Last editedApr 20232 min read
You’ve gone to great time and effort working on a user-friendly website with innovative products. Don’t let your customers down at the last step with a poor checkout experience. Providing a wide selection of easy-to-use, secure payment methods ensures that your customers will have a good experience throughout the payment process. Here are a few tips to improve your online payment methods.
Understanding shopping cart abandonment
To solve the unique problems your customers might be experiencing, it’s first helpful to examine the reasons behind shopping cart abandonment. So, why do customers put items in their cart only to navigate away from the page? Here are a few frequently mentioned reasons:
Payment method of choice is unavailable
Forgotten password
Required site registration
Payment method declined
Redirection to third-party website
Lack of trust in payment security
These are the issues you need to solve with your payment process to improve the overall customer shopping experience.
Choose the right types of payment methods
What happens if a website only accepts PayPal, which the customer has had a bad experience with in the past? They’re unlikely to complete the sale. If you want to provide the best possible customer experience, you need to offer a variety of payment methods to choose from. For this example, along with PayPal you should enable card payments and electronic bank transfers at a minimum. Compare payment processors carefully to find out which payment methods are supported.
You could ask our customers directly which online payment methods are preferred using a quick survey. This can help you simplify and streamline your payment solution.
Enable multi-currency payments
If your business sells to an international client base, you’ll also need to think about currency exchange. Is your payment gateway capable of handling payments in multiple currencies? Are the exchange rates easy to understand and fair? Are there added fees? Does your website display products in the local currency? If not, it’s time to change payment methods. Accepting payments in multiple currencies builds trust and makes the process run more smoothly for customers abroad.
Fight declines with alternative payment methods
Many websites only accept credit card payments, but what happens when a credit card is declined? This is a major reason for a customer to abandon their sale. To solve this problem, you should first ensure that your payment processing form is easy to understand. One of the primary reasons for declined card payments is incomplete card details. Take care that your payment technology is compatible across multiple devices to ensure that your checkout process works easily well no matter the smartphone make and model.
However, in addition to finding ways to prevent declined payments, you should also look at offering alternative payment methods. That way, if one method is declined, the customer can change payment methods with secondary options to fall back on. With digital technology, there are now more outlets than ever including QR code payments, mobile wallets, and payment apps.
Ensure payment methods are secure
Security is paramount to a user-friendly checkout experience. If your website is suspicious, customers are unlikely to return. At bare minimum, add an SSL certificate and Digital Secure Remote Payments (DSRP) with cryptography to protect card details. Display these certifications clearly on your website to build trust. Consider building in layers of biometric authentication if selling via mobile apps, such as fingerprint scans and facial recognition. This also helps solve the problem of a customer forgetting their passwords.
The bottom line
When comparing the various types of payment methods, there’s no singular option that will satisfy all customers equally. This is why it’s so important to offer a range of different online payment methods while ensuring they’re secure. Automation can help streamline the process from end to end, providing a hassle-free shopping experience for first-time customers and repeat clients alike.
We can help
GoCardless helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of admin your team needs to deal with when chasing invoices. Find out how GoCardless can help you with ad hoc payments or recurring payments.
