The Story Of the ‘Buy Now’ Button

If you’re looking to sell products or services via your website, it’s important that you understand what actually happens when your customer clicks on that mighty ‘Buy Now’ button. This post will briefly explain the process of online payment and then look at four ways to increase the number of converting customers.

The Four Steps of an Online Payment

There are several different ways for websites to safely take money from their customers, but the below is the most common method:

1. Your customer selects the product or service that they want to purchase and clicks the ‘Buy Now’ button. (It’s a good idea to install shopping cart software to make this part of the process easier for the customer and potentially more fruitful for you.)
2. Clicking the ‘Buy Now’ link takes the customer to a webpage with a secure form (ie. with an SSL Certificate). This is where they’ll enter their card details.
3. Those details will then be stored by a Payment Gateway, an agent that can be thought of as a kind of mediator between your merchant account and the customer’s bank.
4. The Payment Gateway will query both yours and the customer’s bank to check the payment can go ahead. A confirmation is then returned back to the website and, if all is well, the transaction will occur.

Now you understand how the payment process works ‘behind the scenes’, let’s talk about how you can get more customers clicking your ‘Buy Now’ button.

Four Ways To Make the Buy Now Button More Clickable

1. Test the language – Are you sure that the phrase ‘Buy Now’ is right for your business? Why not try testing a few different approaches, such as ‘Invest Now’, ‘Purchase’ or ‘Order’. If you’re offering a service such as a paid-for newsletter, or access to some resources, try testing phrases like ‘Sign Up Now’. There’s a great website called Ninja Button that makes this kind of testing easy.
2. Test the design – As with the language of your Buy Now button, you can’t be sure you’re getting the most out your design until you test it. Could it be bigger? Brighter? A different shape or a different colour? Again, Ninja Button, or Google’s Website Optimizer will help with this process.
3. Testimonials – Make sure to add testimonials from happy customers at all stages of the purchase funnel on your website – that includes somewhere close to your ‘Buy Now’ button.
4. Payment methods – Despite the omnipresence of ecommerce, some web users are still understandably nervous about handing over their payment details online. One way you can reassure them is to offer well-recognised payment methods. Paypal has wonderful brand recognition, as does Google Checkout.
5. Professionalism – There are many ways you can convey the professionalism of your business. A well-designed and well-built site is paramount, as is well-written, error-free copy. It can be tempting to draw attention to your ‘Buy Now’ button with flashing or moving content, but this rarely looks professional; best avoid!

If I had to narrow this list down to just one action, it would be testing. It can seem like a bit of a hassle to set up in the beginning, but testing different combinations of language and design can make huge improvements to your bottom line. It’s worth doing!