My experience with a Shopify online shop didn’t work out as I expected. I did everything I thought I was supposed to…the design of the store was good, I was selling print on demand products, I had decent page views…why was I not making sales? The problem was PAYMENTS. This is something not many Shopify store owners will tell you about. This is especially important to those who DO NOT LIVE IN THE USA & CANADA, which is a lot of people.
What did not work:
- My shop was created in a NON-US country, somewhere in Eastern Europe (where I am currently living). Since I set my shop up in Eastern Europe, not all the payment options were available for my potential customers. Shopify POS, which is a Shopify payment gateway was not available and it meant my customers COULD NOT PAY BY CREDIT CARD. This is a huge disadvantage because I was limited to PAYPAL and most customers prefer to pay for online purchases via credit card.
Where I went wrong:
- I didn’t research the payment methods for customers beforehand. I suggest that you first make sure you can set up all the payment methods so your customers have options and will be more likely to go through with that purchase. The best is Paypal and Shopify POS and if you are in the US and Canada, you don’t need to worry about more than those two. However, living outside of North America means that you need to research the available payment gateways.
Fixing the problem:
Enable different payment gateways in your shop. The easiest is Shopify’s own POS, but also enable credit card payment. You can accept gift cards, but I would not recommend it because it could be complicated to work through. Remember that people want to see secure payment options when they reach check-out. Most prefer to pay by credit card, and it must be an option if you want to make many sales. Paypal Express is a good payment method but not everyone has cash available on their Paypal account.
Add third-party payment providers. If you reside in the United States and Canada and you really want add extra gateways, use Authorize.net and Stripe. If you live outside of these countries, below are other credit card gateway payment providers you can use which are already integrated with Shopify. These payment processing services all charge COMMISSIONS which you need to take into consideration.
· Worldpay
· Stripe
I suggest you research all of the payment gateways and look into their commissions so that you aren’t losing too much money from each sale.
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