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Key Points to Know Before Integrating a Payment Gateway into Your Website

Tag: ecommerce

Key Points to Know Before Integrating a Payment Gateway into Your Website
Mohab Ecommerce 0

Key Points to Know Before Integrating a Payment Gateway into Your Website

More people are now shopping online and as an online business owner, you have to make a smart move to provide a seamless checkout process.  Many shoppers abandon their shopping carts just before completing the purchase if they encounter problems with the payment process. It is critical that you provide a seamless and convenient payment process by working with a reputed payment system provider.  You have to learn how to integrate a payment gateway into your e-store as this is a major step in improving user experience at your e-store. With the right payment network in place, your customers will enjoy quick and secure payments, which will in turn lead to higher sales conversion, reduced cart abandonment and increased customer loyalty.

There are multiple payment gateways in the market and choosing one may seem like an overwhelming task. To make the right decision, you should consider the following factors before integrating the payment system into your e-store. Read on.

  1. Processing Speed

If you want to tap into the fast-growing e-commerce industry, you have to provide the best customer experience through a quick and painless checkout process. The gateway you choose for processing your payments should be fast in order to provide a seamless user experience.

If your customers experience hiccups when making payments, they will most likely abandon their carts and move to your competitors.  To avoid this, evaluate the processing speed of the payment system; query the provider’s downtime and contingency plan.

  1. Security

One of the greatest concerns in online shopping revolves around safety in transactions. Many businesses and customers have suffered losses due to fraud and these go into billions every year.  When choosing a payment gateway, evaluate the security levels offered to protect your customers’ sensitive data. Failure to do this will lead to loss of customer trust, business losses, and hefty fines from the regulatory authorities among other devastation consequences. The provider should guarantee encryption of all transactions during payment transit and storage.

  1. Consider the Terms and Conditions (T&Cs)

Many business owners have suffered irreparable damage due to the purchase of services without reading the terms and conditions (T& Cs). When purchasing a gateway to process your online payments, you have to read every item in the terms and conditions list to avoid surprises along the way.

Pay careful attention to the small print because otherwise, it could lead to business losses in the future. Look for contract issues such as software integration fees, processing volume requirements, transaction fees, monthly fees, early termination fees, minimum fees, fraud software fees, etc. Ask for clarification before signing on the dotted line.

  1. Multiple Payment Options

There’s no compromise when it comes to accepting multiple payments at your e-store. The best payment network must support such needs as more customers now go for alternative payment options other than credit cards.

  1. PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry-Data Security Standard) compliance

Another crucial factor to consider when shopping for payment gateways is PCI-DSS compliance. These standards guarantee the system is safe and secure. You will not have to worry about data breaches, data loss, and fraud among other online data handling problems. With the PCI-DSS compliance badge on your website, it is easy to win and retain customer loyalty which is the aim of every business owner.

  1. Flexibility

Every business has unique needs and when shopping for payment gateways, you have to identify a system that is compatible with your e-store needs.  Consider whether the system you choose is flexible enough to adapt to the specific needs of your business, adapt to the programming language of your site, and to process all global currencies you need for your business among other things. Look for a flexible payment processing platform which you can adapt to suit your business needs.

These are only a few of the crucial factors to consider before integrating a gateway for payments to your website. It is also important to consider technical support from the provider, ease of technical integration, reporting features, UI and usability, built-in invoicing capabilities, and fraud detection and other security features.

5 years ago
All the Traffic but No Sales: 5 Things You Might Be Doing Wrong
Mohab Growth Hacks, Guest Posts 0

All the Traffic but No Sales: 5 Things You Might Be Doing Wrong

Your e-commerce website site is shiny, ready, and that fresh marketing campaign is driving traffic like gangbusters. Newsletters are flying out, and your tweets are picking up tons of action. But, you do not see any pickup in sales.

All that marketing spending is just going in smoke, and it’s got you down.

We get it, and nearly every e-commerce store has been there. Driving traffic was supposed to be the hard part, so what’s gone wrong? Where’s the breakdown?

The bad news is that there are hurdles throughout the process that you might not be clearing. The good news is that you can definitely overcome them. Let’s look at five of the biggest to get you started in matching sales with the new traffic boom.

Getting the Wrong Traffic

Most e-commerce stores believe that traffic is the key. As long as they’re driving eyeballs, then they’re golden. Unfortunately, that’s often not the case because you have to drive the right eyeballs to make a sale. Your traffic must match the content of the site and the offer you provide.

