How can small online merchants increase their revenue? Why the perfect sales funnel still isn’t converting – and how the problem sits at your checkout.
- Team Taylr
- Jun 3
- 4 min read
You’ve nailed targeting, tuned the creative and A/B-tested every call-to-action. Traffic is flowing, the clicks are cheap – yet orders refuse to follow suit. It’s easy to point the finger at the marketing stack, but the real culprit might be lurking one step later: the payment experience.
Many businesses still don’t realise that payment churn could be the missing piece of the puzzle, directly impacting their revenue.
Below, we’ll examine how a shaky checkout can drain sales in the short term, erode loyalty in the medium term, and, if left untreated, erode brand value over the years.
Spoiler alert: every one of these issues is fixable inside WooCommerce, especially when your gateway (hello, Taylr.io) bakes in fraud protection as standard.
Jump to section:
One missing second, one lost sale - how poor payment experience can lead to higher cart abandonment rates.
Cart abandonment rates - where somebody leaves the checkout before making payment - generally stand at around 70%. Extra steps, such as having to create an account, might lose you 24% of shoppers, and a complicated checkout process deters 17% of shoppers.
Slow, clunky forms are a prime reason. Each extra second is an invitation for the customer to bail – and they do. Your payment tech needs to be prepared for this.
Silent churn: When a card fails because it’s expired or tapped out, shoppers rarely try again. The platform marks “failed payment”, you might shrug and move on, but the revenue is gone for good.
Form friction: Optional address lines, duplicate phone fields, unoptimised mobile scripts – they all steal seconds and spike abandonment.
Conversion as a multiplier: If your ads convert at 2% and half of those reach the 'Thank you' page, you net one sale per hundred visitors. Increase checkout conversion from 50% to 55% and you’ve added +10% revenue without spending another penny on media.
A smoother payment flow is the fastest revenue win most e-commerce stores will ever find; in fact, one of our clients recently increased conversion rates from an already respectable 80% to 90% conversion rate, just by implementing Taylr's payment tech.
Preferences, renewals and the loyalty loop - convincing shoppers to press “buy again” with as little friction as possible.
Capturing first-time buyers is only half the game. The next half is convincing them to press “buy again” with as little friction as possible.
It pays to have options: Shoppers now expect to see their preferred wallet front and centre – and often that's digital wallets such as PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay. Offer the right button and they glide through in a couple of taps, credentials handled by their device, trust already established. Ignore it and up to 90% of buyers will vanish before you can say “guest checkout”.
Subscriptions raise the stakes further: For merchants running memberships or replenishment products, a failed renewal is a hard churn event - so you need to make sure your payment tech is set up for success here.
Fraud – the threat that keeps CFOs awake - and how reputational damage can impact sales
More than 90% of merchants have experienced one or more types of fraud in the past 12 months.
A single breach costs money up front, but the real damage is reputational. Customers hesitate to re-enter card details, reviews take a hit, average order values slide.
Over time, acquisition costs climb as trust erodes.
Expect fraud protection as standard
Most payment providers charge a premium for advanced fraud tools or make you bolt on third-party software. We flip that script. Real-time fraud protection from the best in the business, Kount by Equifax, is included as standard for all merchants.
Small businesses get the same protection the enterprise crowd enjoy, which comes in handy when you’d rather spend the budget on stock or marketing than on security engineers.
Mind the margin – small percentages on each transaction means big amounts on the top line
Processing fees look small until you total them.
Stripe’s classic 1.5% plus 20p knocks £1.70 off every £100 order*
Taylr.io charges 1.00% plus 15p – £1.15 on the same sale (plus, for transparency, a flat fee of £20 per month).
The £0.55 difference feels trivial until you run the maths: on £1 million annual revenue, that’s £18,000 reclaimed (minus the £240 annual fee). Enough for an entry-level marketer's salary, a warehouse mezzanine or – dare we suggest – next month’s pay-per-click budget.
NB * fees correct as of 3/6/2025
What should a WooCommerce merchant do tomorrow morning to maximise their revenue potential?
Audit the journey. Buy something from your own site on mobile data. Time the steps. Note every field that feels redundant.
Make sure you have the right wallets and payment types. Apple Pay, Google Pay or even Cryptocurrency.
Implement key practices (such as the ability to store payment methods) - this will reduce checkout time for returning customers.
Check your fraud settings. If they aren’t part of the package, ask why.
Compare fee structures. Pull a month of statements, run the totals and see what those percentages mean in real money. Then imagine the product features you could build with the savings.
Review your tech infrastructure and ensure your supplier is building to support you and your customers for the future.
Payments aren’t just a back-end detail – they’re a core driver of your revenue, retention and brand health. Get them right, and you’ll unlock a multiplier effect on every marketing pound you spend.
Ready to ditch silent churn, keep fraudsters at bay, slash fees, and power growth? Let’s chat about how Taylr.io can upgrade your WooCommerce checkout today.
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