Challenges of Export and International Payments in Ecommerce

As a global exporter of British food in both retail and wholesale sectors, the team at British Corner Shop have first hand experience of some of the challenges faced when using a payment gateway for international business.  Peter Howarth, British Corner Shop’s technical director gives us an insight…

Having used Sage Pay (and formerly Protx) since 2004, we’ve grown from a small start-up to a large business using Sage Pay throughout the businesses evolution. The first thing we wanted from our payment gateway was good customer support, and a technical solution that we knew would meet our requirements at each stage of growth. Sage Pay’s capable support staff, and range of integrations are ideal in these regards.  But as an exporting company, the most important aspect for us was internationalisation and exporting.

The Challenges

When it comes to internationalisation, here are a few things to consider:

1. Payment in Different Currencies
2. Customer Perceptions of Restrictions
3. An Appropriate Rulebase
4. International Maestro
5. Fraud

 

1. Payment in Different Currencies

This is an important capability, some e-commerce sites let you view prices on screen in various currencies, but when it actually comes to payment they’ll only accept one – GBP for example.

This is a real barrier for many customers who want to pay in their local currency, especially when exchange rates are favourable.

Sage Pay makes this easy, the solution we have employed is to have a separate vendor name, and merchant account for each currency. The currency code GBP, EUR, USD etc. can then simply be specified with the transaction information.

Multiple vendor names can be grouped, so Sage Pay don’t charge you for each one, and it neatly separates the currencies for accounting purposes.

2. Customer Perceptions of Restrictions

Sometimes customers think that their card won’t work because it’s registered overseas. However most of the time, if a transaction does fail, it can be traced to an incorrectly entered 3D secure password!

The good news is that with an appropriate rulebase in Sage Pay, such address issues are easily avoided.

3. An Appropriate Rulebase

By setting your rulebase to accept either a CV2 value OR an Address Match, you ensure that cards registered in any country will be accepted. Enforcing address matching can result in a failed transaction for overseas cards because sometimes it’s not possible to check addresses based outside of the UK.

This doesn’t have to compromise security, combined with 3D Secure we find that fraudulent transactions are minimised.

4. International Maestro

This card type is optional and needs to be added to non-GBP currency accounts. Make sure it’s included, otherwise you could be missing out on business.  Don’t forget, to be able to accept international maestro, you must have 3D Secure switched on in your account.

5. Fraud

A combination of a decent rulebase and the 3rd Man Results, that Sage Pay provide within My Sage Pay, give you an excellent chance of spotting and stopping fraud.

The problem can be worse for exporters, as they tend to get a higher incidence of people trying stolen card details to attempt to receive an order overseas.

Sage Pay does allow you to block specific countries altogether, and if you take that approach I would recommend that Nigeria and Vietnam be high on your list!

However, we find that the number of fraudulent transactions is relatively low overall, and with experience and the help of the 3rd Man Results we can generally spot frauds easily, and don’t dispatch any goods until we have confirmed things.

Tokenisation

Here at Sage Pay, with 36,000 customers all in an increasingly competitive industry, we often get asked the best way to convert browsers into buyers.  There’s no magic answer for this, but there are some things you can do to encourage shoppers to complete a sale.

In our opinion, the most important thing to do is to always be in the know as to what’s happening on your site.   Track how many web visitors you’re getting every day, how many end up converting to a sale and if shoppers are dropping out of the buying process, monitor exactly where they are leaving your site.  Look at your website as a leaky pipe -once you know what your dropout rates are and the exit points (where there could be potential issues), go about plugging the holes to make sure that as many of your visitors complete a purchase.  When we surveyed online businesses for our 2011 e-business benchmark report, we were overwhelmed by the amount of respondents who weren’t doing this.  Knowledge is power, people!

The two biggest reasons why shoppers drop out of the payment process is not feeling that the web pages they are on, or the company is not secure. Customer confusion (not knowing where to click) and long, drawn out payment pages is the other sales conversion killer.

This is where tokenisation really comes into it’s own.  By saving your customers card data against an alias using the token system, you can increase customer loyalty, whilst keeping them completely secure.

