SMBs need a faster way to get up and running by building rich, meaningful websites — which these days must also include the ability to instantly turn on payments to support a variety of new SMB use cases. That need, says Greg Goldfarb, VP of products and eCommerce at GoDaddy, is now GoDaddy’s differentiator. Goldfarb tells PYMNTS why the company made the decision to integrate payments into its website options and explains the complexity involved in making it simple for SMBs and their customers.
GoDaddy, SMBs, eCommerce, payment methods, online payments, Square, Apple Pay, Greg Goldfarb, news
Whether they’re hairdressers who are wizards with a razor and shears, clothing designers with a knack for new looks or carpenters with all the tools of the trade, all small businesses have one thing in common: They need to get paid.
While SMB owners may be masters of their crafts, few are experts in efficiently resolving their payments pain points. They need websites that offer online payment capabilities to stay competitive, preferably with clean and simple interfaces to ensure they can quickly accept and process a range of payment methods.
These small businesses may all need to get paid, but they don’t all need — or want — to get paid the same way.
With customer expectations on the rise, SMBs also need much more from their websites than they once did. Hairdressers want to be able to book appointments at the drop of a hat, clothing designers need an online store to display their latest styles and carpenters must create a web presence to help them stand out and find work in, well, woodworking.
To help address these challenges, development platform providers are working to integrate one-touch payments on SMB websites, enabling them to better compete in the digital age. In a recent interview with PYMNTS, Greg Goldfarb, vice president of products and eCommerce at domain registrar and web hosting platform GoDaddy, explained how the company is looking to use payments-powered products and features to stand apart from other players in the space.
“We serve a very broad range of different types of small businesses or people who are in the start of creating businesses,” Goldfarb said. “So, we really try to work to offer the tools that can make all different kinds of small businesses successful online.”
Adding Payments to Online Stores, Calendars and More
GoDaddy currently serves roughly 17 million businesses around the globe, according to Goldfarb, and has customers in just about every industry. To help them grow, and help GoDaddy grow by extension, the company must provide SMBs with tools to fit their specific needs.
For example, GoDaddy recently added an online appointment calendar feature to its platform, via a partnership with Square, to aid salons and other appointment-based businesses. The calendar is designed to cut down on the number of missed appointments — and, by extension, missed revenue — by syncing with other popular calendar apps to help inform customers of their upcoming activities.
“There are millions of service-based businesses [that] get bogged down with scheduling clients,” Goldfarb said. “Missed calls, multiple emails and texts and calendar malfunctions lead to missed appointments, which directly impact their success.”
It also allows business owners to cut down on missed revenue by collecting payments when customers first book their appointments. Customers can pay by credit card, PayPal and Apple Pay, among other methods, and payments are processed by Square.
Though online calendaring can help salons and other appointment-based businesses run more efficiently, they only solve part of the problem. To keep up with larger competitors online, SMBs need eCommerce stores that are easy to navigate and that help them grow beyond their storefronts.
A robust online presence means it is critical for SMBs to be able to seamlessly accept payments online. To that end, GoDaddy now enables them to integrate payments into their web interfaces, allowing customers to purchase products with a single click, Goldfarb explained. The company’s eCommerce store platform means businesses can list up to 1,500 products and up to 10 photos per product.
Payments can be made with the same payment types that can be used for online appointments. GoDaddy partners with Square and Stripe to accept those payments.
“We want to help small businesses up their game so they can offer the same flexibility of larger merchants in a much easier way,” Goldfarb said. “Our goal is to power an experience on a small business’ site that is going to help them win over customers, no matter where that customer is coming from or what they want to do.”
Helping Small Businesses Grow Bigger
While many of the SMBs that sign up to build an online store with GoDaddy are fledgling enterprises, most don’t plan to stay that way.
Entrepreneurs typically want to grow their businesses as big and as quickly as possible, but success and growth come with challenges of their own. A growing company requires owners to offer a wide variety of payment methods and features, particularly those that pertain to the needs of their customers.
To tackle these challenges, GoDaddy offers tools to help SMB owners keep up with their growing businesses, Goldfarb said. These tools are often designed to help them compete with larger competitors by offering many of the same features. Along with tools like the online calendar, the company provides buy-online and pickup in-person services, one-tap checkout, cart abandonment reminder emails, mobile-friendly websites and eCommerce stores, among others.
“Customer expectations are increasingly being pushed higher and higher,” he added. “That’s because of the convenience, the price, all of the factors that lead to the positive interactions these customers are having by shopping online — whether it’s with Amazon Prime or with a small business. We want to help businesses keep up with those expectations by having an interface that is simple for business owners, but offers a robust and full set of features to customers.”
Going forward, GoDaddy will continue to come up with other new payment features and tools to help small businesses grow into big ones. After all, whether they’re salon savants, fashion gurus, master craftsmen or another niche expert entirely, everyone needs to get paid — and fast.
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