Here are three of the most common disconnects in this space:

  • Targeting the wrong people for your product (right product, wrong people)
  • Sending your target audience to pages or content they aren’t interested in (right people, wrong product)
  • Targeting people not interested in your core offer and sending them to landing pages that don’t focus on your core offer (wrong people, wrong product)

You’ll need to do some customer research to find out who is most likely interested in your products. Start with this data and get as much demographic information as possible. Use that to build your ad campaigns and your social targeting.

Next, review your messaging and sales funnel to ensure that this new audience of people who need your core products are being sent to pages highlighting those products. If you’re sending someone to the wrong stuff, they’re more likely to click back to the page they came from instead of browsing around your site.

Having a Complicated Site

Another big sales killer is a website that’s hard to use. Most office this means it is too complex for the visitor. Complexity hurts in a few ways.

First, it can make your site load slowly. More than one-third of visitors will leave a site if its images don’t load quickly and about half of your audience thinks your site should load in two seconds or less. Second, complicated sites can impact how they display on mobiles. This can harm you if you’re in one of the categories where mobile accounts for at least half of total ecommerce spending.

And the final note about web design is that 75% of your audience will judge your credibility and trustworthiness based on your web design.

When sites get too complicated to use easily, they cut against the engagement and trust required for a sale. Address this by simplifying your website, working to reduce load times, and keeping your product images and “buy” buttons clearly visible toward the top of each page.

Missing Pertinent Product Details

If you were buying a product you’ve never tried before, would you get a small, medium, or large?

We know what you’re thinking: “It depends. Tell me more about the product.”

That’s exactly right. You need a wide range of details to understand any product. Plus, you also need information about why it is a right fit for you and, often in the e-commerce space, if this product is the right style for you too.

Customers who don’t understand your offer or get these details aren’t going to buy.

Approach each one of your products and the pages that host them to see if you’re providing the right details. Here are some of the bases to cover:

  • What problem does the audience have?
  • How does this product solve that?
  • Are the available options able to do that for this particular visitor?
  • What do they need to narrow down the options? (Think size charts, how much liquid a cup holds, etc.)
  • What does it look like? What will this visitor look like or feel like using the product?
  • Why do they want to look/feel like that?
  • How can they easily buy it from you?

These questions will give you the structure to present the customer with an idea about their problem and how you solve it, convincing them that you have the right solution based on how they want to look or feel after the purchase. Everything else is designed to help them make their choice.

The faster you can do this, the better.

No Clear Differentiation

Many e-commerce stores offer a similar selection of products — this is even more true if you’re drop shipping.

Do a quick online search of your business area and specific products to see how your competitors are describing the products and how close their offers are to yours. If you’re one of many talking about products in the same way, or are using the same stock photos, you won’t be creating a clear reason for a visitor to make a purchase from you.

Tell a story that highlights what you like best about the products and match it to your overall personality. Align that with your target market, because it may create a personal connection with a site visitor who would then be more willing to buy.

You need to show brand and product personality to stand out. It can be difficult in the e-commerce space to do that because you’re often working with limited products. However, the design you give your site and the way you talk about your products can go a long way. If you need inspiration on how to feel different, look at websites from the brands themselves. Don’t copy their style but find things you can emulate while adding your own flavor.

No one needs just another bland catalog on the Internet.

Problems at Checkout

The final place to check is your purchase process. Messy, complex, or broken checkout systems are often a cause of failed sales. Again, you want to be as simple and straightforward as possible.

Show users the price of the goods and have their cart follow them throughout. You can indicate expected costs like taxes or add a note to the cart overlay text that says, “plus shipping and handling.” This way there is less of a surprise jump in price when checkout time comes.

If you offer free shipping or have a partner who guarantees speedy ecommerce delivery, then note this information on the page to help customers feel more comfortable with the purchase.

Breaking the process into multiple steps also helps people stick with it, instead of getting overwhelmed by long forms. You can see this practice on most leading e-commerce sites, especially Amazon. Another trick to grab from Amazon is to show product detail summaries on your checkout pages, including things like size, color, and quantity.

One final note to consider is that you might not want to force customers to create an account. Ask for an email to send the receipt, but wait on making them choose a password. You can use the receipt or “thank you” email as a place to ask them to create an account. It reduces the burden and can increase your overall subscription volume too.

Here’s hoping these 5 tips will help you onto the path of greater sales.

All the Traffic but No Sales: 5 Things You Might Be Doing Wrong

About the author

Jake Rheude is the Director of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, an ecommerce fulfillment warehouse that was born out of ecommerce. He has years of experience in ecommerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others.