The token system can also provide you with the option to streamline your payment pages.  Reducing the number of payment pages is a proven way to improve conversion rates.  We found that most successful e-tailers have a maximum of 2-3 pages. Don’t forget, the competition is just a click away so you want to do everything you can to create a quick and slick checkout process to keep them happy.

Of course, as always, our friends at eBizmarts are already way ahead of the game and their latest Sage Pay Suite includes full functionality of all our products and services including the token system, PayPal and back office integration.  If you are currently an eBizmarts CE user and want to upgrade to the new Suite to take advantage of Token, you can find details on their latest upgrade offer here.  If you’re not currently a user but are interested in the eBizmarts modules, you can drop them a message here and they’ll be happy to get you sorted!

Bleating the competition…

Sage Pay Partners are a crucial part of the Sage Pay ecosystem.  We currently have over 2,500 partners with a variety of experiences from hosting companies to shopping carts to ecommerce solution providers.  All of them are providing dedicated support for Sage Pay users by overseeing the entire process from designing websites to integrating with Sage Pay.  So if you’re starting up online and need some extra help, let us know and we can put you in touch with the right people for your business.

This month, focusing on the partner/customer relationship, I’ve chosen a business selling a product that will certainly put a spring in your step for the New Year! Family-run business Corrymoor Socks produce mohair socks, scarves and throws from Angora Goats farmed in the heart of the beautiful Blackdown Hills in Devon.

The Whitley family own 128 acres of land on which they keep their award- winning angora goats, producing copious amounts of mohair which is then combed, spun and knitted in England. Mohair is renowned for strength and durability. Natural mohair fibre means that Corrymoor Socks will keep your feet warm in winter and cool and fresh in summer. Proving this, Corrymoor’s loyal customers send in pictures of themselves in their socks globetrotting all over the world, from Greece to Antarctica and they’ve even featured in Turkish-born designer Hakaan Yildirim’s 2011 collection at the Paris Fashion Week!

With no prior knowledge of ecommerce, Corrymoor signed up to use Sage Pay in 2009 with the help of our Partner eBizmarts. Based in Uruguay, eBizmarts have worked with the Magento platform since the early beta testing and they are known as Magento ninja’s as there’s nothing they can’t do with the platform!  eBizmarts helped to manage the integration between Corrymoor and Sage Pay so the whole process ran smoothly and Corrymoor got the friendly help and advice they needed.

Stephen Whitley from Corrymoor tells us “When we designed our website, we looked at several alternative Partners. We are very pleased with our choice of eBizmarts and the seamless links between Magento and Sage Pay. Reliability is important for us and for our customers – we all like our service and products to be reliable, durable and without faults”.

We’re delighted to award Corrymoor with our January Business of the Month award!  We think they’re a ‘darn’ good business!

6 steps to improve your website’s performance through conversion rate optimisation (CRO).

This next guest blog has been sent in by Crafted Media’s search director, Ian Miller.  Crafted Media (a Sage Pay Partner)  is an independent creative and marketing agency offering e-commerce solutions tailored to client needs. Ian provides a run down of his top tips for maximising those all-important conversion rates…

Good news! Your website has 10,000 visitors per week and you are number 1 in Google for your key search phrase. Your marketing team has done a fantastic job increasing your digital footfall and the traffic graph is going up.

However, have you checked just how many of those visitors requested a quote / bought your product / booked an appointment? If you have Google Analytics installed on your website with goal conversion tracking setup, it is pretty easy to see how many visitors are actually turning into customers by engaging with your website.

If the conversion rate is looking a little on the lean side (a 2% conversion rate essentially means a huge 98% of people left without taking action), it is probably time to look at how well your website is working for you.

Google, as you might expect, has a product to enable website owners to test the effectiveness of forms and content with their “Website Optimizer”; a free and very powerful system capable of A/B and multivariate testing to gauge which version of your enquiry form / checkout / quote tool works best. But before you get started setting up experiments, check out our suggestions to drive up your conversion rates:

1)     De-clutter

As Steve Krug, author of the hugely popular web usability book says, “Don’t make me think!”. Look carefully at your page – does it need two paragraphs of introduction or would one get the point across? Do you need to ask the user for their date of birth or can you quote them without? Perhaps just “Contact number” would be best rather than ask them to fill out Phone, Mobile and Fax.

