5 Tips for a Seamless Online Checkout Process through Payment Gateway

An easy and seamless checkout process through an online payment gateway leads to higher conversions and better customer retention. That is why the quality of your checkout page is critical to your digital success. Your customers must feel completely secure in providing their payment information here, and the experience must be seamless, if not truly pleasant, in order for them to return soon for another ride.

This is the point at which your value proposition becomes a monetary proposition. On the checkout page, visitors become customers.

If you believe that your checkout conversion and retention rates are adequate as they are, or that a generic solution is adequate for you, then stop reading and continue basking in the glory of your online success.

However, if you believe that you could benefit from an improvement in your checkout-page stats, even by a small margin, here are five tips to help you do just that:

#1 Stop Frustrating Your Customers

For starters, requiring users to sign up is a major conversion killer, particularly for first-time buyers. Consider asking for contact information after the sale has been completed.

The typical scenario is as follows: the user adds a few items to her cart and proceeds to checkout, where she discovers that only registered users are permitted to shop on your website.

There goes a full-fledged, irritated rant, and, quite possibly, your sale.

There are other methods for preventing or avoiding user frustration. For example, whenever a customer makes a mistake with her card details, such as missing or mistyping a number, gives her the option to edit the existing information. If you ask her to start over, expect a full-fledged frustration-fueled rant and, quite possibly, another no-sale.

Overall, go through the checkout process a hundred times if necessary to smooth out any details that may irritate your user. Also, solicit and consider all customer feedback.

#2 A/B Test It

Few payment service providers (PSP) or online payment gateway service providers provide A/B testing capabilities, but SifiPay does, and it has proven to be a significant advantage for our clients, with the majority of them improving conversion rates well into the double-digit percentiles.

If you're unsure or believe A/B testing is overly complicated, here's an HBR article that discusses A/B testing and the benefits of an experimentation culture. The point is that the most successful online businesses are data-driven and actively generate actionable data by running experiments rather than passively storing and analyzing data. Over and over.

#3 Security & Privacy Are Paramount

Any sane user will immediately bounce if they have even the slightest doubt about payment security. Here are some things you should think about right away:

A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate

This creates a secure connection on the best payment gateway and encrypts all information provided by users, including credit card information.

PCI-DSS compliance

It is enforced by credit card companies with the goal of managing security standards for all operators who share, store, and process cardholder data.

SifiPay, unsurprisingly, is fully PCI-DSS compliant, so that's one less thing to worry about.

Nonetheless, SSL certification and PCI-DSS compliance can only take you so far, which leads me to my next major point.

#4 Put Forth a Clean, Seamless Design

You can't just slap a payment link on there and call it a day. You can, but it's sloppy and risky, and it will cost you clients and money. Your checkout must be completely customized to match the overall look and feel of your brand.

Your logo, fonts, brand colors, and one-of-a-kind user experience (UX)! Every aspect of your checkout page should be as consistent with the rest of your website as possible.

A neat solution is to deliver the checkout page within an iframe that is overlayed on top of the shopping cart or any other website page. Consider this.

#5 Remove All Distractions

Please only convey critically important information and NO advertisements, OK? Your marketing efforts have brought this client to the counter, and your only goal now is to collect the money.

Remove the top navigation bar and don't include any links in the footer. All that remains is the card-details format and the massively satisfying call-to-action: Complete Your Purchase.

In Conclusion

Customers abandon their shopping carts for a variety of reasons, but the root cause is friction. They may encounter an unexpected step or cost that irritates them, causing them to immediately bounce. This is especially common with mobile checkouts. If you've been following eCommerce trends, you'll know that you must go mobile or go home.

So, as a bonus, here's tip #6: go mobile, optimize for mobile, plan for a fully mobile future, and future-proof every aspect of your online business, including your checkout page.