More than half of consumers (53%) prefer to browse online and then buy in-store – or vice versa. Yet some 63% of businesses have not yet integrated their online and offline channels, according to Sage Pay’s new Payments Landscape Benchmark Report 2014.
At the same time, says the report, 36% of consumers say they are more likely to shop where there is a choice of payment methods – yet 80% of businesses say they will only embrace new payment methods if customers request it.
Adopting new payment technologies and going omnichannel are among the priorities that Sage Pay sets out small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in 2014. Other key priorities, it says, include exploring overseas trading, weighing the risk of losing money to fraud against the risk of losing genuine shoppers with fraud screening tools. Together these can make, it says, the difference between high and low growth for businesses.
Simon Black, CEO at Sage Pay said: “UK SMBs are a driving force in the UK economy, but if they fail to innovate, they are in danger of being left behind.
“Reducing friction should be the focus for every business. Whether that’s looking at moving away from cash towards newer payment types, using ‘single-click’ checkout or adopting an omnichannel approach, this report looks at payments in the context of the consumers and businesses that use them.”
Making payment easier, it says, boosts conversion. Some 41% of the successful companies it questioned offered the tokenised payments that underlie one-click checkout, and had seen their conversion rate rise in response.
“Using tokenised payments to obtain a single click checkout means the process is slick and seamless for your customers and is particularly beneficial when it comes to the steadily increasing numbers of shoppers browsing and buying through mobile and tablet channels,” said the report.
Sage Pay surveyed 1,124 UK business decision makers and 1,042 consumers in the study.
