Tips for better online payments

| February 24, 2015

Mobile shopping is a significant sales channel for businesses. Chris Pope of EpiServer explains that to maximise this opportunity it’s important the customer has a consistent experience but tailored to the device.

It’s odd that when many businesses plan their eCommerce strategy the customer experience is undervalued. They figure customers shop online for one reason – price. While price matters, it’s not as important as many retailers think.

In fact, one of the biggest reasons your customers will shop online is to save time. So anything that slows down their purchase will have a significant effect on sales.

To prevent this from happening, here are some areas to think about when it comes to your online payments:

Make it streamlined across all channels
The mobile user journey requires a streamlined user experience. Ensure that your payment service provider provides a streamlined payment experience for mobile devices, to ensure there are no usability barriers to customers completing their orders.

One way of doing this is ensuring they can use the same login and access the same basket across the desktop and mobile channels. This can be done by utilising tokenisation from your payment service provider which will allow customers to easily use stored payment details to quickly complete orders on mobile channels without having to re-enter their card details.

Focus on friction
Your online store can have a vast range and attractive prices, but if it simply too much of a hassle, customers will go elsewhere (and remember, there are generally plenty of other sites that will also have wide ranges and competitive prices).

Of course today, not only are customers quick to abandon a sale, they’re also quick to share their experiences on social media.

The answer is to ruthlessly hunt down every instance of friction – those areas that slow your customers down. This might be in your navigation or search. It might be in your product descriptions and photos. Hint: Often it will be in your shopping cart and payment processes.

Don’t forget about in-store
An increasing number of businesses are allowing online customers to pick up or place their order in-store. The customer will appreciate being able to order in-store using the same identity and payment details as for their online order.

Mobile wallets
Mobile wallets are providing another way of paying in both physical and online environments. Visa, MasterCard, Google and soon Apple, all provide their own electronic wallets allowing streamlined payments.

Emerging payment methods
Innovative new payment methods are being introduced in many countries including invoice payment. This allows customers to order online and aggregate orders in order to pay a single invoice across a number of retail purchases at the end of the month.

Chris Pope is CEO of EPiServer Australia, the Asia–Pacific arm of one of the world’s fastest-growing e-commerce and digital marketing technology vendors. Chris’s career spans 25 years in the IT sector in senior roles across business development, sales, and strategy. 

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