Once a user is on the page where you want them to engage, it is essential to remove as many potential stumbling blocks as possible. If you can process their enquiry or order without asking for this information, do so (you can always ask them for this information later, once they have submitted their core details).

Quick tip: Keep forms concise. If you need to ask 40 questions to complete a quote, split your form into two stages: the first to capture the all-important contact details, and the second to ask everything else you need. If the second form isn’t completed, you can still call the customer to get the missing information.

2)     You are making the smart choice, Mr Customer

Your website user is about to become your customer, they are already on your contact page after all, but sometimes they just need a little more encouragement to take the last step and press the button.

Providing your customer with reassurance that they are doing the right thing can be the difference between form abandonment and a new sale. This can be achieved with a message about what you will do with their email address (“We will never pass your details on to 3^rd parties. Ever. Promise.”), that your website is secure and is independently tested, that X thousand people complete this form every month, or that you have won the award for Best Customer Service 2011 from the local paper.

Remove doubt from their minds by trying to second guess their concerns and addressing them with carefully placed messages. Make the process seamless, and comfortable.

Quick Tip: Always inform customers what you will, and will not, do with their email address details. Even if you do not need them to opt-in to your newsletter, still make sure you explicitly state your intentions with their details. (could it do with rewording so its stronger / more explicit?)

3)     Form labelling: above, to the left or to the right?

What might seem a fairly inconsequential aspect of your form design can have quite a serious impact on completion rates and speed.  Luke Wroblewsk, author of “Web Form Design” suggests that each can be used in an appropriate scenario.

Left-aligned labels are perhaps easier to scan read, but the gap between field and label can increase completion time – these should be reserved for advanced or unfamiliar field entry. Top-aligned labels allow users to capture both field and label in one eye movement and therefore improve speed of completion. Right-aligned labels are most commonly used when vertical space is restricted.

Quick tip: Unless your form is reasonably complex, use either top-aligned or right-aligned labels for fastest completion time.

4)     Little messages of support

A well-designed form should be pretty self-explanatory to complete. Certainly, most savvy users will know what is expected of them – to fill out their name, phone number and email address – but are there any fields that could use a little explanation?

Firstly, review your form’s questions and ensure that they are all as intuitive as possible. Strive for clear labels and certainly don’t leave any ambiguity about what you require as a response.

Secondly, for any questions that could use some clarification, make sure you provide a note against the field to fully explain (concisely) what is needed.

Quick Tip: To keep a tidy form without lots of additional text, use code to automatically display the relevant message as a user clicks into each field.

5)     The big red button

The most important aspect of your form is arguably the action button and therefore needs to be considered very carefully. There are several factors to think about: message, colour, location, size. Simply changing the colour of your button and nothing else could have a positive effect on your overall conversion rate.  In terms of size and location, your button should be visible and follow the user’s path through the form – don’t overly separate the button from the final field.

The message on the button should be a positive action. “Submit details”, whilst factual, is very dry where as “Send my details” or “Checkout now” suggests a more active engagement.

Quick tip: Avoid a grey button with a dry message. Ensure your button is visible and engaging.

6)     Test & re-test, learn and refine

Whether your first test is a success or an abject failure, don’t stop testing. Conversion optimisation is an activity that ought to be on-going even if the later tests are focussing on subtleties such as the title of the page or the shade of your action button. Each and every element of your website can affect sales conversion.

Make sure your website is working hard to sell your products and services. By following these guidelines, you will convert more visitors to customers, more enquiries to clients.

Quick Tip: Change only one factor at a time to ensure a proper controlled test. There is no limit to the number of tests you can do – strive for the ultimate completion rate! Increase your ultimate conversion rate.

Amy adds: Great tips from Crafted Media!  Interestingly we found in our 2011 E-Business Benchmark report that although the majority of e-businesses conduct usability testing on their website, around 1/3 of them forget to test their payment pages!  It’s good practice to check every page of the customer journey regularly alongside tracking checkout abandonment rates.  In most cases drop-outs can be down to a technical fault that you’ve never noticed and not only because a competitor is offering something similar at a better rate.

If you have any tips to share, please do so! We’d love to hear from you.