6 years ago
Using Your Social Media Channels for Customer Service
Mohab Customer Experience 0

Using Your Social Media Channels for Customer Service

When social media platforms first came into being, they were perceived as a unique way to connect with friends, families and acquaintances. Over time, e-commerce stores or online businesses began to make their presence felt through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Why? Because they quickly realized that social media is an intelligent way to enhance brand awareness. It is also a rising trend to market products and services through social media channels and gauge customer reactions.

Nearly every website today has a social media page and a social media strategy in place, to listen to customers, receive feedback and resolve queries or complaints. Hence, keeping the social media connection with your target audience is essential to expand client base, improve brand value and retain existing customers. Here are the top things to remember if you wish to use social media for customer service effectively:

  • Fast response is a must – Most online stores don’t offer round the clock phone or email service. But customers expect prompt response on social media channels, whether they have a query or a complaint. Responding late can cause customers to escalate the issue through other channels, tell friends about the bad experience, and buy less from you. They might also choose not to recommend your brand. This can hamper your brand image in more ways than one. So, timely responses are always a wise idea.

For instance, on Twitter, customers expect you to reply within an hour. And if you cannot resolve the issue in 280 characters, you can lead them to direct messages. On Facebook, response time rates are always shown clearly. And you must reply within 5 minutes if you want Facebook to consider your business very responsive or fast.

  • Understand public and private resolutions – No matter what you sell online, you should be prepared for negative comments or complaints. So decide which kind of comments you wish to resolve publicly and which ones you want to keep private. As comments impact your brand image, think carefully. Consider what kind of comments you usually get, who handles them, and how you want to redirect negative comments. Decide if they should be moved to direct messaging, phone or email.

For example, if a customer makes a negative comment on Twitter, or something that requires the exchange of sensitive information, you can reply to them cordially and send an automatically embedded link to direct messages. Your reply should clearly show what to do next or where to click for further conversation.

  • Don’t ignore even a single comment – Always remember to acknowledge every review or post on social media and answer every query without fail. If you don’t “hear” a customer, he or she is most likely to leave you! Ignoring a comment would mean you are ignoring the customer and it’s not desirable.
  • Fight negative comments positively – If a customer posts a complaint or negative feedback, don’t start defending your business. Address them politely by their names or initials, acknowledge the issue, show empathy and offer a phone number or email ID to continue the discussion and take it offline. Remember that the customer is always right and a thousand other customers are reading the complaint too. So, if you show a positive attitude, you will gain everyone’s trust and support. You can collate negative comments from your past experience and make a list of positive replies which you can use later in similar situations.
  • Use tools to monitor social media customer service – Tools like Buffer, Hootsuite and Mention can help you monitor customer service activities on social media channels. Through these, you can handle customer comments and queries on different platforms, simultaneously. These tools also let you tackle issues or queries in posts where your name has been mentioned but you have not been tagged or mentioned with @. You will get notifications even when you are away.

To conclude, being positive, responsive, understanding how to deal with negative comments and using the right monitoring tools can take you a long way when it comes to offering customer service through social media. As long as you are prepared, you can offer customers a supportive environment where they will engage with your brand more and trust you enough to stay loyal.

6 years ago
5 Tips for Improving User Experience at Your Web Store
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

5 Tips for Improving User Experience at Your Web Store

When we talk about user experience, we can broadly divide it into the following categories:

  • Convenience
  • Flexibility

These are the two major factors on which the entire user experience is based. People look for convenience while shopping online or using an e-commerce site. If the site offers everything that the customer might be looking for, keeping their convenience in mind, people will love using the site. The same is true for another factor – flexibility, which is applicable when people look for different options.

Nobody wants to be conditioned to use a limited set of options, which might be quite inconvenient sometimes.

1.Keep your payout speed fast

E-commerce world is going through a sea change as more and more people are moving from traditional jobs to freelance and online jobs. They earn their livelihood through offering gigs and working remotely for others. In such a scenario payout speed of your site becomes extremely important, as your users need to pay their monthly bills.

User experience is everything in this case and the popularity of your platform largely depends on how well the platform pays its users.

2.Make use of targeted keywords

Convenience can be of different types and ease of access and search ability of your website is the topmost factor. We can achieve visibility in organic search through targeted keywords. It is not only important for SEO but also to attract online crowds through different channels. We need to keep in mind that most of the people are looking for a product using their mobile phones so misspelled words and voice search are extremely important, and we should take care of them while defining the targeted keywords.

