Online shopping is extremely popular and only becoming more so. Yet customers react particularly sensitively on their way to the checkout if their preferred payment method is not available so when building your online shop remember customer experience is everything. Without happy customers all your efforts could be wasted so remember these points and help your online shop make money.

Avoid cancelled purchases: the bigger the selection the better

More than a third of online shoppers cancel the buying process if they don’t find their preferred payment method. That’s all the hard work to the get them to the checkout stage undone and it is very simply solved. A successful online shop should, in principle, offer at least two to three electronic payment procedures to keep the rate of cancelled purchases to a minimum. Our recommendation: offer credit card or PayPal for first-time buyers and international customers, combined with the direct debit procedure and an online banking-based procedure like instant transfer.

Saving time and money

In order to incorporate a payment type in an online shop, you need to establish communication with the interface of the required payment procedure. Each of the various payment types, will have existing interface for you to complete all the necessary details in the administration area of your shop. Contracting a payment provider enables online sellers to reduce their technical and administrative costs and to process all the usual electronic payment methods through this provider by integrating the payment gateway provided.

The return policy mentality

Completing a purchase does not necessarily mean a guaranteed profit because goods returned by customers represent a further challenge for online sellers. Interestingly, there appears to be a direct link between the return rate and the payment procedure on offer. Many sellers, particularly those selling fashion items, report an increased return rate in the case of payment on delivery, while customers who pay in advance, by credit card or instant transfer return significantly fewer goods.

Need more help? Read this guide to launching an online shop.