First of all, we need to discuss why payment options have huge importance! With the spread of online businesses, people are more willing to shop online as well. Webshops need to constantly monitor customer preferences, including the increase in demand for different payment options. Customers now expect to be able to pay in various currencies or even to make payments easily from their mobile phones. Now we will show you why it is worth providing a variety of payment options in your web store.
Let us start with the basics
In the case of a webshop, a kind of basic function is that the customer can choose to pay in cash or electronically. Interestingly, we have found on several online shops that only the electronic payment option is available. Never make this mistake, because many people are afraid of it. The reason for this fair is that they will be scammed or that they will not receive the product they ordered and therefore they insist on cash payment. According to a study, out of over 3,000 responders surveyed, 690 said they would prefer cash payment. These numbers also demonstrate the importance of this basic function.
Is credit card payment enough?
Now you know that a cash payment option is essential for a webshop, but what about online credit card payments? Well, in addition to cash payment, this is also an essential feature, but the aforementioned uncertainty also appears among customers here. We can offer you two options to eliminate these worries. First, guarantee that the customers can pay securely with a credit card on your website. The easiest and best way to do this is to put your certificate into the cart. This can also reduce the risk of abandoning purchases.
Our other advice is to make the PayPal function available in addition to credit card payments. Due to the mentioned uncertainty, more and more people are using online wallets and making online transactions from them. Now you must have asked yourself why PayPal? The answer is simple: because it is used by a lot of people (more than 200 million users, you see very well, it is a huge number) and because it is dead easy to set up. In addition to security, online wallets also refer to modernity. A webshop optimized for such a feature will reflect that yes, site operators are paying attention to customer needs and constantly following payment trends.
It is not just Visa in the world
Good old Visa, we can say the most common and popular payment technology besides MasterCard. But why forget the rest? It is so annoying when we are already at the payment section, we have already left the cart and there are only Visa and MasterCard options. With this, you can lose a lot of customers. In many countries, junior credit cards are exclusively Maestro cards. These cards are usually valid until the age of 25, but you do not want to sell to this target audience? Of course, you want to!
Make it possible to pay with all types of cards, be it Maestro, American Express, or Discover. Why is this useful? We can show you:
- This will prevent potential customers from leaving your web store after the shopping cart simply because they cannot pay for the product
- This will make your site much more versatile and it will radiate reliability
- It will be possible to buy from several countries – for example, Discover cards are almost completely unknown in Europe, but if your online store is based in Europe, you have already come closer to the American market with such a function, where this card is a common
- It is almost certain that your conversion rate will also increase
Mobile functions
Contactless payment is undoubtedly becoming more and more popular, and the epidemic situation is only increasing this popularity. Opinion polls show that people are increasingly accepting and even enjoying newer and simpler payment options. This is not only the case for offline payments but also online options.
Based on this information, it may be worthwhile to introduce this payment feature on your website as well. Just to reinforce the importance of this, in 2019, 950 million people used the mobile payment opportunity worldwide. It is a huge number, but it is, accepted in a few places to this day.
Therefore, be the exception, incorporate this feature into your webshop.
There are two ways to use this function: The first is the credit card added to the mobile phone, it is not different from a simple credit card payment, the only advantage is that you do not have to carry your credit card with you.
The buyer basically does not feel the weight of the purchase, as they do not have to pay for the product/products at the moment. This is good for you as a webshop operator, but the buyer may regret the purchase and does not complete it. One thing to note, this remorse will not be directed to your webshop’s product, rather to the form of payment. In any case, we recommend that you also smuggle this payment method onto your website.
Cryptocurrencies
Nowadays, cryptocurrencies are gaining in popularity. We cannot say for sure, but they are likely to play a major role in the currency market in the future. Although many people see them only as an investment, there are many places where they serve as legal tender – for example, Microsoft accepts it as payment. Basically, we do not say that you incorporate this into your payment features, we just want to illustrate the future. However, if you feel that your website’s target audience may have a cryptocurrency or they use digital currencies then you do not necessarily have to shy away from the idea, but be sure to note that the exchange rate or value of these currencies fluctuates, as the securities listed on the stock exchange. So, it could be that if the $10 item is paid in cryptocurrency, it will be worth $15 the next day, but it could also be only $8.
If you decide to accept these as a means of payment, we recommend that you do a survey among your customers about their digital currency preferences before you cut into them.
Summary
We would like to point out that the ideas and methods of payment presented here are not engraved in stone. Of course, all payment methods can be useful for your webshop, but introducing all of them can even be risky. Just imagine you bring in the PayPal payment system, but no one is using it. This can be temporal and financially disadvantageous for you.
We strongly recommend that you conduct a survey about your customers ’needs and choose from the useful payment methods we have described based on the results. For this, you can find many analytics features that you can use to track the demographics of your store’s customers and visitors, or even their activity on your site.
