“Reaching a 100 percent conversion rate is impossible — actual fraud should be blocked and some shoppers will always have second thoughts — but it is possible to create a seamless process that guides shoppers through the purchase, ensuring merchants attain a greater proportion of their hard-fought revenue.”
Shopping cart abandonment is a very real problem plaguing the bottom line of online merchants. ACI Worldwide has released a paper on some of the things that merchants could do to unlock the revenue lost to a lack of eCommerce conversion rates, a cost that we have estimated to cost merchants $168 billion a year, annually.
ACI acknowledges that when it comes to maximizing an online merchant’s potential, the end game is about optimizing the entire chain that includes product development, marketing and sales. The final “link in the chain” is, of course, the payments process that ties it all together.
“The checkout conversion rate is an incredibly important statistic because every abandoned shopping cart represents lost revenue,” ACI writes in its report. “And for large merchants dealing with thousands of shoppers every hour, even seemingly minuscule changes in a conversion rate can noticeably affect revenue, positively or negatively.
“Thus, every online merchant should work to raise conversion rates as high as possible.”
Optimizing the payments flow, ACI suggests, is one way to crack this problem.
There are, of course, plenty of what ACI calls “enemies of high conversion rates,” which can be counteracted by executing a strategic payment process plan that takes into account the obstacles that a shopper may face. ACI recommends first identifying those challenges and then learning how they play a role in the overall checkout conversion equation.
The challenges that merchants face in this instance can be broken down into one of three categories: distrust, inconvenience or process problems.
According to ACI, achieving higher conversion rates boils down to three things: developing a strategy to fit local conditions and realities, tools to implement that strategy, and the ability to monitor the conversion rate and pivot when necessary.
“The tools at a merchant’s disposal are vast: hundreds of alternative payment methods, the ability to automatically adapt payment options and processes to cater to shoppers’ locations, sophisticated fraud prevention tools, and many more. And with in-depth analytics, bolstered by payment experts’ scrutiny, these tools can be tweaked to constantly improve conversion rates,” ACI concludes in its paper.
Of course, achieving that 100 percent conversion rate is nearly impossible, but what is possible is implementing the right tools and strategy to help continually boost that rate and provide shoppers with the frictionless experience they demand.
“Every move closer to 100 percent, even incrementally, represents additional revenue in a merchant’s pocket. Thus, seeking to achieve the elusive 100 percent conversion rate is a worthwhile goal. With assistance from the right partners, merchants will maintain high conversion rates, benefiting their business by boosting their bottom line,” ACI writes.
—
Complete the below form to access ACI’s full paper, Driving Up Conversion Rates in eCommerce: Payment Tools for Uncovering Hidden Revenue:
Error: Contact form not found.
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
Learn More