In the final blog, part of the series on 7 practical ways to recession-proof an ecommerce website, we take a look at strategy 6: Looking internationally & Strategy 7: Increased payment options.
If you missed the last 5, check out the blog series here:
- Make your Agile ‘agile’
- Reduce internal costs
- Focus on mCommerce
- Customer insight from analytics
- Getting to know your customers
Strategy 6: Looking internationally
Whilst it is an obvious strategy and obviously comes with its own challenges, more so in a post-Brexit environment, it is certainly an option to just look at simply marketing to a different country.
However, there is an important role for QA to play on this front, both in terms of usability testing, but also considering functional testing.
It is important that the QA team understands how users in that location think and what devices they use. This allows testing to be scoped better to add the maximum benefit. Typically, the best way of doing this is to have a team of professional testers in the location you are looking to deploy to. Linking the test team to this additional team (which may be 1 or 2 people) enables pre-release testing to be completed and any early errors to be identified quickly.
Strategy 7: Increased payment options
Adding the right payment methods, used by your target audience, can improve conversion rates as much as 30%.
However, don’t rush to add as many payment options as you can, you need to be selective. Whilst this doesn’t specifically relate directly to QA, QA has an important role to play which is to regularly test live payments.
This becomes especially important when there are foreign payment providers that may only operate in that territory or there are a number of payment options that doesn’t see a lot of traffic.
As a reader, we’re sure you’d be surprised with the number of times that Digivante have come across where the payments, especially in foreign markets, simply don’t work. A great example was a large UK retailer selling in Iceland – cards from the largest bank in Iceland couldn’t transact on the site. Obviously, a detail of insight into payments could have been used, however there wasn’t sufficient traffic to make this an obvious issue. Additionally, with a number of sites being managed, each with different payment options and providers, it can tricky to see all potential drops.
To ensure you beat a recession, you should have a regime of live purchases happening in all markets you operate in and by the top payment types in that location.
It’s no new phenomenon that having lots of happy customers will charge your company to success. Ecommerce companies that focus on developing and improving customer experience during challenging periods attract and keep more customers. So, combining one, a few or all these methodologies and considering the right ecommerce testing services will certainly support you in beating the recession.
Download your copy of the eBook guide for 7 strategies to drive improved conversions and new revenue lines from your QA team.
