Adding the ability to accept online payments to your website can boost cash flows, create a better online experience for your customers, and even create entirely new revenue streams. So, what’s involved in adding an online payment system to your site? Let’s explore that.
One sure sign that it’s time to add online payments to your site is customers who start asking you for it. The convenience of paying online, 24/7, will drive many customers to start asking, even demanding, the ability to make those payments online. If you’ve added a client portal to your site, this is a perfect place to include a billing section and online payments.
It might be your employees or your accountant who starts asking for this. If your employees are always hunting down checks, and your accountants are regularly bringing up your slow paying customers, the solution might be online payments. You can realize a real boost in cash flows from the faster payments.
Finally, you can open up new markets (International?) and revenue streams with digital products, which require online payments.
Read More: Adding Digital Products To Your Business
There are two methods to add online payments to your site:
Please consider that a custom solution means you control the billing process. This is beneficial with flexible, month-to-month fees (i.e. base fee + $X per widget per month). As your business grows and you add new products, services or subscriptions, you’ll need a custom solution to handle that. Plug-n-play solutions like Stripe work great if you have a single plan that isn’t going to change.
The decision to accept cryptocurrency like Bitcoin depends on your business model. If you choose to accept it, understand the volatility of the currency. It’s difficult to convert it to the exact price of your service. By the time you convert it, the payment may have a significantly different value than the actual charge, and not always for the better. Once you understand that, we can add it to your payment options.
Pre-built payment solutions are usually the easiest to create in the beginning. But if you know that your billing options will change with business growth, you’ll want to be prepared for that with a custom, in-house solution. Switching from a canned solution to a custom one can cause issues with your customers, especially if things don’t look and feel the same to them. That’s the primary motivation in starting out with a custom, in-house solution from the start.
Let Sol Minion Development help you decide if your business is ready to accept online payments and, if so, the best way to move forward with it. You might find completely new revenue streams or ways to turn customers into Raving Fans by accepting these payments online. Contact us today to find out what the possibilities are for your business.