The payment experience you offer on your e-commerce site directly influences your visitors’ perceptions of your brand. If your visitors find your site’s payment experience to be pleasant and straightforward, they’re more likely to make repeat purchases and become loyal customers. With enough loyal and engaged customers, you can then build a stronger foundation for your e-commerce store’s success.
The main challenge to doing all of that is the sheer diversity of customer preferences. For instance, some may prefer their online payment processed with just one or two clicks while others might prefer a more secure experience. Without some kind of customization on your site’s design, navigational experience, and online payment solutions, it may not be able to appeal to a sufficiently wide set of visitors, resulting in limited sales and slower growth.
Fortunately, there are plenty of options for offering a customized payment experience to e-commerce customers. See which of the five strategies below apply to your online business:
1) Accept As Many Payment Methods as Possible
The most basic way you can customize the payment experience is to allow customers to pay with whichever methods they prefer. This can be a challenge given the growing diversity of internet payment solutions across different online markets.
In the Philippines, the online payments scene has become increasingly crowded, with digital wallets, QR codes, direct bank transfers, virtual payment cards, and conventional credit and debit cards all having their share of advocates. When customers come across an online payments gateway that can’t process their preferred payment methods, they are more likely to seek an alternative merchant or product rather than go through the process of enabling the payment method the site needs.
If you want your site to have repeat business, you need to offer fuss-free online payment processing. With its unmatched experience in providing tech-forward payment solutions to Philippine e-commerce startups and SMEs (small- and medium-sized enterprises), Maya is the online payment processing company that is favored by many contemporary businesses. We offer customizable and locally relevant payment solutions on your website, including the Maya Checkout payment gateway, which easily integrates with most websites and apps, including those built on popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce.
2) Design Your Site Around Typical Customer Journeys
Apart from payment preferences, factors like institutional trust, device preferences, and digital readiness all vary across different online markets. As globalization and e-commerce growth continue to converge, online payment portal implementation and overall site design need to be considered to better match the behaviors and expectations of users from different online markets.
For in-depth site customization, e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce are tremendously popular among SMEs, and their ability to accommodate any customer journey makes them worth considering if you’re only starting to venture into online business. However, as popular and versatile as these solutions are, many of the online payment platforms available for them are limited, particularly for certain geographic markets.
If you’re targeting Philippine-based consumers but also want to maintain an international reach, Maya Checkout is a solid choice, especially if your site is on Shopify or WooCommerce. Maya Plugins allow you to effortlessly integrate a third-party payment gateway Shopify and WooCommerce sites can use to offer a full range of online payments to customers.
3) Save Your Customers’ Payment Profiles
Storing customer information after their first purchase and using it to auto-fill purchase forms allows you to remove most of the friction from subsequent transactions, leading to repeat business and fewer cart abandonments. Using saved data in this way can be especially handy for appealing to mobile customers, as filling out forms on mobile devices can be tedious.
Storing sensitive payment data does come with some caveats. Your e-commerce store will need to comply with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard or PCI DSS guidelines and satisfy other regulatory requirements that are relevant to your different target markets. Using a PCI DSS-compliant online payment processing service like Maya can reduce the regulatory burdens on your online business, minimizing the risk to customer payment data while also providing a smoother payment experience.
4) Offer a Guest Checkout Option
While many customers are willing to let you store their data to facilitate future purchases, many others are unwilling to share payment information due to privacy and security concerns. Offering a guest checkout option that doesn’t require account creation or the storing of personal data can be a good way to accommodate these kinds of shoppers. Additionally, guest checkouts can create opportunities for spontaneous purchases, building the foundations for more engagement, later on.
5) Implement Wishlist and Abandoned Cart Reminders
For customers who consent to having their information stored, implementing wishlist and abandoned cart reminders can be a good way to encourage them to complete their purchases. These reminders can be particularly useful for driving sales during key times like salary release dates or just before certain holidays and observances. Moreover, you can use these reminders to recommend complementary products that could further drive customer loyalty and sales.
Customize Payment Experiences with Maya Business Solutions
As one of the country’s leading digital banking service providers, Maya Business offers the best online payment processing services for Philippine-based e-commerce operations. Create a Maya Business Manager account today to accept a range of modern payment methods and to cater to customers with different preferences.
Once you’ve created your Maya Business Manager account, you’ll get to unlock the perks of Maya 1-2-3 Grow, an exclusive business growth bundle designed for small businesses. The Maya 1-2-3 Grow bundle lets you enjoy a 1% MDR discount on all QR Ph transactions for 3 months after signing, letting you save PHP 14,600 in transaction fees for every PHP 1M in QR Ph sales. This gives you more cash to offer seamless payment journeys to your customers. As part of this bundle, you can also assign a Maya Business Deposit account as your settlement account. You’ll earn a 2.5% per annum interest on your deposit account, which translates to PHP 25,000 in interest per year on a PHP 1 million deposit. Finally, opting into the Maya 1-2-3 Grow bundle also qualifies you for a Maya Flexi Loan offer of up to PHP 2 million in just 3 months, giving your business the extra liquidity it needs to snatch up one-of-a-kind market opportunities. Complete your Maya Business Manager account application today to begin enjoying better online payments and exclusive offers like Maya 1-2-3 Grow.
