So you’ve set up your website and now the only thing left to do is to create an easy and reliable payment system. If it’s an ecommerce website, then this is arguably the most important stage of the journey, since a faulty payment system will tarnish your reputation.
Read on to find out more about how to fully optimise your website for payments.
Payment Gateway
Your ecommerce store can be integrated with a number of different services which allow you to accept credit and debit card payments. These facilities are usually referred to as ‘Payment Gateway.’
A payment gateway is essentially an ecommerce application that authorises card payments for online retailers. You should see this as the linchpin to your payment system since it can offer a fast, secure, and reliable online payment processing service, enabling your business to accept credit and debit card payments easily.
Why should I use payment gateway?
To begin with, improved security. If you’re serious about making money from ecommerce, then this should be a good enough selling point. Customers will not want to shop at ecommerce stores where fraudulent activity may arise. Payment gateways significantly decrease the chances of this occurring, so it’s a no brainer.
It also offers a variety of different payment methods for your customers to make purchases. The easier it is for your customers to make purchases on your store, the higher your chances are of increasing sales. With payment gateway, you’re essentially widening your sales net.
Keeping it to one page
If you can help it, provide all of the payment processing information to one page instead of spreading it over numerous. Baymard had conducted some research into this and discovered that 27% of people will abandon the checkout page if the payment process is too long or complicated, so make sure to write all of the necessary information succinctly.
You can view the full study here.
Remove distractions
Although staying consistent in your branding is crucial, at the payment processing stage you want all of the customer’s focus to be on paying. Having distractions that will tempt your users to go elsewhere on the site is entrepreneurial suicide since the ultimate objective is to drive sales. You can do this simply by removing advertisements at the side, slimming down or completely removing headers and footers.
Test it to see if it works
Hiring a specialist to test how functional and efficient your payment system is would be a wise move. The easier it is for your customers to make payments, the more likely you’re going to increase sales. Specialists such as Digivante have large teams that will undergo a rigorous process, covering a range of payment options, to see if there are any existing inhibitors.
Be clear with your CTAs
Clarity is the magical ingredient to successful payment pages. Be succinct, be clear, be trustworthy. Don’t give your visitors a reason to raise any unnecessary questions – they should know exactly they’re doing. Call to actions should be simple. If the CTA completes the purchase, be crystal clear and ensure that it does so. For example, use ‘complete payment’ instead of ‘proceed to next stage,’ since this implies that there are more steps to go through.
