Drive Higher Revenue Through These Customer Metrics

Monitoring and measuring customer metrics is crucial to business growth and revenue generation, but where do you start? Read on for examples, and why a payments analytics dashboard can help.

Any business that involves taking payments online should be tracking customer metrics. If your business doesn’t, why not?  There’s a lot to be said about trusting your gut and your instincts when it comes to business decisions, but add solid data to those instincts, and you’ll boost revenue generation even more.

If online sales are the lifeblood of your business, you should be aiming to make the most of them. And with up to 40% of online sales lost due to reasons that are within your control, doesn’t it make sense to use facts and data to get a better view of customer experience and sales performance?

Why Customer Metrics are Important

Data shows you how well your business is doing. Without key metrics, you’ll have a more challenging time knowing how to improve results and revenue. By understanding your customers and their actions, habits, and preferences as much as possible, you can make sure you align your actions and decisions with business objectives for greater success.

And it’s more than just knowing when and how customers act in specific ways. On top of drilling down the ‘why’, you should be monitoring and measuring metrics so you can make the necessary improvements and then measure just how well those improvements are working.

Using the facts and data you glean from analyzing customer metrics, you can pinpoint problem areas, look at possible causes and solutions, and monitor how well any solutions you implement are working.

Which Customer Metrics Should You Track?

You could come up with countless complicated customer metrics to track, but not all of them would be relevant or helpful to your business. You need to think about the metrics that really tell you something about your customers, something that can actually help drive revenue.

Here are some examples:

Authorization

Online card payments require authorization from the customer’s card issuer, and tracking payment authorization data lets you monitor how successful (or not) they are. It might be that certain issuers have difficulties, and analyzing the data means you’re more equipped to find out why that might be.

Sales

Sales are the central part of your business, so being able to measure and track metrics that relate to sales can be key to improving your bottom line. There are various types of things you can track here over and above simple sales figures. For example:

Conversion rate

How many visitors to your website go on to actually buy? If there’s no sale, is that because they leave after browsing? Maybe they’re just browsing and don’t find what they’re looking for, or maybe there’s something in your site design that makes it difficult for them to complete their purchase or signup. Perhaps they get to checkout and bail.

With the average cart abandonment rate for ecommerce sites a whopping 69.57%, it’s a big problem, but something you can work on if you know it’s an issue for your business.  

Transaction value

Another valuable metric to track relating to sales is transaction values. How much are people actually spending on your website?  Analyzing these data findings can help you make smarter business decisions. Is the average transaction high or low? If it’s low, do you need to look again at your pricing structure? How can you get customers spending more?

Refunds and chargebacks

Refunds often end up costing you money, and monitoring the causes of refunds gives you more clarity when resolving them. What reasons are your customers giving for wanting refunds? If you notice frequent customer returns because the customer received the wrong item, for example, you know what you have to work on. And as chargebacks may be down to fraud, part of the expected $20B+ lost to ecommerce fraud in 2021, it’s good to have the data you need to help prevent chargebacks and disputes.

Use Technology to Unlock Valuable Insights

By using technology to gain insights into the payments and customer information at your fingertips, your business can generate more revenue while cutting costs and boosting profits. A customizable analytics dashboard can highlight the figures and metrics that most matter to you and give you so much valuable insight into your payments environment. You’ll be able to identify trends and issues, and drill down into the data to get the insight you need to drive revenue and profits.

To find out how PayFrame’s payments analytics dashboard can help you turn data into revenue, get in touch today.

Do’s and Don’ts When Picking a Payment Service Provider

Choosing the right payment service provider is key, especially in an increasingly digital world. Here’s what to look out for.

 

The Federal Reserve’s 2020 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice survey found that over 40 percent of consumers had changed from in-person payments to online or telephone payments.  With cash payments on the decline since the pandemic accelerated the need for digital transformation and reduced people’s desire for too much in-person contact, it’s even more important for businesses to offer a seamless payment experience.

And the answer for many is to use a payment service provider, or PSP. While some businesses prefer their bank to handle payments, a traditional bank doesn’t always offer everything you need to make and receive payments in this increasingly digital-led age. PSPs, however, have more to offer.  

The Benefits of Choosing the Right Payment Service Provider

Working with the right payment service provider offers countless benefits. Your aim should be to work with a PSP that will partner with your business, not just give you the technology to meet its payment requirements.

A PSP that’s flexible, adaptable, and offers customized payments solutions will be able to support your business in unlocking new revenue, preventing fraud, and giving your customers exactly what they want, a smoother digital experience.

Here are some of the best—and worst—practices when picking a PSP.

Do: Make sure you understand the fees and charges involved

You’ll almost certainly pay a transaction fee—likely a percentage of each transaction—but the exact percentage may vary between providers. There may also be other processing fees, such as set-up costs, monthly fees, and more. 

Look for a PSP that’s transparent when it comes to fees. Be wary of hidden charges, and compare fees between providers. While cost shouldn’t be the only consideration, it’s important to find a provider that suits your budget. 

Do: Confirm Your PSP offers the most up-to-date payment capabilities

If a PSP doesn’t support the payment types and features that your customers prefer, you can lose business unnecessarily. Today’s consumers require convenient, fast, and cost-effective payment capabilities. To meet those needs you need to offer a variety of online payment methods from credit and debit cards to Electronic Fund Transfers (EFT), and choose the right payment instrument service provider.

Do: Ask plenty of questions

A good PSP will have a team of experts who can answer most if not all of your questions. And if it’s a particularly complex question, they will be happy to go away and find out the answer for you. As with any potential provider or partner, an unwillingness to answer your queries is a red flag. So be wary if you’re not getting straight answers or they try to skirt round the question.

 

Payments Practices to Avoid

Don’t: Limit yourself to a PSP that isn’t scalable

Growth is crucial to business success, whatever industry you’re in. You may be a small business now, but if you’re like most businesses, you’re planning to grow in the future. You’ll need technology that can scale and grow with you. If the solution you’re looking at is already limited, you may end up having to switch providers in the future at extra expense and hassle. You may not want or need an all-singing, all-dancing solution if your current business doesn’t warrant it. But going for a PSP with a modular payments infrastructure will let you start with just what you need, and scale up in the future. For example, while you might currently only make online sales, in the future you might add a physical location to your business. In that case, a PSP that can provide in-person payment terminals as well as supporting your digital offerings will be key.

 

Don’t: Disregard potential ‘add-ons’

Make sure you fully understand all the potential functionality a potential PSP has to offer. And even if there’s something that may not fit your business now, that doesn’t mean you should discount it. Card issuing, for example, might not be something that you’d previously considered, but it could have valuable benefits for your business.

Don’t: Skimp on costs and risk missing out

If you’re making your selection purely based on price, you’re likely to end up regretting your choice—unless you’re very lucky! While your budget is extremely important, just going for the cheapest without fully examining everything a PSP has to offer could mean you miss out on features or functions you really need. Plus it will probably end up costing you more in the long run if you have to add extra functionality or go to other providers for the features you’re missing. 

For example, is your existing payment system capable of integrating with other core business functions you have? If they are, this adds another manual, time-consuming, and potentially non-compliant process to your plate. Payments integration on the hand, can make your life much easier by speeding up your processes while observing payment card industry (PCI) compliance. Cutting corners can make your life difficult in the long run.

 

Partner With Payment Specialists

Armed with the right questions and an understanding of what’s essential for your business from a PSP, you’ll be able to make the right choice. 

PayFrame offers scalable, customizable design built by specialist payments architects, so you know you’re working with a provider that offers the most valuable support. To find out more about partnering with a payment service provider that works for you, get in touch with our team of specialists.