The number of online retailers has increased dramatically over the past few years. Partially fueled by the pandemic, consumers are now much more comfortable making online purchases. With so many shoppers in a buying mood, it’s important to offer them convenient ways to buy. If you have an online store, the best way to convert casual shoppers into buying customers is to make it easy for them to buy from you by adding a powerful little checkout tool to your ecommerce website: the Buy Button.
Buy buttons let shoppers buy from you without having to go to your online store to make a purchase, giving them a faster, smoother checkout experience. In this article we’ll explain what buy buttons are and why you should consider using them for your ecommerce business.
What is a Buy Button?
A buy button represents programming code that contains information about a product, such as a description and pricing, and also determines what the button looks like and what it says (e.g., Buy Now, Click to Buy, Get It Now, etc.). Put simply, a buy button is a feature that lets a shopper click a button to bypass the shopping cart process and go directly to checkout, such as a secure hosted payment page. For example, putting a buy button on a product page on your website provides a shortcut for the shopper so they can quickly complete their purchase.
Using Buy Buttons to Boost Sales
Buy buttons are versatile sales tools. Not only can you put them on your product pages, you can add them to promotional email messages, social media accounts, and blog posts, as well as affiliated websites that direct shoppers back to specific pages on your website. According to the PYMNTS.com February 2021 Buy Button Report, “retailers offering buy buttons experience significantly reduced checkout times” and reduced shopping cart abandonment. Streamlining the buying and checkout process is can improve the customer’s shopping experience and increase sales.
There are two types of buy buttons: HTML and social media. Here’s what you need to know about the differences between them and how to choose which one to use.
HTML Buy Buttons
An HTML buy button is a piece of HTML code (a “snippet”), generated by your ecommerce software, that displays as an icon and stores information from your online store about the product you want to sell. After generating the code snippet, you can use it with any web platform that accepts HTML code, such as a product landing page, a blog post, or even within the body of an email. When a customer clicks the buy button, the system sends them directly to the checkout page where they can complete their purchase quickly and easily.
HTML buy buttons give you a lot of flexibility because unlike social media buttons, they allow businesses to sell products and services that are restricted on social media platforms
Social Media Buy Buttons
Social media platforms use a special type of buy button that lets customers shop while on a social media platform like Pinterest, Twitter, or a Facebook business page. On some platforms, the shopper can make a purchase without ever leaving the application.
There are a few drawbacks to using social media buy buttons, however. For example, in order to do business on social media you must first go through an approval process, and there are also rules that restrict the types of products and services you can sell. Your choice of payment processor is also limited. And depending on where your business is located, you may not be allowed to sell on social media at all.
Although social media buy buttons are a bit less flexible than HTML versions, if you qualify to sell on one or more of these platforms, they are a great way to extend your brand beyond the confines of your ecommerce website.
Combine Shopping Convenience and Security with a Hosted Payment Page
Buy buttons can greatly improve your customers’ checkout experience, but to make the most of buy button technology you need to have a secure method for accepting payments.
You can manage the payment process with either a “self-hosted” payment page (or checkout page) using your web hosting provider’s server, or you can use a third-party hosted payment page. At first glance it might seem that using a self-hosted page would be easier to manage, but there are some important things to consider. Here are the differences between a self-hosted and a hosted payment page.
Self-Hosted Payment Page
The advantage of using a self-hosted page is that it allows your customer to stay on your website without having to leave it to make a purchase. If you decide to use a self-hosted checkout page, however, you will need to implement a number of additional security features to ensure that your customer’s payment information is protected, which can be costly to implement and time-consuming to maintain.
Hosted Payment Page
With a hosted payment page, the customer is redirected to a secure checkout page hosted by your service provider where they submit their payment information to complete their purchase instead of entering it on your website. Using a hosted payment page is an easy, cost-effective way to secure your customer’s payment information.
Accept Payments Securely with the Elavon Converge Payment Gateway
Elavon’s Converge payment gateway offers omnichannel payment solutions that enable you to accept in-store, online, mobile, and mail/telephone order (MO/TO) payments, and comes with all the advantages and security features of a hosted payment page. In addition, Converge supports buy button technology, making it easy to add a button or link to your website, social media business page, or customer email messages.
Cartis has the technology to support all your payment processing needs. Call us today to learn more.