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Attracting potential customers to your service or products can be a big challenge. When it comes to the payment process, it is essential to make it easier for them.
Well, it is likely to make them return to you for more business, which infers an increase in sales. Thus, an easy and quick payment process is crucial to the well-being of your business. However, getting paid can vary from business to business.
If you run a profitable business or a charitable organization or even an educational institute, you do need an easy payment process for your prospects to pay fees or give donations.
If the payment procedure is complicated, the chances of candidates choosing your competitors with an easy payment process increase. If you are wondering how you would make that process easy for your prospects, here are the top 5 ways that will help you with that:
- Offer a Variety of Payment Options
Are you giving your customers a host of payment tools at checkout? But, do they seem to be in synchronization with their current payment practices? Well, that’s something universal!
Most people who shop online expect to see a range of payment options. So, if you have a website that includes a payment process, you must ensure it is customer-friendly.
How to make it customer-friendly? By including the ability to pay with various tools such as visa gift cards, loyalty points, credit card rewards, electronic checks, gift cards, virtual currency, major credit and debit cards as well as mobile wallets/payments. With time, you will be able to sense the types of tools your customers use the most. But until that happens, offering a variety of payment options is the key!
- Make Your Customers’ Preferences Your First Priority
Businesses or any establishment that mandates a minimum purchase limit to use a debit or credit card or accept cash only are benefiting themselves instead of their customers. Therefore, if you want your customers to be happy and return, your payment process should be rooted in their preferences. Not in your staff or even your perfect business model. In a few cases, your customers prefer a process that isn’t necessarily impulsive.
For instance, even though the self-service kiosks that let the person control their checkout experience may look like it’s benefiting the customer, a study on shopper preferences demonstrates that a great number of customers in Europe prefer to check out with a salesperson instead. They prefer that even when an option to pay at a self-serve terminal or purchase online is available to them.
3. Comprehend Sales Impact On Customers
Knowing the details like how they buy, helps you make your payment processes easier for them. These details may include knowing the places they are at, the type of device they use when purchasing and the tools of payment they are familiar with.
For example, customers who pay using their smartphones will have a completely different payment experience, in regards to device functionality, size of the screen and the ease and comfort with which they can put in the information required for the payment.
Their experience is going to be different than a customer purchasing online from a desktop computer or present at a physical point of sale. Thus, to make the payment process easy and quick for such customers using different tools, you must know who they are. Additionally, you should give them the experience that suits them the best and meets their needs.
- Giving Them the Ability to Check out as a Guest
Honestly, who needs an extra username and password to remember? Probably no one! So, why should you put up a wall that prevents your potential customers from purchasing your products or services?!
Pressing first-time customers to sign up for an account can be too intruding. Additionally, it can be a great conversion killer. According to a usability study, “the major reason users loathe setting up a new account is they expect their email account to be flooded with promotional emails.”
Apart from that, many customers also do not understand the need for signing up and creating an account just to buy a product. Another disadvantage that comes with it is that it prolongs the payment process, adding more fields for customers to fill out. Therefore, to ascertain you get paid and to make life easier for them, let them check out as a guest.
Moreover, what you sell also has an impact on the perception of “ease of use” in payment. Many customers consider their smartphone as an important tool in their shopping experience. It also depends on where they are during checkout. Thus, features like the ability to check out using social media credentials or as a guest and accessing previous card info stored in a mobile or virtual wallet can improve the experience of payment for hurried or busy individuals.
5. Simplify Navigation
To ensure your payment process is uncomplicated and swift, companies must test the process before releasing it in public. Testing will help you remove any distractions that could make your prospect give up on you. Using prefilled functionality is also a great option such as filling in the customer’s Last Name and other information based on their first name. Besides, eliminate any fields that are not mandatory to avoid making the process unnecessarily lengthy.
In today’s digital era, everyone is looking for almost instant everything. It could be anything from delivery options to site load times to payment systems to easy checkouts. Ascertaining a simple and fast payment experience begins with making your customers your priority and crafting your systems the way your customers prefer to browse and pay.
Final Word
Since online payments are a part of life in today’s digital world, it is important to make the process simple and swift for people using it. From online courses to online products and services, online payment has become a need for almost all establishments.
Some payment methods are, however, more user-friendly than others which is why people tend to opt for the ones that are easy and quick to proceed with. Hence, make sure your payment process either online or offline, is easy and user-friendly. Most importantly, ascertain that the procedure of payment feels and looks like the rest of your brand.