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Create a poor ecommerce experience at your peril this festive season

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday expected shortly, as well as the festive shopping season to follow, Visa has released its latest report on the ecommerce space.

Titled, Accelerating the shift to eCommerce, this Visa Consulting & Analytics (VCA) report (PDF), highlights the importance that a payment experience will play for retailers during the months, especially if they plan to grow following a tough year brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the key findings on this front, is that 81 percent of customers surveyed across the globe, indicated that they would pay for if it meant a better online retail experience.

“Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) that leverage ecommerce solutions; which provide excellent online shopping experience for consumers; have the opportunity to benefit from high spend periods like Black Friday and the coming festive season compared to businesses who have not mastered the importance of holistic back-end design of the customer journey,” adds Aldo Laubscher, country manager at Visa South Africa.

Added to this need to leverage ecommerce is the simple fact that most consumers are simply heading online instead of risking going in-store.

To that end Visa’s  COVID-19 Impact Tracker, released earlier this year,  shows that up to 68 percent of consumers are going to grocery stores less often.

With these kinds of retailers key to helping stabilise a struggling economy, it falls on businesses to have an effective and efficient ecommerce platform in place, with safe and quick payments a central part of that.

“The impact of a bad payment experience can be devastating. When a shopper abandons an online shopping cart due to checkout friction, the data shows that 67% end up leaving for a competitor or never complete the purchase anywhere, and 59% say they are less likely to shop with that same retailer again,” Laubscher points out.

It looks like many retailers are cottoning on to this fact though, as the report indicates 60 percent of small businesses are preparing more actively for ecommerce, focusing primarily on infrastructure and digitising their operations.

“The VCA report highlights how the payment experience is a critical touchpoint – a part of the customer journey, which requires special attention. Each time a potential customer reaches the checkout page, they have a moment to reflect on whether the effort needed to make the payment is equal to the value they get from their purchase,” says the country manager.

To win prospective and repeat customers, SMBs need to have a digital presence during the discovery and evaluation stages of the customer shopping journey”, concludes Laubscher.

[Image – Photo by David Clarke on Unsplash]

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