3 Online-Payment Processing Tips to Sell More Big-Ticket Items If you run an e-commerce shop of any kind, simplification can lead to more sales.
By Lucas Miller
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
If you want to further optimize your company's web sales, as well as reduce the risk of fraud in valuable transactions, it's crucial to have a trusted solution when it comes to moving big-ticket items. With that in mind, here are three tips to help ensure your company sells more high-priced goods online at a quicker, more reliable rate.
1. Partner with an all-in-one payments provider.
Partnering with a company that offers a wide variety of monetary benefits like an "all-in-one" payments service can help your business increase its revenues, make time-consuming processes more efficient and reduce costs as a result of increased efficiency. An all-in-one payments provider is a business that supplies merchants with everything from payment-processing services that allow your business to accept credit and debit transactions, to point-of-sale financing options that permit your customers to finance their more expensive purchases.
Why are these kinds of potential business partners so important, exactly? Offering finance options leads to an increase in overall sales, as it allows consumers to make purchases beyond the limitations of the cash they have available. By way of a real-world example, one company that has helped online businesses navigate this is Currency. E-commerce (or brick-and-mortate-retail, for that matter) merchants who partner with all-in-one payments companies like Currency have seen increases in their revenue due in large part to the financing services made readily available.
Furthermore, according to research conducted by Forrester, companies who offer finance options as part of their point-of-sale systems have seen a 5.7 percent increase in total sales over a three-year period. They've also seen an increase in efficiency, as an all-in-one payments platform typically offers services that can save them significant amounts of time and money.
Related: Learn How the Right Payment Processor Can Drive More Sales
Optimizing processes via digital methods often leads to a reduction in costs, as well. According to Investors.com, small- and medium-sized businesses are paying $16 to $22 to process an invoice manually. But in the same article, Goldman Sachs estimates that by switching to digital methods, businesses would see the cost of processing invoices decrease to $6 to $7 per invoice.
The one thing worth considering is that your company would have to part ways with every aspect of their current payment process, which can become a problematic task, so an all-in-one payments solution may not be one-size-fits-all.
2. Work with a finance provider.
When you work with a finance provider, the increased purchasing power that buyers receive makes them more likely to buy. Recent research conducted by PayPal found that 42 percent of online shoppers claim they wouldn't have made their most recent purchase if a financing plan wasn't offered. Beyond that, consumers who were able to finance their payments at check-out made purchases in amounts that were typically larger than those of individuals who did not finance their purchase. That same PayPal study suggests that businesses offering finance options at checkout saw transactions that were 214 percent larger than their average order sizes.
3. Accept online credit card payments.
When you accept credit card payments online, there is a good chance you'll boost your total revenue. According to a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, one factor that plays a key role in this is that when buyers have the option to pay with a credit card as opposed to cash, they are far more likely to focus on the benefits (and happiness) the product will bring them rather than its cost. As a business, it is crucial to be aware of these consumer-purchasing trends and to make sure your business operations align with modern-buyer habits.
However, do keep in mind that only accepting credit cards comes with a few significant drawbacks. For starters, the total amount of funds your customers can tap into via a line of credit is rarely as generous as the amount they can receive through financing. Secondly, you will still need to contract a processor who can process your customers's credit card payments. But all told, the additional purchasing power that credit cards grant your customers will help increase online sales.
Related: The 15 Most Popular Online Payment Solutions
Each of the above three tips is meant to help your business not only finalize more big-ticket purchases online, but to also give buyers a positive experience at checkout, the kind that will have them returning to your online store for years to come. In the end, though, it's ultimately up to you to decide which option is best given your business's current needs and goals.
