When it comes to constructing beautiful and smooth digital experiences for your customers both new and loyal, it’s pretty common to simply brush past the payment page.
It’s the unsexiest part of the experience. But it’s still a core part of the digital experience!
The reason for that is because the payment page is the make or break finale of the main online experience. The tipping point of when a browse becomes a payment, when a visitor becomes a customer.
Here’s why you should (continue) to care
As shoppers, when a payment process looks unnecessarily complicated, or simply takes too long, we have a tendency to not stick around; we abandon the basket and take our wallets and purses to a competitor.
Many brands and retailers have crafted incredible customer experiences over the years that truly fit with their style and image, and its brand’s feel seamlessly stretches across platforms… yet its payment processing page is simply neglected.
So when it’s time for us to head to checkout, things often go sideways. So many friction points, clunky text and small buttons. In one survey, 58% of ecommerce websites had at least 3 errors during the checkout process.
While brands and retailers are realizing more and more this necessity to simplify and streamline their checkout process, ecommerce payment solutions are blooming.
Take, for example, the ability to deal in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin; the ability to pay for goods in a set number of installments each month; and the ability to pay for goods on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
With the correct tech, businesses can provide flexibility for their customers so that they can pay in whatever way they prefer.
Consider the following insights.
Follow new payment preferences
Companies that don’t bend break. Being flexible and agile means embracing the digital solutions that their customers prefer. Knowing their preferences is the first step. Implementing them is the second.
Make your commerce platform simple, and provide new payment types popular with consumers. As a new payment option becomes popular, integrate it into your platform.
Let’s look at one example: Smith Optics, which specializes in high performance sunglasses, goggles, and helmets. They recently replaced and upgraded their D2C infrastructure. And part of that, they searched for a premium payment provider that was created specifically for brands and retailers that operate globally, and can be integrated with multiple systems.
They searched for a solution that enables and nurtures innovation.
They searched and searched and searched. And they chose Salesforce Commerce Cloud for its powerful ecommerce capabilities and Stripe for its payments – Stripe works closely with SFCC and is easily integratable.
Fuse ecommerce and payments
Yes the checkout process is logically at the end of the digital experience. But it is ultimately fused to the overall ecommerce experience. And it’s worth keeping that in mind. Making a payment is a journey. It can be reimagined and reworked to fit with the general feel of the brand. And importantly, it greatly affects conversion rates and building loyalty.
You can team up with consumer teams and product teams to bounce ideas off each other to strengthen payment methods, which could include mobile wallets, buy-now-pay-later, subscriptions, etc.
What’s great about fusing ecommerce with payment methods is that it can reveal key metrics used to generate reports to use to improve. Take, for example, the dreaded issue of abandoned carts, whose metrics can be used to identify trends. Perhaps there are sudden increases of cart abandonment in a particular region. Seeing this, your teams can investigate such a curious event and figure out both what’s going on and how to fix it.
Fighting fraud
While commerce becomes more and more digital, more and more bad actors follow… wherever there’s money is. And so fighting fraud – its detection and prevention – is more important than ever.
Yet fight it too hard with too many tools and you’ll be in danger of friendly fire – rejecting legitimate purchases, and in the process upsetting a great many (ex)customers. The right balance is important to simultaneously build customer loyalty and trust.
Imagine racking up way too many false positives (legitimate consumers) while looking inactive and doing too little will likely damage a company’s reputation – it can even lead to taking a website offline for a while.
In this targeted battle, artificial intelligence is your right-hand bot. Machine learning can greatly help fight against fraud. As soon as scams are detected and flagged, artificial intelligence can also flag similar attempts. Getting the right payment solution will be able to mine the data in order to constantly and continually improve their fraud detection and prevention capabilities.
As an example, Smith Optics does this with a solution from Salesforce Commerce Cloud Payments, Stripe Radar. They use it to create risk scores that are based on a number of attributes.
In addition, Smith Optics can adjust the thresholds for what’s needed for those transactions that should either be reviewed or denied. Another thing that its team can do is add new rules regarding the verification failures or other specific metrics, like when an IP address does not seem to match the credit card address.
In this way, the customers of Salesforce Commerce Cloud-powered Smith Optics can benefit now only from a smooth checkout process but also feel reassured that the brand is fighting fraud with the smartest tools. And because it’s website is hosted on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, its customers benefit from more relevant and better personalized content, underpinned by the latest artificial intelligence.
Payments are experiences, too!
With the right solution, the customer’s digital journey – rather than falling apart at the end – quickly and easily finishes the purchase, leaving customers feeling good and reassured about its dealings with the brand, as they put their feet up and patiently await that knock at the door.
PS: ArganoUV is one of the world’s leading Salesforce Commerce Cloud (formerly Demandware) agencies. Contact us to see how we can work together.
