Nobody likes paying; nothing can kill the excitement of getting your hands on what you are looking for online than having to go through a long, complicated and at times, failed payment process. For customers, it can elicit a range of responses – embarrassment, stress, anger, frustration and of course, so common in some areas of online retail, abandonment of the transaction. The retailer will be well aware of dropped carts, but without feedback that is generally not forthcoming, can they really know what it’s like for the customer, a problem that really only shows up in retention rates – will customers come back?

Increasingly, they won’t. The inertia that grips customers in the real world, like moving bank accounts, simply doesn’t apply online. Almost limitless access to goods and services online has spawned a generation of shoppers who are demanding, fickle, sophisticated and easily irritated. If you make the buying process painful, then it matters little that you are the brand leader in your sector or a retailer of popular items.

Often, the focus on payments, is with the merchant – how to make it easy, affordable, secure, while the customer experience is considered second. Better we think to work backwards – see things from the customer’s point of view and make payments work for them.

Achieving this is relatively straight forward, particularly if you outsource the whole process to a provider that supplies many of these functions as standard.

  • Create an attractive payment page that looks like part of your site, even though it is actually a totally secure white label page provider by your Payment Service Provider
  • Offer a range of payment methods to enable your customers to choose how they pay
  • Make the WHOLE payments process easy to understand and use
  • If selling internationally, display currencies your customers understand and payment methods they feel comfortable with
  • Provide clear confirmation of payment being approved or declined – don’t leave your customers guessing
  • Put the checkout total on all pages, as customers shop
  • Provide a clear returns policy
  • Making shipping costs clear BEFORE checkout

Ian Cushion is Marketing Manager at SecureTrading