As Internet marketers, we spend a great deal of time and effort trying to seduce people to enter our sales funnel by one way or another. We are always looking for ways to streamline this process and to make it as natural as possible, so that we overcome the resistance and attain a new customer, hopefully for life. Everything that we learn as part of this process is designed to remove as many stumbling blocks as possible and to make it a “no-brainer” for the prospect or soon-to-be client. For many organizations however, this procedure can hit a giant sized stumbling block when it comes to the actual payment methodology, which can leave much to be desired!
While you may have done your job famously to attract prospects into that sales funnel in the first place and they may be more than ready to consummate an association with you, the process of payment is still to be completed. This can be a somewhat traumatic experience for many people and is the point in the whole process where you are likely to have more bailouts than anywhere else. You certainly need to ensure that all elements of security are addressed here for obvious reasons, but you must remove any obstacles and streamline this process as much as possible.
If you are dealing with a first-time client, you should never put too many steps in front of them in the overall transaction. While you must adequately describe your product or service within the body of the site and cover shipping and other questions prior to checkout, do not make prospects jump through any unnecessary hoops. This includes the need for them to register and sign up for an account with you before they can go any further. By all means ask them to do this after they have committed to giving you money, but it has been proven time and again that the more steps you put in the process the higher the likelihood that you are going to get bailouts.
Look at your entire checkout process from a neutral point of view and get someone who you trust, who is not directly involved with your site, to go through the process and give you adequate feedback. The whole thing should flow nicely and it should be possible for the transaction to be completed in an almost subconscious manner. The consumer has generally got a good idea of how these things should work and if your operation has an unexpected hiccup they will not like it.
You put too much effort into the attraction of a potential client to let him or her disappear due to a cumbersome payment process. If you check your analytics program and see people leaving your site before they get to the confirmation page you need to ask yourself why and find out the reason pretty quickly!
How have you made sure your payment process flows smoothly?
Adam Toren
Very nice. I always say the less clicks for the bustomer the better.. make the process simple, use arrows, over explain the step by step process.. Also makes the customer feel more at ease with giving up their CC info.
Making people feel comfortable is CRUCIAL. Look at your demographics. You’ll find that the older the customer is….. the more skeptical they are to enter in their credit card number. Simple things like the BBB logo and other recognizable icons help a lot to put their minds to ease.
Once prospective customer land on the website and convenience enough to buy the product/services then the crucial part appears i.e. How I do the Payment. I think everyone online business owner must have PayPal or similar kind of online transaction tool, this can generate more number of qualified leads. Thanks for the sharing such nice information.
Totally Agree! By offering our customers choices and actions to follow, they will find one that suits them and hit the paynow button!