How To Finance Purchases Online: Steps Of Customer Financing For Online Retail Purchases
After opening an online business, the next step is, how do I attract customers? Some of the options would be online marketing and offering high-quality goods or services. Financing online purchases provide an opportunity to increase sales and create customer loyalty. However, how does financing my customers work?
Customer financing allows your customers to enroll in an affordable payment plan. If the customer qualifies for funding under the particular program, the customer can take the product without paying the expensive item’s entire price upfront. Therefore, online financing purchases allow a business to convert people from only window shoppers to buyers.
How do I offer to finance for my customers? To answer the question, we look at different steps of customer financing for online retail purchases. Therefore, through the following steps, you can deploy customer financing for your online store.
Table of Contents
Step1. Choose The Best Customer Financing Option
Now that the thought of offering customer financing has come to your mind, the next item to think about should be which customer financing programs best works for my business?
There are two primary options to choose from when it comes to customer financing programs. Here is a brief overview:
● In-house Consumer Financing Program
As the name suggests, the program refers to financing through your finances. Therefore, the merchant has to access the business’s cash flow to determine whether the option is viable.
● Third-Party Consumer Financing Program
There are different third-party programs to choose from. To ensure you have picked the right one, check whether the program offers access to consumer information so that you can make informed decisions. This is so that you are assured to be lending to high-quality customers to avoid bad debt. Besides, make sure the program is available to your target customer. In this case, you may end up choosing multiple programs to ensure all customers are covered.
Step2. You Let The Customers Know About The Program
Now that you have identified an appropriate customer-financing program, the next step involves advertising the program prominently. This can help to turn window shoppers into buyers. This is mainly those wishing to purchase the big-ticket products but cannot afford the one-off payment. Therefore, if you are an online store, display the standard product prices and the prices shoppers would pay upfront with financing. Ensure you mention you are financing online purchases somewhere on the product description. Alternatively, you can add a banner on your landing page to notify the customers of the option to purchase through a financing program.
Step3: Receive Applications From Potential Customers
Upon ensuring effective advertising, customers begin sending applications. If you are using the in-house program, ensure you have an intelligent plan to review and accept the applications depending on creditworthiness. If you are using a third-party customer financing solution, your customers will be directed to the third party’s verification and approval platform.
Step4: Customers Receive Feedback
Within seconds, the application is reviewed and a response sent to the customer. If the program requires the customer to pay a certain amount upfront, this and other prerequisites must be met.
Step5: Customer Is Allowed To Proceed To Checkout
Upon approval, the customer will be redirected to the checkout page and expected to clear the payment. If there is a promotion, the customer should receive alerts to encourage them to keep using credit.
Step6: Customer Pays For The Product
The last step can be paying for the product after the promotional code has been applied. The financing company will pay the balance and final checkout, allowing consumers to receive the product.
Conclusion
If you are offering customer financing, expect that customers will begin coming to you quite often. This is so long as you do it in the right way. This is because they are assured to take the products they want home through the financing program. Lastly, your program’s success will depend on how well and carefully you choose the customers who qualify for the program.
