter it over and over again with each purchase.
If you’re not convinced, consider that the Baymard Institute found that 35% of shoppers would abandon their purchase at the shopping cart stage because they were required to create an account. That’s a huge number!
- Avoid redirecting to other sites at purchase time, and highlight security benefits
Clients generally do not trust third party sites when making a purchase (unless it’s to a big payment gateway like PayPal). Redirecting also slightly affects your perceived legitimacy, and could result in a lost sale, if the customer has to make an account for the third party payment processor.
Allowing customers to complete the payment on your website’s checkout page gives you control over the layout of the page, the messaging, the design and the call the action, all of which can be tweaked to improve conversion rate.
Also worth mentioning – eConsultancy has found that 58% of respondents have dropped out of a checkout page because of security concerns. To address this, it’s important to have security measures such as an SSL certificate for your website, multiple authentication layers, and PCI SSC compliance. These measures should be mentioned in your website’s messaging in order to reassure customers.
For more information on how to streamline your payment process, or to sign up for a merchant account, please call (888) 924-2743 or go to Charge.com.