8
Future of Retail — Payments Innovation
issue 02
The latest mobile purchasing trends reflect a new
breed of channel-agnostic consumer that’s set to grow and grow. Delivering a consistent brand experience has now become essential; where businesses might see multiple channels and purchasing streams, your customers see just one. This means they will no longer tolerate slow response
times to web pages when shopping online - even a half a second delay on an e-commerce transaction can affect positive conversion rates for shopping cart checkouts. What’s more, Google now favours mobile optimised websites, which means these pages appear higher in the SERPs (search engine results page). Smart businesses are investing in building websites to
deliver mobile-optimised user journeys with responsive payment pages that support a smooth checkout process and can boost revenue. As competition increases, being able to respond to consumers’ ‘I want it now’ mentality is crucial to sales. Responsive web design provides an optimal viewing
and interaction experience. Products like Sage Pay enable businesses to offer this with no extra setup required. It works with all major operating systems and you retain all features and payments functionality. While omnichannel, mobile-friendly responsive
applications have previously been the preserve of large or mid-market businesses, we are now offering these services to smaller businesses like growing retail chain Office Shoes, through Sage Pay Cloud Connect solutions. Sales staff are armed with mobile devices, supported
with Sage Pay payment applications that enable them to browse goods, make personalised recommendations and take payment wherever they are in-store. Consequently, staff can catch shoppers as they’re ready to buy, via whichever channel they choose.
THE RISE OF THE APP Apps now account for a significant amount of consumer time spent on mobile devices, and while people might not be shopping all the time, social sharing and engagement has afforded the buying public increased familiarity with applications. When it comes to shopping, apps are no longer
restricted to m-commerce and e-commerce. Physical handsets are becoming part of the face-to-face payments world too and the benefits of this for merchants are plenty. Contactless payments via bank card are ideal for businesses that deal with frequent, low-value transactions. Queue times are reduced and no additional setup is required.
Keen to capitalise on the adoption of contactless,
non-payment focused brands like Apple, Android and Samsung have released their own contactless technology, reflecting the huge opportunities apparent in this growing trend. Consumers value the speed and efficiency with which
these transactions take place, and the more transaction- capture opportunities there are, the more consumers will use them. I’m convinced they will play a significant part in the payments landscape going forward. The consumer is in the cockpit now and the power
lies with them. They have access to the technology and businesses need to make sure they can respond to that.
MAKE THE DATA WORK FOR YOU Merging the online experience into the in-store environment is evolving the customer experience and breathing life back into the high street. Consumers want a consistent and unified shopping experience that meets their needs and enables them to buy in a way that suits them. More choice in how to buy, delivery options and a fast,
secure payment service are now customer must-haves. Providing them is relatively easy; companies sell through several sales channels – a physical shop, an online store, a catalogue or app. However, this presents a new challenge for businesses. Multichannel can be counterintuitive, as each channel is independent of the others, opening up some big data disconnects. With a number of channels compiling different sets
of data, many businesses are struggling to keep up or get any real value from it. Key data on transactions and purchasing behaviours is being lost and is having no real benefit to the business it’s supposed to serve. Omnichannel is the logical evolution. This is where
businesses have a variety of payment channels, integrated together, allowing customers to be channel agnostic whilst retaining the benefits of having all their customer data kept in one back-end system. What’s more, linking payments through a Point of Sale (PoS) interface into inventory management, which Sage offers, can provide even greater efficiencies. It is our firm belief that businesses shouldn’t be
focusing on compliance - card scheme rules and regulation - but instead doing what they do best. The removal of that burden is possible, as long as they take the right payment partner.
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