Thanks to technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, customers now have the most personalised, intuitive, and streamlined shopping experiences ever. And they expect convenience at every step of the journey — especially checkout. When the ecommerce payment process takes too long or gets confusing, customers abandon their carts and shop elsewhere. In fact, complicated checkout and a lack of preferred payment methods are often cited as reasons a customer abandons their cart.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can take a few practical steps to make sure your checkout experience is easy for every customer. Here are five ways to win back abandoned carts and increase conversion rates.
Get insights on payment strategies and more
Our State of Commerce report surveyed more than 4,000 commerce leaders to discover what’s next for digital commerce.
1. Consolidate payment vendors for a smoother experience
Ecommerce sites. Brick-and-mortar stores. Mobile and desktop apps. Businesses sell on a lot of different channels, and costs can add up quickly if you rely on multiple vendors to perform one task across all your touchpoints.
For example, a brand may use one ecommerce payment provider to service their online stores, another for mobile shopping apps, and yet another for physical locations. This requires your teams to spend valuable time managing each vendor and completing lengthy installations. It also means duplicate work for each channel. Even worse? It can lead to disjointed experiences for your customers. It’s the software equivalent of too many cooks in the kitchen.
Fortunately, new ecommerce innovations are paving a better path. Partnerships between platform vendors and payment providers can help businesses deliver a unified experience across all touchpoints. With a single payment vendor that works across all channels, you also get a single view of payment activity. This makes it much easier to spot patterns, prevent and reduce fraud, and avoid payment declines.
2. Treat payment as an integral part of ecommerce — because it is
While payment is often the last step in the checkout process, brands need to think about it from the start. Payment is a critical part of the customer journey: it affects your user experience, checkout conversion rates, and brand loyalty. It’s paramount that payment is simple, accurate, and safe — every time.
The best way to do this? Make sure your product and commerce teams have access to payment data and real-time visibility into important metrics like conversion and cart abandonment rates, bounce rates, and net promoter scores. Your teams should be able to easily generate reports and dashboards from these data points, and quickly identify patterns to get ahead of any issues. For example, if abandoned cart metrics suddenly increase in a specific part of the world, commerce teams can investigate what’s going wrong during checkout and determine the right path forward.
3. Adapt quickly to new ecommerce payment preferences
New payment methods crop up faster than you can say “crypto.” Make sure your commerce platform can easily accept new payment types as they gain popularity. The faster you can integrate new methods with your platform, the faster you can earn sales — and customer loyalty.
In today’s environment, digital leaders recognise the need to adapt. In fact, 61% already offer installment payments, while 32% plan to add it in the next two years.
4. Make fighting fraud a priority
As commerce goes increasingly digital, bad actors follow the money. Nearly three-fourths of fraud and data-breach cases involve ecommerce merchants.
Strong fraud detection and prevention is essential for business success. Your approach should accurately target nefarious activity without hampering legitimate purchases. The right balance builds customer loyalty and brand trust. Too many false positives and expensive manual reviews frustrate customers, while too little can damage a brand’s reputation or even take a site offline.
Machine learning goes a long way toward preventing fraud without detracting from user experience. Once new scams are detected, the system can flag similar and subsequent attempts. These kinds of automated solutions can give businesses and customers peace of mind. And that’s crucial since fraud is the number one concern for business leaders, and only 52% of consumers say they trust companies. The right ecommerce payment solutions will mine data to constantly improve fraud detection and prevention to keep customers safe.
For example, some solutions use built-in fraud prevention to create risk scores based on multiple characteristics. They can also make it easy to adjust thresholds as needed for transactions that should be reviewed or declined. Customisable solutions allow teams to add new rules around verification failures or other specifics, such as when an IP address doesn’t match a credit card address.
5. Connect payments across your entire platform — and the entire customer journey
Connecting payments throughout the commerce and post-purchase experience gives customers the consistency and flexibility they want. After all, the customer journey doesn’t end at checkout. Shoppers want to be able to track their order after purchase, and return or exchange it if the product wasn’t the right fit.
Make it easy for customers by giving them options to use the credit from their initial purchase toward their exchange, or to check out with UPI apps, wallets,or gift cards. With the right payment solution, the checkout process enhances the customer journey and increases loyalty. But a solid payment approach isn’t just a win for customers; the checkout process gives businesses a key opportunity to collect shopper data and gain insights while building trust.
By connecting your commerce, payment, and order management systems, you get a holistic view of every customer, from discovery to delivery. This makes the entire interaction seamless and sound — exactly what customers want as they prioritise convenience and trust above all else.
Win back abandoned carts and build brand love
Payment processing is complex. Brands need to simplify checkout, combat fraud, and keep up with new methods, all while keeping user experience front and center. Clunky, complicated checkout leads to abandoned carts, but an intuitive process helps build brand love and keeps shoppers coming back for more. These tips, along with the right payments partner, will help you effortlessly juggle ecommerce payment priorities and grow with ease as new trends and methods emerge.
Are you using too many vendors? Take an all-in-one approach to ecommerce by treating commerce, payments, and order management as one.
Read More:
Customers demand a personalised digital experience. Here’s how retailers can deliver it right
Why Indian shoppers love these 5 retail and consumer goods trailblazers
6 ways to unlock efficiency, cost savings and revenue during retail inflation
Headless Commerce: Ensuring cost-efficient, personalised customer experiences at scale
This blog originally appeared on Salesforce US blog here.
