You have had card payments implemented in your online store for some time. You were told that the card entry and payment form must be hosted on the bank’s / provider’s page. You believe that this is how it is and that there is no better solution. Are you sure about that? What if we told you that you are currently losing customers because of it? Have you tried different solutions that give you a card entry form embedded in your website, without the need to redirect the customer to someone else’s page?
Attracting customers to your website is no easy task, especially today, when competition keeps growing. Don’t let the customers you worked so hard to attract leave your website just to pay for your goods / services. When you use solutions hosted outside your online store, you give your customers the chance to leave your website and never return. Are you sure you want that? We believe not.
1. Customer Reaction
Wondering how this “redirection” of customers affects your sales? Look at it from the following perspective. A customer comes to your online store, adds a product to their cart, chooses card payment and ….. then the system redirects them to an external website with a different design, logo and URL. How many customers do you think will have second thoughts at that moment?
Some customers will be confused. Others will think they are paying someone else, not you. A good number of customers will get scared and won’t even try to enter their card details… Of course, there are also those who overcome these feelings of fear and successfully complete the payment process. But what about the rest, who will be discouraged, perhaps even frustrated, by such a process? In any case, this approach reduces trust and often results in abandoned purchases.
Think about the number of steps your customers have to go through to pay for your product. A solution that does not require redirection lets you reduce the number of such steps and simplify the process. What if the payment took place on your (“single”) page, instead of the customer being redirected somewhere else and then redirected back to your store again?
Payment Process with Redirection
The customer clicks the “payment” button —> (waits to be redirected to another website to pay) —> starts the payment process —> enters data into the form (sometimes several clicks are needed to reach the form) —> clicks the confirmation button —> sometimes has to go through additional steps to complete the payment —> is redirected back to the merchant’s page.
The process above applies to the scenario of a successful payment transaction. With declined transactions, all of this becomes even more complicated. Can this be frustrating for the customer? We believe you agree.
Checkout is the final step of the purchasing process. Use this step to promote your organization’s identity, not the bank’s or the provider’s.
2. Design the Payment Process
Keep in mind that a poorly designed payment process has a negative impact on the number of successful sales, even when you offer top-quality products and services. When a customer lands on a page where they need to enter their card details, and that page looks completely different from the rest of your website, this further reduces the number of those who will complete the purchase. Some will give up out of confusion (mentioned earlier), and others simply out of fear that they are on the wrong page.
Some solutions and providers allow you to customize a certain number of elements on the payment page (it is usually possible to change the color or content of the “header”). However, when you have spent serious money and energy taking care of every smallest detail of your online store, moving to someone else’s page that has “the same header color” is certainly not enough to make your customers feel comfortable.
Wouldn’t it be better if you could fully customize the look of the entry form, right within your own page?
Payment gateway solutions that include a customizable form displayed on your website give you complete freedom in designing the payment process. You own your code and design, so you decide what your payment form will look like, as well as what it will contain.
3. Control Over the Payment Process?
When researching card payment solutions for your website, consider factors such as system flexibility and the speed of the integration process. A Payment Gateway with a “hosted payment page” solution that involves redirection does not allow you to fully customize the look of the payment form, nor does it give you control over the payment process.
You will never be 100% sure that the customer has completed the payment process. Redirection does not give you the option to assist the customer during the payment process or to show them “special offers” at the moment of payment. All of this affects conversion and the number of customers. When you redirect a customer to someone else’s website, you don’t know what is happening there, and control over your customer lies with your bank or provider instead of you.
Want to “recognize” the card brand that has been entered and used for payment, in order to give the customer a discount after they click the “pay” button? Want to give a customer who has entered their details and selected “pay” the option of an “impulse purchase”, adding a related product and automatically increasing the cart value without complicating the process? All of this is impossible when the payment page is outside your store.
Redirect-based solutions often lack the option of custom error messages. We believe this is a very important issue and that only you know how to explain the reasons for a declined transaction to certain categories of your customers, or how to guide them so that their next attempt is successful.
Fortunately, these and many other similar features are very simple when the payment form is on your website.
4. Support
Solutions that allow the payment form to be displayed on your website make communication with your customers easier. You can monitor payments in real time and know immediately if a customer is having problems (e.g. filling in the card details form). Wouldn’t you agree that it would be very useful to have “live chat” on the page where the customer enters their card details?
You surely know that quality customer support can have a major impact on your business. This is especially true for payments, where a quick response is extremely important. We are sure you wouldn’t want to send a customer who arrives at your checkout with a full cart to a nearby bank, would you? No, you want to help them yourself, so they can pay for the products in their cart as quickly and easily as possible.
5. Security Standards
The advantages of solutions that allow the payment form to be “embedded” on your website are clear. But what about the security of this approach? Is this approach compliant with PCI standards?
Redirect-based Payment Gateway solutions were invented almost two decades ago, at the very beginning of e-commerce. In the meantime, technologies have developed dramatically, allowing us to improve security while making it easier for customers to pay. One such technology is “tokenization”. With tokenization, we drastically reduce the need to exchange sensitive data between the merchant’s website and the payment gateway.
In addition, with a “hosted field” solution, sensitive data (card number and CVV) is entered into small iframes located within what appears to be a field. The merchant still has no access to sensitive card data. This way, we retain full control over the look of the page while applying the highest PCI security standards. The world’s largest providers have already implemented “hosted field” solutions, and we are especially proud that our SecurePay integration system is one of the first certified PCI SAQ-A compliant solutions in the world.
To sum up: the difference between “hosted payment page” solutions that involve redirection and advanced solutions that allow card details to be entered without leaving your website is enormous. Don’t let yourself lose customers, and think twice when choosing a Payment Gateway solution for your online store.