The entrepreneurial spirit may help business owners overcome adversity, but sometimes, it also lays the seeds for future emergencies. This is quite evident in the payment systems used by many online sellers in the Philippines. If you didn’t run a business yourself, it may be surprising just how many of today’s digital storefronts still depend on a mix of legacy systems and fragile ad hoc solutions to manage sums in the millions of pesos.
These solutions are not necessarily a hindrance for a business with very limited goals. After all, if you only need to sell one item every couple of months and have no desire to grow the business, there isn’t much sense in making your payment process significantly more efficient. However, if you’re in a competitive niche, depend on repeat business, or process multiple transactions in a day, a modern e-commerce payment system is a necessity.
If you’ve been in business a while but haven’t updated your e-commerce payment processes, there may still be room for improvement. Let’s look at how you can keep optimizing your payments in the face of emerging challenges:
Choose the Right Payment Gateway
Unlike traditional custom-built solutions, modern payment gateways integrate effortlessly with online stores built on popular web platforms with no need for potentially buggy customization. This improved integration ensures near-limitless scalability and other benefits that your business will need in order to dominate its niche.
Integrating the best payment gateway Philippines-based entrepreneurs have access can also go a long way toward saving your business time and building its credibility. A reliable payment gateway like Maya Checkout is going to be recognized by many of your customers, and the trust they have in the brand may play a role in convincing them to buy at your online store.
Going deeper, good payment gateways also support various local payment methods, including mobile wallets like Maya, credit cards, and QR Ph codes. The ability to handle a variety of payment methods is a must if you’re appealing to Filipino customers, given the diversity of payments used in the Philippine e-commerce sector.
Regularly Update Your System
Regardless of what system you choose, you must keep it up-to-date with security and usability patches. Traditionally, this once required dedicated development teams to create bespoke fixes for each custom system. These days, however, you’re probably best off using an off-the-shelf payment system by a trusted provider, as they will continually release patches to keep their platforms secure and free of dangerous bugs.
If you’re a user of a popular payment gateway, you can benefit immensely from the scale that your provider brings. They should have the resources to quickly find and fix vulnerabilities, leading to more frequent updates. Be sure to enable updates on your payment system to maintain peak performance, security, and compatibility with new features.
Keep an Eye on Your Payment Analytics
Use reporting tools on your website, socials, and payment gateway to monitor key metrics like transaction success rates and abandoned cart rates, especially after major system updates. The insights you glean from these tools may point you to bottlenecks and potential areas for improvement, particularly in your e-commerce site visitor flows, preferred payment types, and payment processing.
Adopt a Mobile-First Approach
In the Philippines, online purchases in the vast majority of niches are facilitated online. B2B transactions may still primarily occur over desktop computers, but even this is becoming less true with time.
In any case, with most Filipinos shopping via smartphone, your site’s payment system must not just be mobile-friendly, but designed from the outset to prioritize the mobile experience. Periodically test your checkout process on multiple types of Android and iOS devices to ensure that more of your visitors can navigate your site and payment process without any issues.
Keep Finding Ways to Simplify the Checkout Process
The ease with which visitors can go through your payments can influence your conversion rates. Knowing that, you may want to avoid requiring every visitor to create an account or fill out lengthy forms just to buy.
Take your visitors’ perspective and consider what would make the experience quicker and easier. At the most basic, you must provide a simple guest checkout option so that any visitor can quickly check out what they need. If you need customers to create an account first for marketing or data gathering purposes, ensure the account creation fields can be auto-filled and that the new customer is rewarded for their efforts with a coupon or discount.
Enable Instant Payment Notifications (IPNs)
Make sure whatever system you adopt can send IPNs to notify you and your customers of successful transactions in real time. This helps you track payments efficiently and, more importantly, it helps build the trust and goodwill needed to create repeat customers.
Test Your E-Commerce Systems Regularly
Simulate transactions to check for issues like delays, confusing error messages, or unhelpful web design elements. Require regular testing as well as mandatory testing after major system changes so that any payment disruptions are fixed before they cause serious issues.
Set Your E-Commerce Payments Up for Success
A consistently optimized e-commerce payment system is the backbone of all successful online businesses. Thankfully, you can easily integrate a reliable gateway that’s trusted by other Philippine businesses to provide your customers with secure, seamless, and localized payment options. Explore the most popular gateways and payment solutions in your niche to streamline your payments and give your customers the online shopping experience they deserve.
