As a business owner and venue operator, there are few things more frustrating than spending a considerable amount of time and money on getting a prospective guest to visit your website, only for them to leave without completing their booking.
Yes – we’re talking about cart abandonment. And it happens for several reasons – from something as simple as a guest changing their mind to the experience they’ve had with your online checkout and payment processor.
Over the last couple of years, how your guests make purchases has changed substantively. One contributing factor is the global pandemic, which brought the world to a halt and caused everyone to re-evaluate what’s important to them.
Another is that your guests are interacting with other businesses who are disruptive in how they deliver their products and services – and are redefining experiences in the process. Take Uber, for example. When you need to get from A to B, you no longer need to hail a cab or pull out your wallet.
Because your guests interact with businesses like this daily, their expectations are rising, and it’s your job to meet them.
That means you’ll have to make the value proposition of your offering crystal clear and make it super easy for your guests to spend money with you.
In this article, we’ll review tried-and-true methods that will help you put an end to cart abandonment, increase your online conversion rates and watch your business grow.
1. Let them pay how – and where – they want
When a guest gets to the point of online checkout, fills in their details, and discovers they cannot use their preferred payment methods, they’re likely to get frustrated.
What happens to frustrated prospective guests? You guessed right! They abandon their carts en masse.
Offering multiple payment options is a simple, surefire way to ensure that your guests have a great online checkout experience and are more likely to complete their booking.
But it’s not just how guests pay that matters. Where they pay counts too. According to Statista, the current number of smartphone users worldwide is 6.5 billion.
This number is expected to rise to over 7 billion by 2024. Probably safe to say a decent proportion of your guests are not booking while sitting at home on a desktop computer.
Making sure that your online checkout is optimized for multiple device types – including mobile – is another simple, and often overlooked way to increase conversions.
2. Embrace digital wallets
Your guests are carrying a lot – literally. Their wallets are jam packed with loyalty cards, cash, identification and credit cards alike.
If they have young kids, they’ve probably also got a healthy supply of snacks in tow. So imagine them at the point of checkout, having to rummage through their wallet to find the card they want to use to make a purchase.
Their kids are throwing a tantrum because they just can’t wait to get inside your venue and have some fun.
There’s got to be a better way, right? Today, credit cards, debit cards, loyalty cards, and even vouchers and tickets can all now be accessed in a digital wallet.
Digital wallets are mostly a mobile app, but can also be accessed via desktop. The convenience of digital wallets is clear to consumers. Over 50% of guests are now saying they want the option of paying with a digital wallet when they proceed to make a transaction.
Digital wallets, when used in person, involve the guest’s mobile phone transacting with the payment terminal using NFC (Near-field Communication).
This is a technology which allows wireless intercommunication between mobile devices and electronic devices (i.e. payment terminals). The guest will then be prompted to finalize this transaction with their preferred form of verification: facial recognition, fingerprint or a password.
Offering this payment method can provide your venue with a unique opportunity to leverage the growing popularity of digital wallets.
Benefits of digital wallets:
- Higher, and stable, conversion rates. Because this is such a convenient and fuss-free method of payment, guests are much more likely to complete the transactions they start.
- Ability to reach more guests. Many digital wallets can be used in different currencies, in effect widening your potential guest reach.
- Low fraud risk and increased security protections. Tokenization ensures that guest information is not shared overtly with the seller. This feature, together with facial and fingerprint recognition ensure a very secure, and low-risk transaction for the guest.
3. Offer Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) options
It’s safe to say that in recent times, BNPL services have taken off! In the US, just this past year alone, BNPL use grew over 200%!
Data shows that whilst most popular amongst Millennials and Gen Z, the average age range of people who have most recently tried BNPL is 35-44.
With further steady growth predicted for BNPL in the near future, there are many ways this payment method can help you increase guest satisfaction and conversion rates.
BNPL generally falls under one of two categories:
- The guest makes a purchase, pays nothing upon purchase and owes the full amount to the merchant within 14-30 days. There is no interest applied in this scenario; or
- The guest pays the amount owing for the purchase back in installments, over an agreed period of time. Depending on the merchant, this method will usually incur interest.
The increased popularity of BNPL is a direct indicator of how times are changing. We’re all coping with the effects of inflation, so when that inevitable, unexpected expense catches us by surprise, we want to be able to handle it. And we want choice in how we do so.
So now more than ever, having a BNPL option for guests is imperative. Guests will feel more comfortable purchasing and purchasing more.
Optimize payments & increase revenue
By providing a wide range of payment options, you can increase checkout conversion rates and, in effect, your revenue.
As a fully integrated, unified commerce platform, ROLLER Payments can help your venue do just this.
In-store and online, our platform accepts: cards, pay later services (i.e., Afterpay, Zippay, etc.), online banking providers (i.e., iDEAL, Sofort, etc.), and digital wallet methods (i.e., ApplePay, GooglePay, etc.).
Guests can pay in any way they want, using a seamless, uninterrupted, and user-friendly platform designed to delight and bring back repeat business. This functionality has been proven to reduce cart abandonment and increase conversion rates purely due to its ease of use.
“We now consider payments a growth channel for us, thanks to ROLLER.
With ROLLER Payments, we’ve managed all our payments and refunds directly from within ROLLER and reduced our chargebacks to zero. It’s not only a robust and reliable payments platform, but it also gives us the tools we need to generate more value for our business.”
Max Irvine
Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary
Adapt to deliver exceptional guest experiences
Need it now, get it now, and pay as you’d like. It’s the new norm. Updating and broadening your payment setup can optimize your conversion rates and decrease cart abandonment.
It only takes a few purposive changes to take your guests from thinking, “I wanted to purchase, but I don’t feel comfortable,” to thinking, “well, that was easy - let me get some more!”
