It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that the payment process – as the make-or-break moment of any customer journey – must be as smooth as possible. So why are so many e-Commerce sites still struggling, weighed down by shoddy design, confusing error codes, and cobbled-together tech? Well, because it turns out that first creating and then maintaining an innovative, exciting, and (most of all) functional online storefront isn’t easy. So what’s the best way to go about it?

Technology, technology, technology

Is it any surprise that online payments rely on technology? The important question is how to sort through the endless features and functions that promise to boost conversion or to ensure security and identify the ones that will work for you. Ideally, you’re looking for something customisable. Depending on a multitude of factors – your markets of operation, the payment preferences of your target audience, etc. – a payment gateway that can be finetuned to match will perform better than a one-size-fits-all solution.

Integration is integral

It’s not just the tech that makes the difference between a clunky old website and a seamless web experience. How you integrate that tech is crucial to customer experience. You might have the greatest checkout process in the world, but if consumers are bounced between redirects to get to it, they’re liable to get confused and annoyed pretty quickly. To ensure a streamlined experienced, perhaps integrating a flexible API is the way to go?

Everyone makes mistakes

There’s also error-handling to think about. Sure, the ideal payment process is error-free, and most customers won’t encounter the kinds of technological blips that businesses worry about. But the ones that do will thank you for not throwing up error codes that are harder to parse than a James Joyce novel. And hey, there’s always going to be odd person putting their house number in the email address box. That’s why you need an error-handling process that makes sense to your customers, not just the people handling the error reports.

There are plenty more aspects of online payments to address when attempting to reduce friction in the checkout process, but I’ll leave that for another day. In the meantime, the key takeaway is this: a solid, functional foundation comprised of innovative technologies and supported by a flexible, endlessly customisable interface is critical to creating a consistently smooth customer experience.