It should be obvious, but making it as simple as possible for your customers to make a purchase from our eCommerce site is a vital part of increasing the number of conversions you make.
Ensuring that your checkout page/process works like a well-oiled machine will help to ensure that fewer carts area abandoned at the last second and that more sales are made. If you’ve been resting on your laurels, using nothing but the simplest Paypal option to accept payments, then you’ve been making a big mistake all this time, but it isn’t too late to turn things around.
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Here are some simple tips to help you make paying easier for your online customers:
Provide Numerous Payment Methods
First and foremost, you’re going to want to offer more than just Paypal. If you want as many customers to buy as possible, then you need to offer as many options for them to do so as possible. In fact, research has shown that 56 percent of online shoppers expect there to be several, payment options available to them.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should offer EVERY payment method available, but look at what’s available and think about which methods are most likely to suit your target audience and go with them.
Don’t Make Accounts Mandatory
Not everyone who makes a payment wants to sign up for an account – they have enough accounts and passwords to manage already – which is why you should always offer a quick guest account option if you want to convert as many first -time visitors into buyers as possible.
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Make Paying Effortless
There are numerous new technologies, including the ones offered by this identity verification service, which can use things like facial recognition or fingerprints to confirm the identity of a customer. For those customers who have signed up for an account with you, offering something like this, which means that they don’t have to bother entering their information every time, will make your store much more attractive to the average person. If this is too high-tech for you, then allowing your customers to securely store their details, like Amazon, is a good way of making paying as effortless as possible.
Don’t Redirect Your Customers
If you’ve spent lots of time and money on SEO services and marketing to get people to your website, it makes absolutely no sense to direct them elsewhere. Also, doing so could put people off completing their purchase, if they don’t trust the payment page, perhaps because it looks too different to your own site. No, it’s much better to ensure that your customers stay on your site, even when they’re checking out.
Point Out Errors
It’s not uncommon for customers to make typos and accidentally input the wrong information. Wherever possible. Your website’s software should flag up the stakes, such as incorrect zip codes so that customers can rectify them before they pay and end up losing their page or having to get in touch with you to sort the matter out.
Only Ask the Essential
Have you ever bought something from an online store that asks for everything but your social security number and the name of your husband? I bet it annoyed you immensely – it might have even made you suspicious. When it comes to making sales, the fewer pieces of information you ask for, the better, not only because your customers are likely to have more confidence in you if it doesn’t feel like you’re mining their data for all it’s worth, but also because it will be faster for them to checkout.
Make it Secure
It goes without saying that you should make the security of your payments gateway a priority. Not only is this important because, if you are hacked, your business’ reputation will go down the pan and you could be ruined, but more importantly, it could cause your customers’ money to be stolen. What’s more, if customers don’t have confidence that a method of payment is safe, they are 58 percent less likely to go through with a purchase, which is bad news for them. So, make sure you use a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and comply with PCI Security standards as a minimum. If you do this, you’ll give your customers much more confidence to buy, and go a long way to protecting their data.
All of these things will make it much easier for your customers to pay, and that will result in a better pay off for you, guaranteed. So, start implementing these simple changes now!