3. Arrange the placement of search bars

It is extremely important how your search bars are placed on a page during site navigation. In E-commerce sites, there are various filters you can use to search for the product you are looking for. Every section and filter has an adjacent search bar, which can be scrolled up and down or right and left. It helps you view the entire list, grid or web page. It makes the site easy to navigate, view, and find the right information.

4. Keep your product display captivating
Every effort should be made to highlight the product you are selling. A well displayed product has a higher probability of selling. So, everything that might help you in displaying your product in a better way will help you in improving your customer experience. From HD pictures to HD videos, 360 degree views, GIFs and anything else that helps your customer get a better idea about the product will help you.

5.Make sure checkout is smooth 

One major part of user experience is the checkout process. If the customer feels that the checkout process is not smooth and quick, they will not leave your site in a happy frame of mind. It may also prevent them from visiting your site next time. The same is true for customer experience with your payment gateway. The overall experience includes the ease of choosing the right product, time taken to move a product to the cart and finally making the payment to complete the order.

There are many things that make your checkout smooth and convenient, such as the functionality to store your card information. With this arrangement, the customer doesn’t have to enter the card details every time they make payment. Don’t redirect them to another site to complete payment. Try your best to keep the customer on your site, unless it’s warranted due to security reasons.

If you take care of all these things, it will dramatically improve your user experience and will help your site to attract more traffic and convert more customers. That’s probably the reason user experience is also one of the major factors that influences SEO.

6 years ago
Changes in the E-Commerce Landscape That Could Affect Your Business
Mohab Super Merchants 0

Changes in the E-Commerce Landscape That Could Affect Your Business

It is no news that merchants have been making the most of the e-commerce boom for quite some time now. Most businesses these days sell products as well as services online, to customers sitting in far-flung parts of the world.  While the internet has opened up a whole new world of opportunities to merchants, there are certain things you should focus on if you wish to thrive as a virtual business. As the e-commerce landscape is constantly changing, if you want to stay ahead of competition, here are the things you should keep in mind:

Offering multiple payment options

If a shopper visits your website, likes a product, clicks to buy, but sees that you only accept credit cards, he or she might abandon the cart. This is because they were probably looking to use their e-wallet. Naturally, you will lose valuable customers this way. Luckily, these days, there are payment gateways like PayTabs that allow merchants to accept many different currencies and multiple payment options like Visa, MasterCard, Union Pay, WeChat Pay, American Express, Sadad and more. Hence, as a business, you have a better chance to convert potential shoppers into actual ones if you offer more payment choices by adopting these gateways.

Make social media work for you

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become smart ways to advertise products online as well. Hence, businesses of all sizes have the scope to compete and connect with customers and turn them into loyalists. So, you should focus on social media marketing, create engaging posts, and interact with potential shoppers to build trust and confidence. Remember to accept both positive and negative reviews to get better.

Go mobile or get wiped out!

More and more online shoppers are using their mobile devices or smartphones to make purchases these days, be it a pizza or a gold ring! It is expected that by 2019, sales through tablets and smartphones can be as much as $150 billion. So you see how important it is to make your e-store mobile friendly. Or, you will lose out on sales. Adopting a payment gateway like PayTabs is also essential to make the payment process seamless and easy on mobiles.

Don’t ignore Omni-channel marketing

There was a time when people could make purchases only through a merchant’s website. But those days are long gone. You can now use social media, mobile apps, emails and even SMS to connect with your audience, inform them of sales and such, and make it easier for them to shop from you. This way, you will open up multiple channels to them for convenient shopping. Are you worried that managing the revenues from these different channels will be tough? Don’t worry as thanks to gateways like PayTabs, payment integration irrespective of the transaction channel is a reality.

Focus on customer service

The world of online shopping has become intensely competitive over the years. Customers today have more options than ever before, whether it comes to brands, type of products or benefits. So, in this scenario, great customer service can take you a really long way! But it is often expensive to set up and manage a call centre, especially if you are a new business. Though automated chatbots are popular and widely used by many e-stores, they are not always personal and don’t provide the support needed. Hence, a better idea is to use IVR or Interactive Voice Response which will work round the clock to cater to customer needs.

Payment security is very crucial

Online shoppers will only trust you when you use a secure payment gateway like PayTabs. This is because online frauds, identity thefts and phishing are on the rise. Hence, using a gateway that is PCI compliant makes total sense. Such a gateway will protect customer details, transaction data and prevent fraudulent attacks.

Finally, you see how surviving and succeeding in the e-commerce landscape is a tricky business! But with a little foresight and discretion, you can make technology work wonders for you. Just keep the above tips in mind and stay abreast with changes.

6 years ago