How To Increase Your Website Sales By Streamlining Payments

When customers are browsing your site for products, a massive 75 percent of them will abandon their shopping cart without buying anything even if they’ve shown an interest. It’s the biggest problem that all online stores face and reducing abandonment is the quickest way to increase your revenue. One tactic you can use is sending out emails to remind people that they were browsing and try to convince them to come back and buy stuff. It does work pretty well but the best thing to do is stop it from happening in the first place.

 

Image source: Pixabay

One reason that people abandon carts is that they don’t trust the site. That might be because it looks unprofessional and small details like spelling errors put them off. It could also be because you’re using a payment platform that they don’t recognise so they’re reluctant to put their details in. Those things are easily fixed but if you’re still experiencing problems, it might be because your payment process is difficult and lengthy. Consumers have a short attention span so if they have to spend ten minutes going through multiple pages, they’re likely to leave the site without completing the purchase. If you’re seeing high levels of cart abandonment, here’s how you can make the payment process easier for your customers.

Provide Different Payment Methods

At the very least, you should be offering bank transfers on all major credit and debit cards. If you aren’t doing that, you’re going to struggle to make sales. But not everybody wants to use their card directly because of security concerns. A lot of people prefer to use a third party service like Paypal and they won’t buy anything from a site that doesn’t have it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be Paypal but that’s the one that customers are most likely to be using. You could also consider using cryptocurrency as a payment method. It’s not that popular but more people are starting to use it, especially as it’s become a popular investment option. It’s getting more common for people to use it to buy online and a lot of big sites are already offering it as a payment method so it’s worth considering. It’s important that you don’t forget the old school payment methods so you don’t alienate the older generations. It’s pretty rare but some people still like to pay for things over the phone so it’s worth giving them that option as well.

Make It Easy To Log In

 

Image source: Pixabay

A simple email and password login is fine but there are concerns about security. You can bolster security with a lot of additional security questions but that’s going to be frustrating for customers if they have to go through the process every time. However, new technologies allow you to capture and verify customer documents with ease so customers can scan their ID or other personal documents as a way of verifying who they are. It’s a secure and easy way for them to login to your site.

Don’t Use An Account At All

A lot of customers prefer to have their own account so they can buy stuff without having to put their payment details in every time, but first time buyers might decide not to purchase anything if they have to set up an account first. Giving people the option to buy without an account is a better way to get the business of first time customers who will then create their own account if they decide to buy from you again the future.

Don’t Redirect

While it is useful to use services like Paypal, it does have its downsides. When customers are redirected to a different page to pay, it makes the process longer and they can sometimes feel as though they’re giving money to a different company instead of you. It also means that the last thing they see is somebody else website, not yours, so it won’t stick in their mind as much and they won’t be as likely to come back. If possible, you should try to use third party payment services that integrate with your website.

Make Mistakes Easy To Correct

We’ve all filled a form in on a website and missed a box. If you click submit, you’ll usually get an error message at the top of the page but if you’re at the bottom of the form, you don’t always notice it. If you have to click the button a few times before realizing you have to scroll up to work out where you went wrong. This is incredibly frustrating and people might give up. It’s only a small change to make, but when you’re building your website, introduce a function that has the page automatically take them to the box where the error is, they can quickly fix it and carry on.

Streamlining your payment process is the best way to reduce cart abandonment and see a quick increase in sales.