Online payment services have revolutionized commerce, allowing consumers to make purchases from almost anywhere in the world. But some businesses still struggle with getting customers to pay for their products.
“The most common reasons for people abandoning their shopping carts are related to electronic payment,” says Travis McKnight of digital marketing agency Portent, which serves many e-commerce clients. “This includes issues such as having an outdated or incorrect credit card on file or not wanting to share their financial information online.”
McKnight says it’s critical for e-commerce businesses to give consumers the option of paying via a variety of different methods. For example, he cites Stripe as two popular services that allow merchants to accept both conventional credit cards and alternative forms of payment like digitalCash and Apple Pay.
Every entity that accepts payments — whether those payments constitute sales, fees, wages, donations, or anything else — needs to move beyond cash. But simply enabling online payments isn’t enough to clinch every sale. E-commerce business owners also need to make the online payment experience as user-friendly as possible.
“Every step your user takes must use minimal effort and cognitive load,” says Travis McKnight of
1. Provide the widest range of payment methods possible
According to the Payment Methods Report, half of all consumers abandon an online purchase if they can’t use their preferred payment option. It’s crucial to provide as many payment options as you can.
“When you are running an online store, you have customers with a very wide range of preferences,” says Joe Flanagan of B2B engineering company (and online seller) Tacuna Systems. “Some people are only comfortable with credit cards, some only want Payments and some want both. You need to make it easy for people to find their way through your checkout process and get them to buy from you.”
Flanagan says that even though his company sells niche software products, it still offers nearly every major payment option in its checkout process: credit cards ; credit cards and bank transfers in Europe; and credit cards and bank transfers in Australia. “We don’t even try to compete on price because we don’t have any control over the price our competitors set for their products,” he says. “So we focus on making sure that customers can order from us easily.
2. Avoid redirects during the payment process
Consumers trust their payment providers, but they don’t necessarily trust third-party payment gateways.
A survey conducted by the Global Payment Systems Research Centre found that 92 percent of respondents prefer to use their bank or credit card company’s payment gateway. But when it comes to accepting payments online, many ecommerce merchants opt for less-recognized third-party services like and Stripe.
In fact, Stripe is one of the most popular payment gateways for online merchants — it powers more than 100,000 websites and processes tens of billions of dollars worth of transactions each year. But while Stripe’s popularity makes it easy for consumers to pay, it also makes it easier for hackers to steal sensitive data from your site.
3. Keep payment information as secure as possible
Your website needs a payment gateway to accept payments. These software packages encrypt payment data, providing high levels of security. However, you can’t rely on your gateway alone for the robust security your customers expect.
“I recommend that you have a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate for your website in order to provide your customers with a secure connection and encrypt their sensitive information,” Flanagan says.
Secure Sockets Layer certificates are used by websites to encrypt sensitive information sent between the browser and server so it cannot be read if intercepted by an unauthorized third party.
