When I order a product online, I want the transaction to go smoothly. I’m certainly not alone, and this especially important when you consider just how much online shopping has grown in the last year and half. But that begs the question: what exactly is a “smooth” online order process?
Ordering online can get frustrating at times. It feels like jumping through hoops. Enter your number, your address, your email. It gets tedious, especially when you’re shopping online a lot.
That’s where Shop Pay, the popular payment platform, comes into play.
Shop Pay has not just received a significant overhaul, but it has now seamless integrations to Facebook and Instagram. Shop Pay calls themselves “the fastest and most secure way to shop online.” To my surprise, I find myself agreeing with the marketing pitch. Shop Pay has worked hard to provide a platform to take the struggle out of checking out, and they have done so in a very secure and streamlined way.
In short, Shop Pay is going places, especially now that it links up with Facebook & Instagram. Here’s what you need to know.
What Exactly is Shop Pay?
If you’re not familiar with Shop Pay, it is important to understand what exactly it is, and why it matters. The following excerpt from the Shopify blog provides both some history and an explanation of the app:
A couple of weeks ago, we launched the Shop app, a digital shopping assistant that combines the power of Arrive and Shop Pay (formerly Shopify Pay). Shop Pay, Shopify’s accelerated checkout method, launched in 2017 and has slowly made waves with over 40M buyers using Shop Pay regularly to purchase from Shopify stores.
A seamless checkout process is essential for fast conversions and a better buying experience. This is where Shop Pay comes in. Shop Pay increases checkout speed by 4x, but that’s not all. We, on the Financial Solutions team at Shopify, love our numbers, so we decided to dive a bit further into Shop Pay and its performance on checkout.
– Shop Pay Is the Fastest and Best-Converting Checkout Experience on the Internet By Kaz Nejatian
Following this passage, Kaz goes onto discuss how Shopify conducted a month-long study to see how Shop Pay fares against a regular checkout experience on Shopify. Shop Pay converted 1.72 times that of the regular checkout process.
Impressive, right? Shop Pay makes this process ridiculously easy by safely and securely saving your information after you enter it the first time. With your information already saved, you are able to breeze through the checkout process, all without ever leaving Facebook or Instagram. It is as easy as that.
How Shop Pay Works
To provide a bit more context to you about what specifically Shop Pay does, check out this excerpt from the Shopify Help Center:
Shop Pay is an accelerated checkout that lets customers save their email address, credit card, and shipping and billing information so that they can complete their transaction faster the next time they are directed to the Shopify checkout. This can save your customers time when they check out, especially if they’ve already opted in to Shop Pay on any Shopify store. If your store offers a local pickup or delivery option, then customers can choose the option during checkout with Shop Pay.
A customer must enter an email address at checkout in order to save this information. Customers checking out using a phone number in the contact field won’t be offered the Remember me prompt to save their information. Learn more about accelerated checkouts.
The customer’s shipping and billing information is securely stored on Shopify’s PCI compliant servers and is only shared with your store if an order is placed. If your customers have questions about how Shop Pay works, or how their data is stored, then you can send them to the Shop Pay Help Center page.
For every order purchased through Shop Pay, Shopify offsets all delivery emissions.
– Enabling Shop Pay by Shopify Help Center
Shop Pay is also making sure that with their platform, they are doing what they can to protect and preserve the environment – specifically by protecting trees to offset carbon emissions. This might not directly impact quality of payment experience, but it’s really important nonetheless. As many as 60% of customers expect companies to speak up on issues like environmentalism, with higher figures for the younger generations.
Enabling Shop Pay
Enabling Shop Pay is really easy. Like the picture above says, there are only four steps needed to add it to your Shopify store:
- Go to Settings > Payments.
- In the Shopify Payments section, click Manage.
- In the ACCELERATED CHECKOUTS section, click Shop Pay.
- Click Save.
Seriously, that’s it. By following these four steps, you can add Shop Pay to your Shopify store. Once completed, your customers will be able to utilize Shop Pay whether they are accessing your storefront via Facebook or Instagram.
Final Thoughts
Anything you can do to simplify payments and improve customer experience will pay off. You’re likely to convert and even retain more customers just by making simply tweaks like speeding up the payment process.
Shop Pay has made one of the most frustrating parts of the transaction the most effortless. What’s more they have shown us the receipts, so to speak, in terms of increased conversion rate. There’s really no reason not to enable it.
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