Give Customers An Uncomplicated Path To Payment

February 10, 2010

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’re always searching for new ways of improving and streamlining this process, refining it to make it as natural as possible, so that we reduce people’s usual resistance to spending money, and get them as new customers, maybe even for life. All of the details which we learn during this process are specifically designed to bypass as many uncertainties as possible and to make it a “obvious choice” for the prospect or soon-to-be customer. 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 point can be a fairly traumatic experience for many individuals, and it’s certainly the most critical spot in the whole process – and when at this position, more people will bailout here than anywhere else. Therefore, it’s essential that you make sure that every element of security is addressed here, but nevertheless, you still have to find ways of removing as many obstacles as you can, while streamlining this process at every point 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 online business 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!

Adam Toren, Co-Founder of Young Entrepreneur, specializes in developing the profitability of struggling businesses with a specialised and ‘bottom line’ approach. Adam, along with his brother, have created, purchased and sold a variety of companies over the years. At the moment, they own and manage a highly successful publishing company and several dedicated online enterprises.

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