Retail is fast-changing. You can see it all around you. From neighbors getting electronics home-delivered to friends buying clothes from a designer’s IG page. This change, which started with the growth of the Internet, has only increased in pace with the recent lockdown.
As retail slowly moves away from the stalls, stores, supermarkets, and malls we are used to, you want to make sure your business is future-proof.
Why Retail Is Changing
Increased internet adoption and social media use are altering the retail space in Nigeria. Today’s consumers are placing more value on faster, stress-free shopping. This shift is driving the growth of online shopping.
With brick-and-mortar stores, the sales bottleneck is, in most cases, the checkout. Many can relate to the annoyance of waiting in line to check out and exit checks, especially on busy days.
Online shopping allows consumers to shop and check out without delay. This feature, more than any other, drives the appeal of online shopping.
Online Checkout Is The Future Of Retail
Without a doubt, online checkout is the future of retail. Its features give it several advantages over physical checkout and provide benefits to both consumers and retailers.
- Convenience
With online checkout, consumers don’t need to queue to check out after filling their cart or paying in cash. They can buy goods from their home or office and pick up their orders or have them delivered.
- Flexible Payments
Consumers have more payment options with online checkout. Options like pay-on-delivery, debit cards, payment apps, coupons, and discount codes make online shopping more convenient, flexible, and appealing to them.
- Better Shopping Experiences
By reducing or removing the need for queues, cash registers, and exit checks, online checkout allows consumers to shop quickly and stress-free. This leads to better shopping experiences and increases the chances of repeated patronage.
- More Sales and Lower Costs
Online checkouts create a more efficient shopping experience for retailers as well. They can sell goods and get paid at an increased speed and rate while reducing labour costs.
- Real-time Sales Data
The sheer volume and fast pace of retail transactions have previously made access to real-time data difficult. With online checkouts, you can now get sales data in real time, which can help you optimize your operations and inventory to better meet consumer needs and drive sales.
Transitioning
While online shopping is the future, you don’t want to be too far ahead of the market. Instead of solely focusing on creating and driving traffic to an online store, it’s better to go where your customers are and make it easier for them to order and check out, right there. This allows you to increase sales and gain customers while developing your online platforms.
Popular social media platforms include features and plugins that allow you to offer online checkout on your social media ads, listings, and promotions. Your customers can shop securely without leaving the app or clicking multiple links. Adding these on-page checkouts speeds up the shopping experience and boosts conversion. Doing this across various social media and sales channels will help your business become omnichannel.
Becoming Omni-channel
For businesses, agility and adaptability are key traits to embody to survive in our uncertain economy, and becoming omnichannel is a good way to do this. Having multiple sales channels increases your ability to reach consumers and drive sales as more and more consumers find it easier and easier to shop through one of your channels.
In becoming omnichannel, customer experience, platform security, and mobile optimization are of utmost importance.
- Customer Experience
You should strive to enable smooth shopping and payment across your sales channels. Your sales and payment pages should be user-friendly, well-designed, and laid out. There should be no hiccups or delays in the process from choosing items to order confirmation.
- Platform Security
Each time a customer enters their ID and financial details on your payments page, they are entrusting you with vital personal data. Keeping this data safe from hackers and fraudsters will earn your customers’ trust and loyalty.
- Mobile Optimization
Most consumers are going to be shopping on their phones. Pages and checkouts that load fast and format well can make shopping a pleasure. As such, optimizing for mobile can get you more customers and help you keep them.
Dead or unreadable pages, broken links, and stolen data will cost you customers. Prioritising customer experience, security, and mobile optimization helps you widen the reach of your business and boost customer satisfaction.
Choosing The Right Checkout Platform
Adopting the right tech stack can help you with the initial transition and scaling up in the future. Choosing the appropriate checkout platform will depend on your budget and business needs. There are two ways to set up your online checkout pages: Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms and Custom platforms.
i. SaaS Platforms
SaaS platforms are pre-built, subscription-based payment solutions that provide templates and plugins that you can customise and apply to create your checkout page. Servers, coding, security, maintenance, and updates are handled by the SaaS company and ‘rented’ out as a service through cloud computing.
SaaS checkouts eliminate the need for keeping and maintaining physical servers and hiring an IT professional. This makes SaaS a low-cost, beginner-friendly solution for new and small businesses. Scaling up your SaaS-based checkout to accommodate growth can also be as easy as choosing a higher-tier subscription plan.
SaaS platforms can, however, be somewhat limited in the features, templates, plugins, payment processors, and support for recurring payments offered or allowed by your current subscription or service provider.
ii. Custom Platforms
Custom checkout platforms are those you develop yourself and tailor to meet business-specific payment needs. They involve keeping physical servers and paying IT professionals to maintain them and carry out updates that keep the platform functional, secure, and up-to-date.
Custom checkout platforms support features like recurring payments, multi-currency payments, and multiple payment processors, which may not be available on SaaS platforms. This helps you to reduce cancelled orders, reach foreign consumers, get competitive offers from them, and change payment processors to better suit customers’ needs.
While custom platforms offer lots of flexibility, they require you to process settlement reports from raw formats, deal with customer data (management, retention, and anonymization), and handle disputes, chargebacks, and customer support. Upscaling the platform may also involve significant costs, as you need to buy new and more powerful hardware.
Choosing A Platform
Both options have their pros and cons. The best option will be the one that is more cost-effective for your current needs and more likely to handle future upgrades and growth. This ensures that your platform is adequate for your current needs and helps you avoid lengthy downtime when upgrading to handle more traffic, as downtime can be very costly in terms of customers and costs. Most businesses will, however, find a SaaS platform that suits their needs and budget.
Conclusion
Retail is fast-changing. More than ever, consumers today want quick, fluid shopping experiences with minimal steps. As more people from every demographic are spending more time online, online checkout is going to be a big factor in customer satisfaction in the near and distant future. Businesses that act fast can position themselves early to get a large share of the coming earnings.
