All too often, fast-growing e-commerce businesses can fall victim to their own success. It can happen across many different facets of operations: skyrocketing sales overwhelm in-house order fulfillment, accelerated production negatively affects quality, or maybe a clunky online payment form churns out abandoned shopping carts instead of satisfied customers.
The solution to these problems usually boils down to choosing a third party collaborator, be it a fulfillment company to handle orders for you, or switching payment providers to ensure a better card processing experience. Selecting the right Payment Gateway for your e-commerce business is one of those tasks that can help you scale (and help you sell more than ever before), without having to change any other aspects of your business. Here are three ways to boost your e-commerce sales while improving the customer experience.
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Boost Security and Prevent Fraud
Fraud is a serious issue in the U.S., with a 7% rise in credit card fraud for e-commerce retailers just last year. Fraud ends up costing retailers more than the original purchase, at an average of $3.73 for every $1 of fraud. What can help you prevent fraud? You guessed it: a secure Payment Gateway.
By using a payment provider that has security checks at checkout, you can help prevent credit card fraud. There are two common types of security checks:
- Address Verification Service (AVS): If the customer’s entered address doesn’t match the one that the credit card company has on file, the payment won’t go through.
- Card Verification Value (CVV): These are those 3 or 4 digit codes on the back of the card, and if the purchaser doesn’t have the physical card they won’t know the code. If the code they enter doesn’t match, the payment won’t go through.
Optionally, using a Payment Gateway that offers a hosted payment solution provides an additional layer of security for the checkout process. Processing through a hosted payment form means that the payment happens on the Payment Gateway’s secure payment page, which offers built in protection against fraudsters and hackers. Using a Payment Gateway in this capacity is best for businesses just starting out in e-commerce, ones with limited inventory or ones that simply want customers to have the ability to make payments for visits or appointments online.
Optimize Checkout With An Integrated Shopping Cart
A shopping cart in an e-commerce store is such an inherent piece of the shopping puzzle these days that it’s hard to imagine a shopping experience without one. However, not all shopping cart software is created equal - the better your shopping cart software is, the smoother the experience will be for the customer.
There is a huge variation in features of shopping cart software, but at its core, shopping cart integration allows for safer, more convenient shopping, inspires trust, and makes payment processing a breeze. An integrated shopping cart is key for more established e-commerce businesses, ones with large or ever-changing inventory, and those that have a brick-and-mortar side of the business.
Although an integrated shopping cart improves the user experience, you still need a Payment Gateway to work its magic behind the scenes for payments to work. Be sure to use an all-in-one payment provider to avoid additional fees for your software services.
Increase Efficiency
A good Payment Gateway will have features that will make the experience better for everyone involved; for your business and your customers. Saving time for your customers can leave a better impression and lead to more repeat business - and one of the ways you can encourage that repeat business is by using a shopping cart and Payment Gateway that remembers their information. When they return to re-purchase, the checkout experience will be even faster than the first time around.
Leveraging a shopping cart that has built features like customer vaults means eliminating the need to login into your Payment Gateway backend to make updates like manually issuing refunds or setting up recurring billing, ultimately saving you more time. This will allow you to focus on the things that really matter: outreach, marketing, product development ... everything that helps your business grow.
The Customer Experience
Everything you do to improve your customer’s experience will improve your sales, and a good checkout experience is a vital part of their experience. Consider what abilities you have with your current shopping cart provider and make sure it has the ability to integrate with a strong Payment Gateway provider.
Learn more on what to look for in a Payment Gateway Provider.
What has your e-commerce done in the last year to boost sales or the customer experience? Tell us in the comments section below.
