A Full Guide to Making Your Payment Processes Better
So you’ve set up your shiny new e-commerce store, made an excellent-looking website, and set things up just how you’ve always imagined it. Well done, that’s already a lot further than most will advise, but there is still one thing that could cause a severe bottleneck unless fully addressed: how you accept and deal with payments. Throughout this post, we will explore a few things that can reduce the chances of your orders from piling up too much and enable you to collect revenue more effectively.
Consider Your Current Payment Methods
Unless you’ve already broached the payment processor task and found one you believe to work best for your needs, you will need to spend some time finding one that’s right for you and the products you sell. The interesting part about that sentence is the latter half about the things you sell because not all products are looked upon equally in the eyes of many payment processors. Many of the larger options will have heavy-handed rules surrounding the sale of specific things like firearms and adult-related goods. If you happen to be selling these kinds of items and are constantly falling afoul of their often draconian regulations surrounding what they deem to be acceptable, you will need to cast your net further. For instance, this high risk payment gateway notes that even some industries, like vaping and travel, could keep you from readily accepting payments from customers even though they are perfectly legal. By opting for a payment processor that is less fussy about who they allow to use their service but still takes security and ease of use seriously, you will make your life far easier and ensure that you remain in business regardless of how prudish other payment processing companies may be.
Implement Mobile Payment Solutions
While it was acceptable to only include the standard forms of payment back in the day, such as Visa, Mastercard, and perhaps even AMEX, we now live in a modern world where lots of people use their smartphones for almost every aspect of their lives, including making payments. Therefore, by simply adding the ability for your customers to use their Android or Apple Pay wallets to make payments, you can dramatically increase the ease with which they are able to pay, and as is usually the case in life, the easier you make things of people, the more likely they are to do it, and in this instance, it could result in more revenue for relatively little work.
Ensure Transparent Payment Policies
Most payment processors will require a well-thought-out terms and conditions policy alongside robust return policies in order to accept you as a client. However, this isn’t the only reason to invest time in creating these pages, and doing so can boost trust in your customer base and make them feel far more comfortable using your business over others. If you really want to ensure all of your I’s are dotted and your T’s are crossed, you might consider hiring a lawyer who specializes in this kind of thing.
Collecting payment for a product or service is vital if you want to remain in business…that much should already be clear! But finding a processor and setting things up can be more complicated than most people think. By following these tips, you should be best positioned to get your online business up to speed and ensure the money keeps coming in.