4 Reasons Mobile Payments Aren’t Working for You

In an article published November 25 of this year, James Bickers mentions the following statistics, based on a speech given by Jumio Marketing Director Ingrid Pinheiro:

• Mobile users worldwide have reached 1.75 billion
• 56 percent of U.S. adults own a smartphone
• Mobile now accounts for more than 50 percent of retail traffic
• One-fourth of shoppers buy through mobile and mobile alone
• 41 percent of smartphone owners have done part of, if not most of, their shopping through their mobile phone

Gartner predicts that by 2017, the mobile money market will reach $721 billion. That much money at stake leaves players in the field like PayPal, ISIS and Google—along with new-kids-on-the-block startups ZooZ, Cordum, Clutch, and CLoudZync—in a mad scramble to get a share of the market.

All the statistics simply illustrate a point: that different and evolving mobile payment processing technologies like Shopify are here to stay. But what happens if you can’t seem to make mobile payments work for your business?

Here are a few things you might be doing wrong. Check the list and see if you’re guilty of any of these. If you find out you are, it’s probably safe to say it’s time you tried something new:

1. Your checkout process is a pain to deal with.

How many keystrokes does your checkout process require? If it requires 40 keystrokes, then that translates to 40 chances for error. The average mobile checkout seems to require around 75 keystrokes, as noted by Pinheiro. If there’s a chance, even a small one, that you could reduce your keystrokes to the smallest possible number, that would be great for your customers.

After all, mobile is vastly different from desktop checkout. The screen is smaller and it might be harder for people to type in the necessary information, given the lack of a keyboard that provides ample space for hand movement. Some give up halfway through, frustrated and annoyed with the process. If you don’t want your customers doing the same, better find a way—and fast—to reduce your keystrokes from 100 to 50 or even less.

2. Your checkout speed isn’t speedy at all.

If your customers are entering a ton of information, even if they do manage to type the information correctly on the first try, that’s still 100 or 75 keystrokes that they have to get through. That’s almost as much as 2-3 minutes. Given how easy it is to get instant access elsewhere, it’s possible that the delay might frustrate a few of your customers, right to the point that they throw in the towel and walk away. Chances are, they’ll probably turn to another site, one that, this time, offers faster checkout speeds.

3. You force your users to sign up for an account.

This is another chief barrier to landing those sales. More and more shoppers are becoming less tolerant of the wait and view site registration as a bother. Some users simply leave the site and look elsewhere. Whether it’s a case of patchy network connections or problems typing using a phone’s tiny keyboard, some users find sign-up registrations inconvenient.

That’s why sites that no longer require users to go through a lengthy sign-up process win the game. Of course, security could be an issue in the wake of shoppers who have no user accounts. This is why you have to find ways to make your checkout process both secure and convenient, for you and your users.

4. Your site isn’t mobile-friendly.

Given that mobile has grown to become a hub of connectivity, a poor checkout flow compromises the consumer mobile experience in a major way. Eighty percent of mobile shoppers even remark that they’ll wait a full year before they visit a site again, if they encounter a negative experience the first time they went there to shop. That’s up from nearly half of the consumers who said they won’t return to a site that doesn’t load on their mobile devices, according to The Social Media Hat estimate last year.

A third of these users said they’ll just leave and never come back. The online competition, after all, remains fierce. With so many sites competing online, users are spoiled for choice and have no patience to deal with sites that take too long to load on their screens.

To improve your mobile checkout flow, try to reduce the loading time for the page and images. Say goodbye to Flash since this doesn’t usually show up on mobile screens. Make sure the site fits the screen, and that everything, including the navigational buttons, works perfectly.

Also remember to design a process with the least number of steps possible. Lastly, auto-complete features might make life easier for you and your customers so make sure to integrate those into the checkout process.

These are just a few of the reasons why mobile isn’t turning out to be your best friend at the moment. If you take steps to fix your mobile experience right away though, you might just find mobile ideal for your business after all.