How smart payment page can improve transaction success rate of a payment gateway

Payment page is the page of a payment gateway which collects card details from a buyer. It is a critical component in determining transaction success rate of the whole system. In this blog I am trying to capture all the work which we can do to make it smart.

Audiences: All payments enthusiasts, architects, developers, CIO/CTOs of payment firms are welcome.
Scope: How payment page can be made smarter to increase transaction success rate.

Here is a list of workable action items, follow this and increase transaction success rate of your payment platform.

1. Page size: This aspect can be very important mainly in India and other developing countries where internet infrastructure is not very strong. If payment page is not light, it will take time to load, and here comes chances of transaction failure. Please consider following for size of a payment page:
1. Remove unwanted/less desired images/logos
2. Change/remove images with improper size/format
3. Remove unwanted java script/CSS files
4. Remove commented/hidden code
   
   
2. Responsiveness: By responsiveness I mean following:
1. The page should be adaptive to changes in web-browser window. It should change placement and alignment of constructs on the page. This becomes very important when your page is supposed to be opened from mobile phones, tablets, desktops and machines with different size of screen
2. All the validations for card details should be done using Java script or AJAX calls to server. There should not be any validation performed at server side only, because if such a validation fails it will take time for the user to see the updated page after a round trip to the payment server
   
   
3. Dynamic methods of payment and payment types: A method of payment can be card association, or a particular net-banking bank. For example Visa and MasterCard are two methods of payment. Payment type can be Credit/Debit card or net-banking. When the buyer is redirected from merchant system to the payment page, there are various possible options:
1. Displaying only the MOP/Payment type selected by buyer at the merchant web site and hiding all other payment types/MOPs
2. Displaying all the supported payment types/MOPs for the merchant, but by default selecting/highlighting only the method of payment selected by buyer at the merchant web site
3. At transaction level merchants should be given option to choose method of payment based on transaction level flags, such as currency, transaction amount, product type, domestic or international card, etc
   
   
4. Handling a page refresh: You know that when you make online payments you read one thing for sure.... "Do not press stop/refresh/close button". True, in some cases payment gateways cannot help to handle this scenario and if the user presses the killer button, the transaction will fail. But a payment gateway should give due diligence to this case, because its a direct killer. The payment page should be tested properly for the following things:
1. There should be be any issue if a user presses refresh at the payment page
2. If the user is redirected from payment page to some other payment platform and user does not return after an interval, try to perform a status inquiry with the outside payment platform to resolve the status. Do not just say a session timeout or web-browser closed
   
   
5. Look and feel: Look and feel of the page needs to be nearly same to merchant e-commerce platform, because this will keep the buyer at home with merchant. The buyer should not be surprised by the new payment platform page which is totally different from merchant's web-site theme. You can do the following basic things:
1. Keep logo of merchant at payment page
2. Color schemes of payment page should be similar to merchant's
3. Business name of merchant should be clearly written on the page
   
   
6. Number of clicks: More time user takes to complete a transaction, less are the chances of transaction being successful. More number of clicks also introduces more number of errors. Do not have many boxes for prompting the user to enter information. You can detect payment type and method of payment from entered card number automatically. Try to fill some boxes from the information supplied by merchant in the payment request. Do not take many confirmations from user
   
   
7. One-click checkout: One click checkout or quick checkout is the ability of buyer to choose a card from a list of cards (previously saved cards by the same buyer) and proceed for the transaction. The user is not supposed to enter all card details again. This enhances user experience, reduces the overall transaction time and hence more success rate
   
   
8. Cancel button/link: You should not prompt the buyer for cancelling a transaction by displaying upfront a big clearly visible cancel button, instead a link to merchant website can be given with text something like ...."Click here to go to www.merchant.com"
   
   
9. Multiple support payment pages: By support pages, I mean any other pages of a payment gateway which support the main page in completing the transaction. You can try to avoid these pages, if these are mandatory for some reason, then try to have all that content in the main payment page only. Following are some examples of support pages:
1. Page for shipping/billing information
2. Page for order detail
3. Page for Surcharge information display
4. Page for EMI scheme display
5. Other confirmation pages
   
   
10. Supported web clients: Today we have different types of clients, like different web-browsers, different mobiles and tablets. A payment gateway needs to be tested for all the possible clients. The payment page can look defaced and distorted with some clients. Some times validations do not work the same way with all the clients. Some times SSL certificate of payment page does not work well on all the clients.

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Note: I have tried to be comprehensive, and I agree that I may have missed something very important also. I request you to put in comments if I have missed something. I want this page to capture all the possible things we can do to make the payment page smarter.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment