Gateways have a very important role in ecommerce world. Gateways are not only a mechanism through which all the ecommerce payments are done but they also provide options to the customers as well as the vendors to improve their online transaction processes. Here are some of the very important features that a good payment gateway must have in order to serve both the online merchants as well as customers successfully.
1. Payment Options
Whenever you go shopping online, you would have often come across websites that don’t accept your payment option. That not only leads to frustration but you also tend to avoid that site without thinking that the site may have included the payment you option you opted last time. Merchants also loose customers because of unavailability of most used payment options. Even if your gateway service provider does not support a particular rare payment option, even then there are chances that some of the customers might be using those unpopular payment methods, which would eventually result into some revenue & profit leakages.
2. Circumventing frauds & providing advanced security features
Website attacks have always been on the rise and even a lot of bigger names have met with stiffer hacking attempts that resulted into loss of a lot of customers and made your site infamous for payment security. You should never ever compromise on the quality of security being provided by your web host. Good web hosts are PCI compliant and also give the guarantee of your payments being secured. Usually payment checkout pages with secure gateways also open with an https:// prefix, further securing your transaction details through the encryption provided. One key thing that really adds to the security of your transactions is that good web hosts always save your transactional details on their own secure servers rather then you in your browser cache or other temporary folder of your operating system which prevents any other software from getting your credit card or other important information without your consent.
3. Smooth sailing & pleasant memories
It is important to include only required information especially on the checkout pages. This will reduce extra burden on customer’s memory and will help him make decisions more easily. This will also ensure a shorter transaction time removing the unwanted hassle & wrestle the customers usually have to go through in online transaction processes. Feedback links should be on every page and customer service should be prompt. Customers online usually don’t have any kind of direct contact with the ecommerce site and it would be handy if you provide live chat facility as that will also have a significant impact on the customer conversion ratio.