Ever spent time browsing for items online, only to find yourself shutting the session down before hitting the pay button? In today’s times, it’s an almost universal human experience. Consequently, abandoned carts have become a ubiquitous feature of the digital shopping landscape.

‘Left behind’ in their millions each day, by online shoppers who, at the eleventh hour, have thought the better of their purchase, they represent a significant source of missed revenue, for businesses.

Research from Baymard Institute suggests the average cart abandonment rate is a whopping 86 per cent for mobile users and a not-much-healthier 70 per cent for those who do their shopping via desktop.

Reasons for pulling the pin can vary. For some shoppers, it may be a complicated check-out process, while for others, it’s the addition of a hefty delivery fee to the purchase price.

How would you like to pay?

And for a significant proportion – 11 per cent according to Baymard – the absence of preferred payment facilities is the cause.

That’s because the days when customers’ payment options were limited to cash, card or bank transfer are now fast receding into the past.

Instead, consumers and business buyers alike are used to having choice – to select the aforementioned old school methods, or to use payment apps such as PayPal, digital wallets and Buy Now Pay Later service such as AfterPay, ZIP and Klarna to pay for their goods and services.

If a business fails to offer them that choice, a growing number of buyers will keep on scrolling until they land on a supplier that can.

Keeping the customer satisfied

The preferences of your customers and prospects should dictate the payment methods you allow in your business.

Smart operators will give buyers plenty of options, while encouraging them to adopt the payment structure that is most beneficial for the business, in terms of efficiency and cost.

Customers are also anxious to know that all payment systems used by their suppliers are speedy and secure – understandable, given the plethora of different hacks and payment scams that hit the headlines each week.

Building ecommerce infrastructure to support growth

As well as optimising their ecommerce infrastructure, businesses looking to online sales to drive profitability and growth may find it helpful to optimise their billing processes, to ensure customer invoices are transparent, accurate and go out on time.

Billing errors, however infrequent, can damage credibility and make customers less inclined to entrust their business to the enterprise at fault.

Getting accurate bills out on time every time becomes easier when a business runs a cloud-based revenue management software platform which covers the revenue cycle from end to end.

It’s foundation ecommerce technology that allows a business to capture and consolidate sales data and integrate it with the CRM system that tracks and manages its customers.

Actionable insights, that can be used to inform decisions around products, pricing and marketing, can also be extracted, provided a platform with sophisticated data analysis capabilities is deployed.

Setting your business up for a stronger future

If you’re dealing with customers digitally – and, in 2023, the number of businesses which don’t is falling fast – but not offering them a range of safe, secure ways to pay, you’re not giving your enterprise the best chance of success.

Conversely, providing multiple payment options, underpinned by a robust revenue management platform, will see your organisation well positioned to prosper and grow in FY2024 and beyond.

Carl Warwick is regional sales director for Asia Pacific and Japan at BillingPlatform.