Asia-Pacific has grown into the world's largest market for cashless transactions. Find out what are the top APMs here.
The six weeks of "peak season" in November and December can account for as much as half of a retailer's annual revenue. So, it's no exaggeration to say that what happens over that period, which includes Singles Day, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas, can make or break a retailer's year.
That's why retailers spend so much time and money trying to figure out how they'll get people into their stores (including their eCommerce store) during this critical period. And while there are some universal truths about retailing—like the fact that you need to have a great website—there are also some things that are specific to certain types of businesses.
Now is the time to ensure that your payment stack is finely tuned and ready for the upcoming holiday season. Here are some steps retailers can take to avoid online payment issues and ensure payments are an enabler of business success this peak season.
Table of Contents
1. Stay ahead of supply chain hurdles and keep the customers informed
If your business is affected by the holiday shopping season and you don’t have enough inventory, there are ways to avoid shortages. By accurately estimating customer demand, you can minimize stockouts—and avoid excess inventory. You can use Google Cloud’s AI/ML solutions, such as BigQuery ML, to develop custom models with your data points; forecast product demand; and gain a better understanding of how your merchandise is moving across channels.
You can make these maps more accurate by customizing them on a location-by-location basis using Google’s extensive library of public datasets, including weather information, traffic data, COVID-19 tracking, and more. Retailers can help shoppers understand delivery times by using the geolocation feature on Google Maps Platform. Retailers can display estimated delivery times for each product, and then provide real-time delivery tracking once the order is in process.
2. Simplify payments for your customers
A simple checkout process will help your customers complete their shopping experience in a timely manner. Don't make them navigate through multiple pages or go through a long process with additional steps. Double-check your checkout process to ensure it works smoothly.
In order to simplify payments, it's a good idea to offer customers a variety of payment methods. If you only accept certain online payment methods and your customers use different ones, they might feel frustrated while trying to make purchases. For example, if a large percentage of purchases are being made on mobile devices, you may want to consider accepting digital wallets because they're easier and faster than other payment methods.
If you want to expand your footprint and sell into other regions, it's important to offer local payment methods and currencies. Working with an online payment gateway that can process multiple popular payment types and currencies is the key to successful execution. For instance, XanPay enables you to accept local payments in 15 Asian markets and integrate instantly with 100+ payment methods.
3. Optimise the checkout process
Customers want to shop across multiple channels, so it's important to ensure your online shop is updated and available across devices to provide a seamless shopping experience. Optimise the cart and checkout experience by using personalised product recommendations based on previous purchases or recently viewed items.
In customer testing, 88% of shoppers found the idea of having easy-to-buy items in their shopping baskets "useful," "fun," and "something they would consider buying." Moreover, allowing guest checkout is also a great way to simplify the checkout process.
4. Leverage social media selling
Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are robust sales platforms. According to online data shared by Statista, it’s estimated that in 2022 sales via social media platforms across the world will add up to $992 billion. When it comes time to buy holiday presents, social media can help! A recent survey by Adweek found that half of the shoppers had trouble figuring out what gifts to get for their friends and family members. And 45% of people who discovered something online said it was for a gift.
Social media is a great way for your customers to discover your products. Therefore, you should make it easy for them to purchase those items on your website. This will help you attract more holiday shoppers looking for gift ideas while they browse their feeds.
5. Delve into the data to solve persisting issues
As peak season approaches, the risk of payment problems grows due to spikes in transaction volumes. To reduce the risk of a payment issue occurring during peak season, retailers should analyze their online payment data to ensure that there are no hidden problems.
As we move into the holiday season, merchants should keep an eye out for any trends that might affect their ability to process payments. For instance, issuing banks may be incorrectly declining transactions for no apparent reason. This can be a sign of fraud or a technical error. Merchants should also look out for unusual patterns with common decline codes related to authentication increasing from specific markets and so forth.
A thorough understanding of payment data can also help retailers when peak season arrives. By establishing what's "normal" for a particular time of year, retailers can quickly spot anomalies and investigate why such changes are occurring to maximize their chances of success or detect fraudulent activity that could result in false declines.
Businesses should analyze authorization, chargebacks, and fraud rates as well as payment fee analysis. They should also review their systems' reliability and latency at different times throughout the year.
Get ready for the holiday season!
As retailers head into the busy holiday season, they're likely to face several payment challenges. However, there are ways to ensure that you can achieve your goals during this peak period—the big question is whether your current payment provider is able to help. If not, it's not too late to make a change.
Xanpay streamlines payments by adding alternative payment methods (APMs) to the checkouts. Compared to credit cards, APMs are a great way to help merchants reduce their transaction fees. If you own an eCommerce store you can try integrating with XanPay. Find out how you can integrate Xanpay with your checkout.
Asia-Pacific has grown into the world's largest market for cashless transactions. Find out what are the top APMs here.
Asia-Pacific has grown into the world's largest market for cashless transactions. Find out what are the top APMs here.