More Ways to Pay
How to Increase Conversation rates 2-3X
PayPal was originally established by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek in December 1998 as Confinity, a company that developed security software for hand-held devices. Having had no success with that business model, however, they switched the company’s focus to a digital wallet. The first version of the PayPal electronic payments system was launched in 1999.
In March 2000, Confinity merged with x.com, an online financial services company founded in March 1999 by Elon Musk, Harris Fricker, Christopher Payne, and Ed Ho.
In October of that year, Musk decided that X.com would terminate its other internet banking operations and focus on PayPal. That same month, Elon Musk was replaced by Peter Thiel as CEO of X.com, which was renamed PayPal in 2001 and went public in 2002. (1)
Did you know that nearly 88% of online shoppers use PayPal?(2)
How about that 50% of young shoppers prefer financing options for e-commerce purchases?(3)
One of the huge benefits of Shopify is the wide availability of payment options. With Shopify you can integrate 95% of the available payment gateways available online. And what’s the benefit of having multiple gateways? One thing. Ease of checkout.
Here are the multiple benefits of utilizing more than 3 payment gateways on your Shopify site:
Customer’s Preferred System
When you are selling products online you are opening up your store to a broad range of customers. These customers could be iPhone users, or they could be Android users. They could bank with Bank of America or make most of their purchases through PayPal. Maybe they use Venmo for everything in their life.
Bottom line, we don’t know what our potential customers’ financial situation is, so we have to be ready for all of them. The easiest way to get users from checkout to actually converting is to make it as easy as possible.
When a user is logged into their preferred payment system, Shopify will show their preferred “Buy” button automatically.
In my own experience with clients, implementing multiple payment gateways on Shopify has improved conversion rates significantly. Increasing 1.8%on average across multiple sites, as in from 3% conversion rate to 4.8% or 160%. Furthermore, with one client’s Shopify site, PayPal was a whopping 56% of all sales! (This particular brand did not even consider utilizing PayPal as a payment option originally).
AfterPay, Affirm, Klarna
What is the average order value on your website? If it is around $125 then you should consider AfterPay. (If it is above or below $125 there are still options for you.)
Over 50% of “young” shoppers are looking for financing options for the majority of their purchases. After purchasing with financing options, 30% of these young customers claimed they wouldn’t have purchased without financing options.3
These modern financial technology companies (Affirm, AfterPay, Klarna) allow your brand to reach a much broader audience by reducing the cost to manageable monthly payments. Such micro-payments may seem like something that isn’t relevant to your store - but be aware - a lot of these online shoppers are starting their point of search on the financing site itself, not yours.
One Click Purchase
Lastly, a huge benefit to many of these payment gateways is one click buying. For example, let’s consider Apple Pay. When a user with an apple device visits your Shopify site, you can have an “add to cart” button and a “Buy with Apple Pay” button. When you click the “Buy with Apple Pay” button, there is no need to type in your shipping address, billing address, or credit card number. It’s all completed automatically.
These three additions to your Shopify site (AfterPay, Affirm, Klarna) will greatly increase conversion rates, increase average order value and reduce cart abandonment. Turning users into customers is the name of the game and integrating multiple payment gateways will help get you there.
Now go and grow.
J
Recommended Apps:
Since we are talking payments, no better way to increase the number you receive than with a Subscribe & Save program. Recharge is a great software for this with countless integration possibilities.
This little add-on is perfect for installing trust into your potential customers. They have a free plan for smaller brands.
3) BigCommerce
4) Fool.com