As a UX design agency, we understand that with the increasing popularity of mobile transactions, modern consumers demand their transaction be fast, easy, and painless. Before selecting which payment provider is right for your business, ask yourself these five key questions, compiled by web design company Codal.

1. 5 Questions To Ask Before
Choosing Your eCommerce
Site’s Payment Gateway

2. 1. Does your eCommerce platform support
the payment gateway?
Starting with the easiest way to root out unfitting candidates, simply check your eCommerce
platform’s list of supported gateways. While major online retail providers, like Shopify Plus, are
going to seamlessly integrate with just about every gateway imaginable, it’s still prudent to check
to see if your eCommerce platform offers benefits for choosing a specific one.
If you don’t find your preferred gateway on
the list of integrations, you can still build out
a custom plugin or extension—but it will take
an exorbitant amount of development work.
It will end up costing time, money, and other
resources that could be avoided by simply
picking an easier option to integrate with.

3. 2. Will this payment gateway improve my
website’s user experience?
After ruling out any gateways incompatible with your eCommerce platform, the next key
criteria should be if it will enhance the overall UX of your retail site. The payment gateway is
an indispensable component of your checkout process, which in itself is arguably the most
important aspect of your retail site.
As a UX design agency that specializes in eCommerce, Codal has spent years identifying pain
points and curbing the dreaded shopping cart abandonment. In our experience, a majority
of carts are abandoned during checkout, with a notable percentage occurring due to a poor
payment process.
For typical retailers, this means the ideal gateway yields lightning-fast speeds and has a low rate
of failed transactions, both of which can be checked at Spreedly’s gateway index.

4. $$$$$
3. How much will it cost me?
Probably the first question any eCommerce site runner asks, how much you’ll pay for the
payment gateway will obviously be a deciding factor in your choice. At first glance, the pricing
seems identical across the board:
Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.Net,
and many others charge the industry-standard 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
But atop this transactional fee, many gateways stack additional charges. Authorize.net imposes
a $25 monthly fee, as does PayPal’s premium services. Authorize even hits you with a one-
time setup fee as well. It’s crucial to read the fine print and explore all the pricing options before
selecting a gateway.

5. 4. Is a more holistic payment approach
right for you? Or should you use three
different services?
The payment gateway is actually just the first unit of the three-step transaction process. After the
customer inputs their financial information, the gateway serves a middleman, delivering it to the
payment processor and eventually your merchant account.
These three major cogs—the gateway, the processor, and the account—can be from separate
providers, allowing you to customize this back-end operation to suit your needs. Alternatively,
some companies offer all of these pieces as a bundle to simplify maintenance.
As a rule of thumb, taking a holistic approach and using a service that bundles all three tends
to involve less monthly fees and setup charges, though the per transaction costs can be higher.
Small businesses may want to opt for this approach until they’ve grown enough to afford a more
custom merchant account.

6. 5. Is there a contract I’ll be locked into?
While more and more payment providers
are moving away from contracts, it isn’t
uncommon for companies offering
gateway services to lock their clients in
contracts lasting two or more years.
For example, both Authorize.Net and
Orbital payment may impose contractual
obligations if you purchase through a
reseller. Be sure to read the fine print and
make sure you’re not stuck with your
choice if it ends up not being right for your
company.

7. The Importance of The Gateway
Your customers probably won’t notice or care what gateway provider you use—until it stops
working for them. Like so many other facets of UX, when it’s good, it goes largely unnoticed. It’s
the pain points, the headaches, the poor usability that attracts (unwanted) customer attention.
But by selecting a payment provider that’s right for your company, you’re enhancing your
customer’s experience, streamlining their path-to-purchase, and significantly increasing the
chances they’ll return to your online store.
Codal is a UX design and development agency with a focus on blending an Agile process
with the latest technologies. Based in the heart of Chicago, we have a knack for bringing out
the best in every brand that we work with. With more than 8 years of IT business expertise,
Codal has a strong team of skilled and experienced business and technical experts.