Written by Jim Babb

Hidden Marketing is a series we’ve created where we learn from e-commerce market leaders by becoming their consumer. We did this by going through the checkout process on the websites of the 50 largest DTC brands. We then recorded and analyzed their strategies.

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In the previous two “Hidden Marketing” pieces we looked at free shipping and upselling at checkout. In this edition we’ll be looking at payment processors. Which should you be using?

Why Your Payment Providers Matter

Checkout is the critical moment when your customer makes a commitment to purchasing your product, or if you’re lucky, products. And if you’re cash only, and your customer doesn’t have cash, you may be out of luck. It’s important to have speed and flexibility, if you want to compete, especially in ecommerce.

A process that used to take 30 minutes and a drive to the store can now be done in under three, from your bed. It’s a low barrier to entry, but it’s also a low barrier to exit. A distracted child yelling “Mom!”,  a spam phone call, or even a fly on the wall can cause shoppers to leave a cart abandoned.

Over 70% of carts are abandoned (statistics vary) and 30% of those are abandoned because of a need to “re-enter credit card information.”

Find more statistics at  Statista

Find more statistics at  Statista

6% of carts are abandoned simply because payment is too much work.

Improving your payment process is a small change that can have a big impact on your conversion rate and therefore your entire ecommerce business.  Think about how appealing Amazon’s “one click” payment option to customers.  Offering additional express checkout methods can recover a substantial amount of revenue.

As online shopping becomes increasingly more mobile, express payment options are even more relevant. And these days there are a lot of options,  PayPalAmazon PayShop Pay and Apple Pay are all popular picks.  Shopify even makes it easy to accept alternative methods of payment like cryptocurrency.

After examining the checkout for 50 top DTC brands, here’s what we found.

**So, what does this mean for your ecommerce site?