During the pandemic there has been a huge surge in global e-commerce sales as companies leaned into their e-commerce channel to keep their businesses afloat. Even now after most brick-and-mortar stores have reopened, their e-commerce stores remain an important focal point to drive additional revenue and Increasing website traffic.

In order to generate additional revenue, sophisticated merchants have implemented multiple strategies to increase their e-commerce website traffic. Three popular methods that are often applied are:

1.      The implementation of effective e-commerce SEO strategies as nearly 70% of customers make their purchase decisions via an online search engine before they get into a sales conversation.

 2.    The use of a referral programme. A study from Nielsen stated that 84% of consumers consider recommendations from the people they know before making a purchase. This would mean that using existing customers as brand ambassador can be a very powerful tool gain new customers.

3.    Decreasing the loading speed on a website. The longer it takes for a webpage to load the higher the lower the retention will be.

Merchants tend to be meticulous when it comes to increasing website traffic but forget about other low hanging fruit that can help increase their revenue

 While merchants put in a lot of effort to drive and retain customers on their website, they seem to be unaware that 67% of their visitors who make it to the checkout page are lost due to payment friction. Many merchants see payment friction as a black box and do not realise that long payment journeys with multiple payment steps are a big cause for their high cart abandonment rates.

In order to avoid long payment journeys, merchants can implement Transaction Risk Analysis (TRA). Simply put, transaction risk analysis is a tool that makes authentication exemptions possible which reduces friction in the customers payment journey.

So how does it work? TRA solutions usually work by analysing risk factors to confirm that spending, place, time and other behavioural patterns of a consumer are within the norm, if not, the risk alert is triggered and authentication is required. The need for transaction risk analysis was always relevant in the E-commerce world, but with PSD2 regulations TRA has become indispensable.

We have gone through the core solutions for increasing website traffic, but we have also learned that simplifying the payment journey by implementing Transaction Risk Analysis can have a big impact on customer satisfaction. We at FERO offer a free analysis service that will forensically review your payment journey and bring to the surface the knowledge you require to ascertain the best solution.