Everybody’s talking about the m-commerce boom, but if you look past the sophisticated surveys, app owners are struggling to figure out why their conversion rates fall short of expectations.
It’s not surprising if you consider the fact that mobile shopping cart abandonment rates are around 97 percent. Many frustrated developers have asked me how they can decrease these huge numbers that just don’t fit their business model.
I’ve tried to look at this challenge differently, not as a payment expert but rather from a psychological viewpoint, exploring our users’ needs and expectations throughout the checkout process.
Many influential payment companies in this ecosystem have introduced backend solutions that address merchants and developers’ needs. So as a developer you can now enjoy easy APIs, friendly onboarding, methods with reduced processing fees, all of which make their lives easier. The one factor that’s left out of this equation is the user, who somehow seems to be neglected, even though they’re the only one who controls the transaction.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a psychological theory used to understand human motivation. The hierarchy is based on five levels of needs. In order to reach the next level, a person must first satisfy the lower level of rtls.
Even though it’s a little far from the original framework, some of its principals can actually be applied to understand the influence of users’ needs in reference to mobile conversion rates.
Mobile commerce is here to stay. We’re not just targeting early adopters anymore. However, in order to achieve mass market adoption the basic process needs to be clear and simple.
Many app owners require that their users create an account, even for a one time purchase. Yet people need to get their feet wet before jumping in the water. Forcing users to register and remember yet another password can be a huge barrier for someone who still has concerns about their purchase.
Every complication along the way gives the user a chance to stop and rethink their buying decision, while chasing away most impulse buyers among your users. This is obviously less basic than the need for air or food, but it’s probably the key factor to increasing conversion rates.
Security concerns are probably the #1 barrier to online shopping, and things don’t improve on mobile. However, it’s a matter of perception rather than facts. The level of security available with today’s range of technologies is high. Financial risks exist in the physical commerce world as well, but whenever there’s a mobile payment involved, the fear factor kicks in and users becomes more alert. Delivering a secure process isn’t enough; our biggest challenge is to make users FEEL that the process is secure.
One of the problems in most checkout experiences on native apps is redirecting to the PSP’s web page to complete the transaction. At that very point where your user has finally grown to trust you, you pull them away to a different site and bring them back to square one in terms of their attitude towards the purchase. This triggers many doubts about this unfamiliar external page, about its level of security, and what could go wrong while trying to return to the app. Creating a full native experience will ease those concerns and give your users more piece of mind.
A sense of belonging is triggered in a familiar environment. The beauty of Amazon’s checkout is that you can buy a book, a pair of sneakers or a laptop, but the checkout process is the same. By creating this payment standardization process the consumer feels like they are in a familiar place.
Your payment page doesn’t have to win a design contest; it has to look like a place where people pay, with a reliable look and feel, aligned with the standard payment conventions.
Another way to maintain familiarity and continuity is by enabling users to pay without re-entering credit card details. Make sure you keep security in mind and meet the standards of PCI compliance; if you need a reminder, go back to level 2 of the pyramid.
Last year, T-Mobile threw down the gauntlet and announced it would no longer subsidize smartphones and went to a pay-as-you-go format. Since the beginning of the year, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon Wireless have also announced changes to their pay-as-you-go strategies. While the Big Two (AT&T and Verizon Wireless) took baby steps towards making pay-as-you-go a viable alternative for their contract customers, this is still a positive development in my opinion. More choices in the no-contract space are a small but important win for consumers and will hopefully lead to more options for customers of all four of the major U.S. carriers.
While pay-as-you-go MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) like Straight Talk, Solavei, and Ting are extremely viable and attractive options for smartphone users in the U.S., many of these services have caps on how much high-speed data you can access. Furthermore, as of the time of this writing, only Sprint allows MVNOs to access its 4G LTE network. There has been some buzz about some MVNOs accessing 4G LTE on T-Mobile’s network, but my research has shown that this has not yet come to fruition. While many users are fans of MVNOs, which operate independently of the Big Four carriers, I am focusing on the Big Four's prepaid plan options.
I was very intrigued by AT&T’s recent announcement that the company has created a new separate MVNO called Aio, which will operate on AT&T’s HSPA+ network, though it's currently only offering service in Orlando, Tampa and Houston. Aio will offer unlimited talk, text and data, but users will be limited to 4 megabits per second of “high speed data”.
Pricing plans are as follows: the Aio Basic ($40 per month) will cap “high speed data” at 250mb; the Aio Smart plan ($55 per month) will cap “high speed data” at 2GB; and the Aio Pro plan ($70 per month) will cap “high speed data” at 7GB. Users can buy an additional gigabyte of “high speed data” for $10. If Aio is successful in its three initial markets, AT&T has stated that it will roll the service out across the U.S. AT&T will also continue to offer its GoPhone pay-as-you-go service.
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