As electronic payments gain popularity, companies should focus more on customer experience

Online shopping is quickly became a preferred medium for consumers, with a recent comScore report revealing that internet spending achieved 16 percent year-over-year growth during the 2012 holiday season.

"The fact that so many retailers extended their promotions into the middle of the week - with guaranteed shipping by Christmas - helped deliver an encouraging late-season surge," said Gian Fulgoni, chairman at comScore. "The result has been a significant uptick in the season-to-date growth rate, which now stands at 16 percent."

To take advantage, companies are rapidly adopting ecommerce strategies - but they may be neglecting the importance of providing top-notch customer experience. A recent ForeSeeindex with regard to holiday online shopping found that consumer satisfaction had actually declined compared to 2011, according to Business & Money.

Improving the customer experience

In order to take full advantage of the growing popularity of electronic payments, businesses need to complement online payment capabilities with methods that provide an excellent shopping experience.

In a recent blog for Mycorporation, Valerie Cecil, research coordinator and marketing specialist at Outbounding.com, put together several online strategies that companies should implement, including:

- An excellent website: It should be easy for customers to find the website, and they should want to stay on it once they're there. The layout should be relatively simple so that people are able to navigate it easily, while also consisting of interactive features. In addition, businesses should analyze the most common means by which customers end up on their website.

- Quality search functions: Once people have made it to the website, it should be extremely easy to find what they are looking for. Quality search functions are one of the most underrated website features.

- Customer support: Much like in-store and phone service, customers have come to expect online customer support. This is especially important right now with so many companies trying to perfect their electronic payments methods.