Optimizing Your Payments Stack for Enhanced User Experience and Sales

Authored By: Ben Flexner, Director of Payment Enablement, Olo Inc. and Andy McHale, Senior Director of Product and Market Strategy, Spreedly

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In today's digital age, ensuring that customers have a smooth and frictionless checkout experience is paramount. The diversity of payment methods and tools available today can be overwhelming, but when utilized strategically, they can significantly boost conversion rates. 

The Anatomy of the Conversion Funnel

Every customer's journey toward making a purchase can be visualized as a funnel. This process begins with the discovery of a product or service, followed by the decision to register an account or proceed as a guest. The steps continue through the selection of items, and the checkout process, and conclude with the order being accepted or declined.

The primary goal for every merchant? Guide as many genuine, non-fraudulent sales through this funnel. Yet, with growing competition and potential friction in user experience, maintaining and optimizing this flow can become a challenge.

Key Strategies for Optimizing Checkout

• Minimize Scrolling: Try to fit everything on a single page. If customers have to scroll to find things or fill out forms it can really slow down the checkout experience. Employ design tricks like accordion sections to help break up blocks of form fields. 
• Think Mobile First: Page layout and load times are key. Keep any scrolling to vertical patterns and not horizontal. Mobile screens are narrow in portrait orientation and fields not visible to the side can be missed and cause frustration. In addition to the layout, the load times of the page are a big influence on the speed of a checkout. Load times can vary widely depending on whether the customer is on a strong WiFi signal vs. a weak cellular data connection and a page that takes too long to load can cause abandonment. ‍
• Stay Concise: Keep checkout pages focused on checkout. Don’t ask for more info than you need to in order to reduce the time spent filling out fields. Also, try not to add steps like adding ratings or signing up for unrelated services to the checkout flow to keep customers shopping.
• Payment Options: Focus on adding payment methods that expedite the checkout process and cut down on friction. One of the tools making waves in this area is "The Pays." They offer an advantage as they contain both the bill-to and ship-to information, streamlining the process for the user. Also, consider the relevance over quantity. Too many options can cause clutter and confusion for the customer. 

The Cost of Not Optimizing

Failures in the checkout process, whether due to false declines, a confusing user interface, or any friction, can have more significant consequences than just a single lost sale. Recent research indicates that in addition to deciding not to shop with the merchant again, a significant fraction of consumers will share negative experiences by word of mouth or social media harming the merchant’s brand reputation with other consumers. 

Expanding Your Horizons

When thinking of adding new payment methods, merchants need to consider whether they address an existing problem. Key questions to ponder include:

• Is a particular payment method resulting in cart abandonment?
• Can a new payment method attract demographics previously out of reach?
• Will supporting a particular method alter payment processing costs, and if so, is the ROI worth it?

In Conclusion

Building and optimizing your payment stack is not just about providing multiple payment options. It's about understanding the customer journey, reducing friction, and ensuring relevance. It's about making strategic decisions that drive tangible value to your business while enhancing the user experience.

To unlock the true potential of this strategy, a solid payment infrastructure is essential. Spreedly provides that foundation, offering a state-of-the-art payments orchestration platform. With the enablement of Spreedly, Olo Inc. emphasizes its commitment to payment enablement, showcasing the transformative effects of refined payment tactics.

Want to set forth on your path to a more optimized payment environment? Get in touch with specialists now.

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Download the Payments Orchestration eBook Below