A growing number of people are turning to the Internet to do their shopping. Making it as easy as possible for customers to pay is essential for increasing conversions and sales. This is why your checkout page is so important. It’s the final stop for people shopping on your website and the place where they hand over their credit card information. The checkout page is where people become paying customers. Making it easy for customers to checkout on your website means they’re more likely to return. Here are five ways that will help make online payment processing easy for your customers:
Provide a Variety of Payment Methods
This may seem obvious, but there are many websites that only offer one payment method. Now that people are using online shopping more frequently, they expect websites to have a variety of payment options available on the checkout page. It’s not necessary to offer every payment option available. However, it’s important to look at your target audience to see what payment methods they use most often. If you notice that they mostly use credit cards but rarely use PayPal, it would make sense to allow direct bank transfers and payments from all major credit cards.
Allow Payments without Requiring an Account
E-commerce shoppers have enough usernames and passwords to remember, and unless it’s necessary, don’t require them to remember another one. As a business, the last thing you want to do is put up a wall preventing people from paying. Additionally, many customers don’t understand why they need to sign up to buy a product online when they aren’t required to do so in store. To make it easier for potential customers to buy from you online, allow them to check out as a guest.
Make Errors Easy to Fix
It’s a given that people make mistakes during the checkout process. Sometimes people incorrectly type their credit card number or forget to put the “@” in their email addresses. When people do make a mistake, it’s your job to point out the error and make sure it gets fixed. Some checkout pages display an error message at the top of the pages while others make the user scroll down to the field that was incorrect. Ideally, you want an error message to appear in the field in which it occurred. Another helpful tip is to save the information they’ve already submitted so they don’t need to re-enter their information again.
Provide Reassurance that your Site is Secure
Whenever personal information is involved, always go out of your way to let people know about the security measures you have in place. Delivering a seamless design and not redirecting people to a third-party site are important steps in building trust among your potential customers. However, you still need to do more to reassure people that their information is safe from hackers. Having a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate on your website will help give you extra protection while encrypting credit card data.
Create Clear Calls to Action
Don’t leave people guessing what to do next. Provide them with clear directions on where to click and what happens next. Make it specific by using phrases like “continue to check out” or “continue shopping” rather than ambiguous phrases such as “continue” or “apply”.
