Buying and selling online has evolved in such a short time and this rapid evolution has led to the increased study of the behavioural and decision-making processes of online shoppers. It is very heartbreaking to see customers drop off after all of the hard work and resources put in to attract them to the site and convince them further to hit the “buy” button. As a result of its fluid nature, the pervasive and familiar ‘abandoned cart’ is still one of the biggest challenges of e-commerce in Africa.
It is often said that people may forget what you said to them, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel, this is very true as your checkout is your opportunity to give your customers a premium buying experience that they will always remember, and even come back for.
Research has shown that 55% of consumers are more likely to shop with retailers who use technology to improve the shopping experience. Cart abandonment is quite avoidable, and you can accomplish this by optimizing your payment setup. An optimized payment set-up will increase your conversion rates and this increase in conversion rate will certainly lead to a boost in your revenue.
Below we will explore how you can increase the conversion rate for your website’s payment page in five easy steps.
Steps to Increase Conversion at Checkout.
- Make sure your checkout works on different devices
- Increase loyalty through card payment
- Let shoppers pay with different payment options
- Redirect your checkout where relevant
- Stay on top of your risk management setup.
1. Make Sure Your Checkout Works on Different Devices
A report from Statista shows that the current number of smartphone users in the world is 6.5 billion and this number is expected to rise to over 7 billion by 2024. It is therefore safe to assume that your customers are paying or will most likely be paying from their smartphone, tablet, or any other device they use.
This is one aspect that is often easily overlooked during checkout integrations yet it’s one of the most important things to consider in increasing your conversion rate.
Actions To Consider
- Test your checkout on multiple devices and operational systems.
- Minimize the required fields and the number of steps to order fulfilment.
- Make it easy for your customers to enter their data at checkout by making the UX of your website clean and easy to navigate around.
- If you have an app, opt for in-app payments powered by Bloc, instead of redirecting your customers to a new page on a browser to make payment. You can get started here.
2. Increase Loyalty Through Card Payment
Online shoppers tend to lose the thrill of shopping whenever they have to input their card details. It is therefore counterproductive to ask for it more than once, especially at the checkout.
Your platform's ability to recognize and process repeat customers increases the chance of the payment being made immediately.
What this means is that you must offer first-time customers the chance to save their details for future purchases, which they can authenticate with a password, CVV, or fingerprint. These details captured at the first purchase enable you to issue a secure token that can be used to charge a future purchase.
Loyal customers can then speed through the online payment process and at the same time, this opens up a whole new world of reward programs attached to payment cards. According to a shopper survey, 54% of respondents want their loyalty program tied to their credit card.
Sometimes customers forget their loyalty card or find it annoying to identify themselves every time they visit. But if you link the loyalty program to their card payment, they can earn loyalty rewards for all their purchases no matter where they shop. This also saves you the time, money, and resources spent on traditional reward options and systems. More so, this offers you another opportunity to gather valuable data on shoppers and their behaviour/preferences across multiple touch points.
There’s however one factor you shouldn’t overlook, which is your customer’s concern over the security of their card details on your platform. One way to address this is by talking about your platform's security measures or protocols in non-technical terms.
Actions To Consider
- Have an option to save card details for next time via tokenization
- Introduce new reward programs attached to payment cards.
- Invest in systems that capture valuable data on payment behaviour.
- Connect payment information to your loyalty program.
- Sign up on Bloc to collect card payments.
3. Let Shoppers Pay with Different Payment Options
Another thing you must do is evaluate your payment system, what options are available to your customers? It is not a pleasant experience for your customers to get to the checkout, fill in the details, and then discover that your preferred payment option isn’t available to them or can’t be used by them. Depending on where you are and where your customer is from, you’ll need to take into account the ways people pay around the world.
You can solve this with payment orchestration. Payment Orchestration simplifies the process of integrating multiple payment services into a website or application. These payment providers must tick important boxes like extensive technical capabilities, a solid reputation within the industry, excellent customer support, stellar regulatory compliance, and affordable pricing. All of these and more have been prioritized at Bloc and we’ve built a very robust payment orchestration engine.
With Bloc’s payment orchestration engine, you can;
- Set up and accept multiple payment services and methods for your business.
- Establish rules for auto-switching how they are delivered.
- Turn on or off specific providers easily.
- Save engineering time.
- Obliterate payment provider downtimes and make sure you never miss a sale again.
- Optimize your reconciliation and other operations for speed.
It, therefore, cannot be over emphasized how pertinent it is that your checkout is up to date with a variety of payment options. With Bloc’s payment orchestration, you are positioned for an increase in checkout conversions.
Actions To Consider
- Evaluate your payment system.
- Analyse where your shoppers come from versus your available payment method.
- Localize your checkout.
- Integrate Bloc’s payment orchestration engine.
4. Redirect your checkout where relevant
The one thing standing between your customer and their purchase gratification is your payment page, this is why it is important to make sure that every step is quick, easy, secure, and relevant for everyone.
For a safe and fulfilling checkout experience, you’ll want to go for Bloc’s payment tool. It’s easy to integrate and you can customize it to your brand's look and feel.
To have more control, you can host the entire payment flow and process on your website, that way, your customer stays on the same website page and enjoys a consistent flow during their payment journey.
Having total control over branding and layout in this part of the payment process can help your customer to trust the environment they’re in. More trust means more conversion and repeat purchase.
Now that everything takes place in your environment, you can also combine data from your website analytics with Bloc to improve the payment experience.
Actions To Consider
- For specific use cases, go with a targeted redirect but you have to be cautious about this.
- Start easily with Bloc’s payment tool.
- Explore different possible use cases.
5. Stay on top of your risk management setup
The biggest cost to hit you and your business would be payment fraud, you can’t do business online without factoring this into your risk management setup.
According to a report from Juniper Research, retailers are set to have lost US$130 billion from 2018 onwards due to fraudulent CNP (Card-Not-Present) transactions.
You might decide to just enhance your risk settings to keep fraud under control but the cost of this is, you may be blocking valid & legal customers.
Getting the balance right is key. So, go for security products that enable merchants to detect and prevent fraud. These kinds of products analyse every step of the customer experience, ensuring that the payment flow is as quick, easy, and as safe as possible.
Actions To Consider
- Add new authentication options to your checkout process.
- Integrate fraud tools that can filter through, identify and block fraudulent customers.
- Customize your risk tools to meet the requirements of your business needs.
Conclusion
When it comes to increasing your checkout conversions, it is mostly about the payment flow.
Customers are at the breaking point when it comes to online shopping, it is, therefore, your responsibility to optimize your checkouts and payment methods to meet the needs of your customers.
When building and optimizing your checkout, make use of the steps shared above, you’ll enjoy more conversions and grow your business faster than ever before.