Payment processing issues lead to online shopping abandonment

Thursday, September 13, 2018 - 09:36 by Paul Tissington

Research carried out by PPRO Group has found that two thirds of customers (67pc) have abandoned their attempts to enjoy safe shopping online, because of issues with the transaction payment.

The figure has only decreased by 1pc since 2014, demonstrating that - despite huge leaps forward in digital and e-commerce technologies - e-commerce brands are missing out on potential sales by failing to meet customer needs for preferred methods of payment.

Some significant improvements have been noted in checkout processes for online shopping. Previously, overly complex processes led to over 50% of online customers abandoning their cart, and now - four years on - this figure has dropped to 21pc. However, a quarter of customers are still failing to complete their online transaction because their retailer doesn't offer the payment method of choice.

Online buyers want to be able to enjoy their preferred payment method when they shop through a website. In fact, this expectation alone has grown by 10pc from 2014, to 90pc of online shoppers. However, 15pc of these shoppers say that they still can't access this benefit through e-commerce websites, and 77pc said they wouldn't buy online if the website only accepted unfamiliar payment methods.

PPRO spokesperson, Jack Ehlers, explained that payment technologies were a vital part of the customer journey, and a single bad transaction experience with a new retail brand was enough to see a potentially valuable customer head off to a competitor.

He added that, for e-commerce retailers to drive forward sales and growth, they must understand payment culture as a core means of gaining customer engagement and confidence. 

This involves optimising the website so that the journey to the payment point is clean, easy and free from glitches - and so that once the customer reaches their checkout they are able to use the payment process that they recognise and prefer. It's an easy win for online retailers - and a potentially lucrative one.