How the Right Payment Gateway Can Enhance Customer Experience

How Does Payment Gateway Selection Enhance Customer Experience

Customer experience on an online store varies from good to bad to somewhere in between. If you provide a good experience, customers are more likely to make a purchase once and come back for more. Provide a bad one, and they will probably never visit the store again.

A good User Experience (UX) is not dependent on any single parameter. There are many of them that spring to mind when you think of a seamless UX – clean design, easy-to-use navigation, easy product search facility, and the list goes on. But what’s more important to realize is that good UX does not only involve the shopping cart experience.

Another underrated factor that can have a big impact on the customer experience of your online shop is the choice of payment gateway. Choose the right one and you will enjoy higher sales; choose an unsuitable one, and the impact can only be guessed.

Let’s take a deeper look at how the payment gateway selection impacts the customer experience on your online store.

How are sales, online payments, and customer experience interrelated?

Needless to say, if customers are facing difficulties in buying items/services from your online store, they are likely to search for an alternative. A great shopping experience starts with the home screen of your store and ends at the ‘Thank You’ message.

Anything that impacts this experience negatively, like clunky menus, never-ending search process, or lack of preferred payment methods, increases the risk of losing potential buyers.

Deep down at the core, your payment gateway is an integral part of this overall shopping experience. If it is not trustworthy, is difficult to use, lacks common payment methods, or involves multiple redirects, it can result in loss of sales just like any other store design element.

The first step towards improved business statistics here is to realize that payment gateway does have an impact on the customer experience. Let’s move forward with how you can improve this experience with the right payment gateway.

  • Include familiar payment methods to establish trust

At the payment stage of their order, many potential customers second-guess themselves about the purchase – ‘Should I buy it now?, ‘Is it worth the price asked?’, ‘Is this a good brand to buy from?’, and more.

At such a stage, many factors can result in shopping cart abandonment, including the lack of preferred payment methods. Gone are the days when Indian businesses were highly cash-dependent. Much to your surprise, the number of online shoppers in India is expected to reach 220 million by 2025, says the stats.

Data About Online Shoppers

Source: Statista

The best part is – you can convince the customers to buy from you by:

  • Facilitating all the most popular payment methods to accept online payments (like credit cards, debit cards, digital wallets, UPI, and others)
  • Displaying information related to payment security like PCI-DSS compliant, SSL certificate, and others
  • Showcasing saved cards for a faster checkout experience
  • Highlighting available bank offers and EMI schemes

This all ultimately depends on the integrated payment gateway. With these elements, you can put the shoppers’ minds at ease and enjoy more orders being completed.

  • Avoid multiple redirects during the payment process

Another factor to consider to improve user experience is the jumps during the customer journey. The following example illustrates why this is important –

Imagine yourself entering a beautiful local store to buy apparel. After you have picked the products and walked to the payment counter, you are told to walk down the street to another store for payments and then to another one to get the order receipt.

If this happens, you would likely be confused or disappointed, and might even think the store is a scam. Surprisingly, the online shoppers may feel the same way while buying from your online store if you send them to another payment page they are not familiar with.

If the current user journey on your store involves multiple redirects, you now know what the problem behind lower sales can be.

Solution – switch to Paytm JS Checkout to deliver a smooth and secure shopping experience that is free from redirections.

  • Customize checkout as per your brand persona

Sending a customer to another site for payments is one thing while sending them to a payment page that does not look like yours at all is another.

It is a bit like our apparel-buying example above, ending with the availability of cashiers in another store, but now sitting in some corner room having no lights and an old register to write about orders.

Doesn’t it seem out of place for a beautiful shop filled with an impressive apparel collection?

The checkout experience on your online store should mirror the brand’s identity. It simply means having a checkout page that looks like it belongs there and is not randomly dropped in.

You can ensure a delightful payment experience for your customers by designing a checkout form that compliments the brand theme.

Wondering how it is possible? We have a solution for it too – Custom Checkout with Paytm Payment Gateway.

Why should you ensure the best customer experience for your online business?

As said above, you need to ensure the best customer experience to increase sales while also retaining customers. In terms of an online payment facility, your payment gateway should provide the customer with what they are looking for – the widest range of payment methods, payment security, and an easy checkout experience.

A satisfactory customer experience can earn your online store a good reputation that can drive more potential buyers towards your brand and hence increase sales.

The bottom line

The most simple question you should answer for business growth is – What do your potential customers want?

The right answer can redefine your business by creating a competitive advantage and following the customer-first approach. Collecting online payments is critical to the overall experience because it is when the customers evaluate the value proposition and make the buying decision.

By thinking about the relationship between buyer experience and payment gateway, you can certainly open doors to business improvements. Payment method choices, reliability, payment security, and trustworthiness are all essentials in selecting a payment gateway and creating the kind of experience that modern customers crave.

Switch to Paytm Payment Gateway

 

You May Also Like
Accept Payments at Zero fees
Read More

Accept Payments Online at Zero Fees with Paytm

While there is no extra cost associated with making online payments on the consumer side, businesses need to pay certain charges. That’s the reason why they look for ways to accept payments at a 0% fee.