If you’ve never used PayPal you’re quick becoming in the minority and with several other payment vendors from BillMeLater, a deferred payment credit solution, to Google checkout, 2 checkout and others alternative payment providers are only increasing in numbers yet most ecommerce sites still insist on taking direct payment only.
For those unfamiliar with alternative payment providers here’s the quick rundown. Basically a customer hits your site and shops in the same way they do today but when it gets to checkout they’re shipped off to another site either right after the cart [ideal] or at the payment page. Once they land on the alternative payment provider’s site they complete the transaction using an existing account or providing payment
So how does this improve your site’s usability? Speed. Well, speed and security. Tens of millions of people have accounts, active accounts, with alternative payment providers so for them paying you is as simple as typing in an email address, password and clicking confirm. No need to enter payment details again, no worrying about mistyping credit card numbers or even having the credit card handy. That’s fast. The other side benefit comes from having a trusted name taking money giving your site a better sense of security and reliability for the concerned user. Not only is there no need to enter a credit card number directly with a merchant while using a third payment provider but they may also be given protections against fraud which is great if you’re a smaller company without a strong brand. Third party payment providers give you a bigger name.
The great thing is that most third payment providers can be setup online without any upfront costs [from there end] and are fairly easy to integrate into shopping carts, accelerated payment systems, even subscription services. They also work much like merchant accounts giving you access to the funds immediately so there’s no wait to get paid while the customer gets the speed and reliability benefits they were looking for.

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There’s no doubt that the web is international but for most companies visitors come from just a handful of countries with a strong emphasis on one or two, like the US and Canada for a north American focused site. So why is it that thousands of forums show a list of every country in the world defaulting to Afghanistan (the first A in the list)? Sure it helps to be alphabetical but when a visitor has to scroll a list with over 200 entries to find a result that they and 70 or 80% of other users will select it’s a burden. While this field alone may not be enough to get them to bail it adds time to the process and feels… cold. You don’t know them, you aren’t acknowledging them and chances are they know there aren’t a lot of visitors from “Baker, Howland and Jarvis Islands” which shows up well before the US and Canada on most lists. And this doesn’t apply to just transactional sites trying to get people through a purchase funnel, lead gen sites, surveys, registration pages all need to streamline this field.
You don’t have to cut out countries to make it useful either. Simply take the top couple of locations (more if you have a lot of international traffic) and put them above the alpha list and again in the alpha list. This lets people quickly find their country 99% of the time while still providing a world of choices for your other, and by no means less important visitors.

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Here’s a simple no-brainer that applies to just about every website yet continues to be an issue I encounter more than one would seem possible. When you have a transactional system that creates accounts let people complete their transaction without requiring email approval. Yes it’s great to know the email address works and in some cases you may have to validate it after the transaction but think about the user experience… I come in, find something I want to sign up for, start signing up and am told to leave to check my email. If I use hotmail or another provider that may require launching a new browser and going off to login elsewhere with distractions galore. Maybe my email comes in every minute via outlook but I still have to sit around and wait. And guess what, during that wait time I’ve got other things to do and I bail.
It doesn’t matter if you’re selling widgets, collecting leads, letting people apply for jobs or signing up volunteers for an event. Your desire to validate data has to be secondary to the user’s ability to complete the task. Take the steps you need but be sure they never stop the user from reaching the goal.

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