If you own your own business and have an online shop, then you already know how important it is to make the payment process as easy as possible for your customers. Customer service is important as well, but your responsibility to the customer doesn’t stop there.
While they are willing to buy their medical supplies online, they won’t be for long if your payment process isn’t easy and fast to get through.
You’ve already checked into payer contracting, so as to make things easier on your business, now it’s time to do something to make the online payments easier for the customers that buy your merchandise.
Provide a Number of Different Payment Methods
While it might seem like a no-brainer, many websites only offer one way to pay. Offering only one payment option is a quick way to lose a customer. While it’s not smart to offer every payment method out there, you should at least have a variety, such as all major credit cards and Paypal, which has become extremely popular over the years. The best way to judge what payment methods you need to offer is by tracking what your customers prefer to pay with.
Allow Payments as a Guest
There is nothing more aggravating than only needing one thing from a site or just wanting to try out the site, but being unable to order without creating an account. Besides, forcing people to sign up for an account as a first-time user is not only intrusive but rude as well. If you want to hold onto customers and not have them click off of your site onto another, offer the option to create an account, but also offer an option to check out as a guest as well.
Make Checkout Seamless
The last thing anyone wants is to have to sit and watch a page load, and load, and load. Make your checkout or payment page easy to get to, easy to navigate, and fast to get the job done.
Make Errors Easy to Fix
It’s beyond frustrating to complete your form for payment, click submit and nothing happens. Mistakes happen. Human error has people typing in wrong zip codes, wrong social security numbers, and account numbers, and they shouldn’t have to hunt down the mistake they made to correct it. Many sites have error messages at the top of the screen. Many customers don’t realize they need to scroll up to see that message. Make it easy for your customers to see when they make a mistake, and they’ll thank you for it.
Only Ask for Essential Information
Whether someone is buying something from your page or making a payment on something they’ve already purchased, you don’t need their life story for them to do it, and many customers feel it’s intrusive to do so. Refrain from asking for too much information if you don’t want to lose business. Instead, just ask for the essentials and you’ll be fine.
Make Your Calls to Action Clear
No one should put a product into their online shopping cart, then have to hunt around for the checkout now button. Make sure that your calls to action are clear and concise. Stick with keep shopping and checkout here in bold colors, so people can see them. If someone has to hunt around for the checkout button, they may just check out of your site and buy their product somewhere else.
These are just a few of the ways that you can provide better payment methods, payment options, and a better payment experience for your customers. They’ll thank you when you do.
The Editorial Team at Healthcare Business Today is made up of skilled healthcare writers and experts, led by our managing editor, Daniel Casciato, who has over 25 years of experience in healthcare writing. Since 1998, we have produced compelling and informative content for numerous publications, establishing ourselves as a trusted resource for health and wellness information. We offer readers access to fresh health, medicine, science, and technology developments and the latest in patient news, emphasizing how these developments affect our lives.
