How Can Your Online Payment System Impact Customer Experience?

It is a well-established fact that customer experience is pivotal to better sales. A customer’s experience while shopping from a website for the first time defines if they would return to the company for recurring shopping. If a business fails to enhance their customer experience, they are bound to lose sales and miss the opportunity to gain loyal customers.

With abundant competition, customers can get an identical product from several other companies or websites. It is the experience that a customer has with the business that decides if they would choose it over the competition, right from the website’s user interface to the ease of navigating through the website. Customer retention is, thus, directly dependent on the experience that the business can provide. Mainly, businesses get the overall experience right but struggle with the payment system. According to an article published by J. P. Morgan, more than 72% of e-commerce payments were online payments in India in 2019. Hence, enhancing the online payment system becomes a super important factor for the optimal customer experience.

Here is a brief look at how that happens.

• Preferred Mode of Payment

One of the most significant advantages of digital transactions is that they can be made through several options. Credit cards, debit cards, UPI, mobile wallets, net banking, and multiple other ways can be used for making payments. Consumers in the digital era are driven by convenience and control over the purchase process. While making an online purchase, the customer would want to make the payment using their preferred payment as per their convenience. Customers might also end up abandoning the purchase if their preferred payment mode is not supported.

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The presence or absence of the customer’s preferred mode in the gateway defines their degree of gratification. Consequently, offering multiple methods of payments will lead to improved customer satisfaction. After all, a happy customer turns into a loyal customer. The best online payment service supporting 100+ payment options in India is Zaakpay.

• Guest Checkouts

Nothing can be more frustrating than placing an order and being asked to go through a lengthy registration form to complete the payment. Most customers find the process of registering or creating an account tiresome and an unnecessary burden. As a result, they may leave the purchase incomplete and opt for another business. More so, if registration is compulsory for making the purchase.

To provide a more seamless experience to the customers, it is best to opt for an online payment system that has the facility of guest checkout and enables checkouts without the need to register. The facility to log in using a Google or Facebook account is an additional feature that can further reduce the data-entry process.

• Consistent Experience Across Platforms

Customers can make the purchase using any device such as a laptop computer, smartphone, or tablet. The consistency of payment service across the different devices also affects the customer’s experience. For example, if the business gateway is only compatible with laptop or desktop computers, sales coming from consumers using smartphones would be lost. Customer retention would also take a hit because customers cannot shop using only one type of device every time.

• Security

The level of security offered by the online payment system is crucial to customer experience. An insecure gateway is sure to bring down the customer’s user experience. The customer would be afraid of their sensitive payment information being misused.

Any cyber-attack also brings down the credibility of the business. To avoid such scenarios, merchants must choose a PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certified gateway. Such gateways encrypt the user’s data to protect them from any threat lurking around. Displaying the familiar security logos can make the customer feel comfortable with the gateway. Services like Zaakpay offer additional security, such as two-factor authentication that ensures the credibility of the payment information.

• Customer Support

Technical issues can crop up even in these technologically advanced times. With people shopping at any hour of the day, technical issues can come up even in the middle of the night. Customer experience is highly compromised when any such error takes place.

However, it is the time taken to solve the query that defines the user experience after that. Choosing a gateway with active 24/7 customer support will help resolve queries and technical glitches at the earliest, earning the customers’ trust. Best online payment gateways like Zaakpay allow merchants and customers to report their grievances 24×7.

• Integrated Payment Gateway

Payment gateways can be of two types – hosted & non-hosted. A hosted gateway takes the customer to a gateway on a third-party website. This can arouse suspicion amongst customers about the payment being a fraudulent one.

A non-hosted gateway, on the other hand, is directly hosted on the business website. A non-hosted gateway integrated into the business website offers a more streamlined customer experience by eliminating avoidable redirects. Customers might get annoyed if they are redirected multiple times, which can hamper their shopping experience.

• Familiar Design Aspects

Humans don’t like a lot of immediate changes. It makes them alienated from what they already knew. As a result, customers might feel disconnected if the payment gateway has a different design element than the rest of the website. This is more common in hosted online payment gateways and can make the customer lose a familiar touch with the business. Sales can also dip due to this. Hence, to provide an experience that is pleasing to the customers’ eyes, merchants should customize the gateway with a design scheme matching the rest of the website. Adding the brand logo and retaining the logo theme colors can help uniformity in the payment page.

Conclusion

The payment system can affect the customer experience adversely. The right features will help maintain a stellar shopping & payment experience for the customer. Thus, choosing the best online payment gateway can significantly impact sales by improving the customer experience. Zaakpay is one of the best options for small businesses equipped with the latest features that offer a premium customer experience to bolster sales.