Your 2026 D2C Calendar mapped day by day - Powered by real data from India’s biggest D2C shopping network
Your 2026 D2C Calendar mapped day by day - Powered by real data from India’s biggest D2C shopping network
Your 2026 D2C Calendar mapped day by day - Powered by real data from India’s biggest D2C shopping network
Your 2026 D2C Calendar mapped day by day - Powered by real data from India’s biggest D2C shopping network
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Why Customer Payment Journey Matters The Most For D2C Brands in 2023
12 Oct 2023
07 Min Read
Vardhan leads product and growth initiatives at GoKwik, driving D2C e-commerce innovations, conversion optimization, and scalable growth programs for products. An ISB alumnus based in Bengaluru, he brings expertise from Unacademy, Ola, and Mahindra in building high-impact product strategies.
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The retail industry has become increasingly competitive, making it challenging for D2C brands to attract and engage customers. Irrespective of the product, irresistible deals and a brand name, eCommerce businesses are now experiencing much lower conversion rates on their marketing campaigns than ever before. While there are various reasons one can list – from the social media ad copy not being good enough to the website lacking conversion strategies, bad targeting and others, the one aspect that holds true to it all is not being able to hit the nail when it is hot, i.e. offering a good customer payment journey.
Here’s what we mean.
Statistics and trends state that 84% of all online shoppers have made an impulse purchase, and impulse purchase represents almost 40% of all the sales made in the eCommerce industry. And most of these purchases are influenced by the campaigns brands are running on channels like social media, email, WhatsApp and others.
Think about the last time you saw a post on social media and instantly went on to the website to know more.
The thing is, it’s not just the product description and the offer available on the website that matters.
When a customer likes something and wants to buy it immediately, a long and complex purchase process makes them lose interest faster than a blink of the eye.
That’s exactly why it is important for DTC businesses to start focusing on the customer payment journey as much as their conversion rate optimization strategies.
What is the Customer Payment Journey?
Offering a positive customer experience is not just about offering good deals on the products they like. It’s also about making the buying experience easy and that’s where the customer payment journey comes in.
The customer payment journey refers to the steps a customer goes through when purchasing a product from the business. It starts with the initial decision to buy the product and ends with the completion of the payment transaction. It involves all the touchpoints and the interactions that a customer has with a business throughout the payment process – right from selecting the payment method (COD/ wallets/ Credit or Debit card), entering payment details, entering shipment details, and receiving a confirmation of the transaction.
D2C brands need to make the payment journey as smooth and frictionless as possible to maximise customer satisfaction and minimise cart abandonment. Optimising the payment journey can help build a better customer experience, improve conversion rates, and build customer loyalty.
Why the Customer Payment Journey matters the most for D2C brands
Before we get into how you can optimize the customer payment journey, let’s take a look at what happens when you don’t:
1. Shorter Attention Spans
In today’s fast-paced digital world, customers have a short attention span because they’re spoilt with choices. As per studies, the attention span of an internet user is much shorter than that of a goldfish.
This is not just true for the content they consume on social media. It also holds true for the payment process they need to complete.
If the payment process is too complicated, customers are likely to get distracted and abandon the cart and maybe even move to another competitor.
You can streamline your payment process by minimising the number of steps and clicks to complete a transaction. One-click payment, visual cues on the time to wait for the payment to complete, and auto-fill features work great here to minimise friction here.
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2. Too Many Distractions And Options
With so many options available to online shoppers, it’s only normal for consumers to explore all the options available to them.
The longer the customer payment journey, the higher are the chances of them getting distracted by other offers and promotions they’re getting targeted by across different channels and platforms.
3. Impacts How Much Consumer Data You Gather
Throughout the payment journey, businesses have a lot of opportunities to collect data from customers that they can leverage to refine their sales and marketing strategy.
If you’re not able to convert the consumer soon enough, you risk losing them to distractions. The earlier they leave your site, the less information you have on them.
If you create a lengthy buying process with too many fields, you again risk getting the cart abandoned because making the purchase took too much time.
4. Impacts The Number Of Prepaid Orders
Prepaid orders help D2C brands (especially smaller ones) manage their cash flow effectively. However, if there are postpaid options like cash on delivery (COD) and if the customer figures out that it will take them less number of clicks in COD, they will opt for it.
But too many CODs can impose risks of cancellations, payment fraud, longer payment processing time, non-delivery, RTO etc, which again impacts the bottom line of your revenue.
How To Optimise The Customer Payment Journey
Optimising the customer payment journey is a lot similar to conversion rate optimisation. Here are some strategies and tips we recommend following:
1. Streamline Checkout Process
More and more customers are now making purchases on-the-go. That’s why it’s important to keep in mind the customer payment journey on mobile devices as well.
Right from reducing the number of steps in the customer payment process to how the information and fields are displayed, every little aspect counts. So remember to test your payment process for smaller screens.
Take Swiss Beauty for example. The leading beauty and personal care brand understands the importance of on-the-go shopping and has partnered with GoKwik to streamline its checkout process. Besides completing checkout in a matter of seconds, the brand has also paid attention to a seamless payment process. For this, on the backend, GoKwik ensures that every transaction processed via its partner payment gateways is successful, giving both Swiss Beauty and its customers the peace of mind.
2. Offer Popular And Most Used Payment Methods
As we commonly appeal through many of our blogs, Indians are fast adopting digital mode of payment. And, with vast number of payment options available today, as a business, you need to make sure you offer a major chunk of those to ensure conversion.
To really optimise your customer payment journey, focus on offering payment methods that are common, most popular or majorly preferred by your target audience.
With solutions like GoKwik, you can not only display the multiple payment modes available on your site, but also those that the consumer is more likely to use. For example, if an online shopper has a history of using UPI to make order payments, your checkout process can immediately highlight the use of the same payment method while still offering to pay via other modes.
3. Offer Field Auto-fills
Placing an order can be a tedious process.
Imagine liking a product trending on social media, wanting to buy it immediately. But then once you’re on the site, you need to fill out your name, address, pin code, email address, phone number and other information. This is not just time-consuming, but also a buzzkill to your interest.
This is where brands that offer field auto-fills to win the interest of shoppers and convert them into paying customers immediately. By filling maximum data using their previously filled information, you get to nudge them towards making the payment much faster. In fact, you can even nudge your shoppers to save their card details (as per RBI directed guidelines) so that next time shoppers just need to put in their CVV and OTP to authenticate the payment, that too in a matter of seconds.
Conclusion
If you’re struggling to optimise your customer payment journey, GoKwik can help you streamline your process. By partnering with GoKwik, you can integrate its various APIs on your website and app, and receive payments seamlessly through various online payment options. GoKwik supercharges your eCommerce business by offering your customers a lightning fast checkout experience and the peace of mind you deserve while running a humongous business.
Contact Us today to know more.
AUTHOR
Vardhan Jain
Director of Product Program @ GoKwik
