This is part 9 of 30 in a series on improving your WooCommerce Store.
WooCommerce Payment Gateways
We’ve covered a lot of ground already, as we navigate all the different aspects of improving your WooCommerce store – and if you’ve you’ve missed the earlier posts, here are the first eight.
But today we’re going to step into collecting payments, and to do that, you need a payment gateway.
Payment gateways are the software modules that connect your store to a banking account (or merchant account). They are notoriously complex to code because of all the logic permutations that we all take for granted. And to top it off, different countries support different payment gateways. So sometimes what works in one country won’t work in another.
The good news for you is that beyond Paypal and Stripe, WooCommerce supports 123 other payment gateways.
Today I want to remind you to check out Amazon Payments as an additional payment gateway option.
Pay with Amazon keeps people on your site
One of the challenges store owners face is losing customers when a payment gateway moves a customer off a store’s site. This can happen for a variety of reasons, but is often seen with Paypal.
I had a client who was losing 60% of their sales simply because of their payment gateway and the move off-site. Things would happen – interruptions, confusion and more – and the transaction wouldn’t complete.
That’s a lot of money to never show up in your account!
Thankfully gateways like Stripe, Paypal Professional, and Amazon Payments all keep the customer on your site. It reduces the friction and helps you close deals faster.
In that same vein, Pay with Amazon goes even further than most gateways because it doesn’t ask you to put in your own billing or shipping address, or credit card info. It has all that.
So when you add “Pay with Amazon” to your store, you’re making it ridiculously easy for customers to check out. It’s fast and easy and most store owners can be up and running in less than a day (according to Amazon). I’ve seen it take less than a couple hours!
Multiple Payment Gateways
Here’s the great news: You can activate more than one payment gateway on your site.
I know some people who don’t love Paypal but keep it on their site because of how well others like and use it. They’re serving their customers (regardless of how they personally feel about the product / company). Why does Paypal work well? Because people have balances and consider it free money. So they spend it more easily than pulling out their own wallets.
Guess what? Amazon is like that too. People have gift card balances on Amazon. And to check out they don’t need to pull out that credit card info. That makes it a no brainer to add to your site.
And the great news is that you don’t have to choose. You can have Paypal, Stripe and Amazon Payments all activated on your store at the same time if you like. Then people have a choice.
So check out Pay with Amazon, the free WooCommerce extension, for your site.