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Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

kalzumeus.com

111–120 of 164 posts

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are different from most of users buying on Internet. Most prefer entering credit card directly.

i find that really hard to believe in this day and age of cyber criminal and so much activity in terms of stolen identities.

Try to run your own web sites that has these options.

On my web site PostJobFree.com there are 3 payment options: Direct (backed by Stripe), PayPal, and Google Checkout. Stripe covers ~85% of new transactions. Paypal ~10%. Google Checkout ~5%.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#112
post #97
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The light gray color of your comments should give you a hint as to how welcome they are in this community.

This community can't handle the truth. Instead it idolizes dumbass ideas.

Wow dude, you are ANGRY about something... that's fine, I get it, but you might consider looking into what that's about. It can't be much fun going through life pretending you want to fight everyone. To each their own I suppose.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#113
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Training users to haggle at checkout and not trust the list prices Definitely, this is quite a risky one. Just speaking for myself if I notice a Cart Abandon strategy, I will always abandon my cart in the future to keep getting the dicsount.

Firstly, the merchant still gets the sale and is happy (it's like boasting about getting 20% off at Bed Bath and Beyond). All the merchant has to do is skip an email here and there (if they want). This is to say: you have not found a loophole; you are not a concern to the merchant; no one should be frightened by this tactic because of your story.

> Firstly, the merchant still gets the sale and is happy (it's like boasting about getting 20% off at Bed Bath and Beyond).

True, but they would have gotten more money had they held their ground. I was still going to buy the item, sometimes I abandon the cart accidentally because I got distracted.

However if you shove a discount in my face assuming I'm about to walk, I'm going to use it even if I was just about to pay full price without hesitation.

> This is to say: you have not found a loophole; you are not a concern to the merchant; no one should be frightened by this tactic because of your story.

Assuming the 15%-20% is all extra markup, this is true. Also it's not "my story" for the record. Sites like retailmenot index cart abandon strategies. Way more people are going to use that discount than just those you intend. If that's an acceptable loss, then great.

It's still not necessarily a great idea depending on your business.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#114

Stripe the service is fantastic. I just hope they can get the financial side together soon. They sent me a 1099 on April 14 this year (you know, one day before taxes are due). Fortunately I hadn't filed yet (I was literally typing everything in TurboTax as the postman came). Not only was that usually illegal (at least for traditional 1099's; I don't know if the same rules apply to 1099-K's...haven't looked), it was h…

if i was missing a form I'd have filled for extension probably a week before april and noted the parties that were owning me forms on the request.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#115
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, the merchant still gets the sale and is happy (it's like boasting about getting 20% off at Bed Bath and Beyond). All the merchant has to do is skip an email here and there (if they want). This is to say: you have not found a loophole; you are not a concern to the merchant; no one should be frightened by this tactic because of your story.

> Firstly, the merchant still gets the sale and is happy (it's like boasting about getting 20% off at Bed Bath and Beyond). True, but they would have gotten more money had they held their ground. I was still going to buy the item, sometimes I abandon the cart accidentally because I got distracted. However if you shove a discount in my face assuming I'm about to walk, I'm going to use it even if I was just about to pa…

> True, but they would have gotten more money had they held their ground. I was still going to buy the item, sometimes I abandon the cart accidentally because I got distracted.

This is one of the very things they are trying to fight.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#116
post #110
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your volume a lot of cash. Fast Spring is 5.9% plus $.95 or 8.9% flat per order. Stripe 2.9% + 30 cents.

Chase Paymentech - ~1.9% + $0.15 <---- WINNER!

Stripe would end up costing an additional $20,000 a year or thereabouts for us.

Due to their instant sign-up and almost instant approval however, they were the only option for a quickfix while we await chase or braintree to approve our applications. :)

Love their UI & easy integration though.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#117
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, the merchant still gets the sale and is happy (it's like boasting about getting 20% off at Bed Bath and Beyond). All the merchant has to do is skip an email here and there (if they want). This is to say: you have not found a loophole; you are not a concern to the merchant; no one should be frightened by this tactic because of your story.

> Firstly, the merchant still gets the sale and is happy (it's like boasting about getting 20% off at Bed Bath and Beyond). True, but they would have gotten more money had they held their ground. I was still going to buy the item, sometimes I abandon the cart accidentally because I got distracted. However if you shove a discount in my face assuming I'm about to walk, I'm going to use it even if I was just about to pa…

It's a numbers game, and the money form extra sales might very well make up for a few sneaky users abusing it.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#118

Stripe the service is fantastic. I just hope they can get the financial side together soon. They sent me a 1099 on April 14 this year (you know, one day before taxes are due). Fortunately I hadn't filed yet (I was literally typing everything in TurboTax as the postman came). Not only was that usually illegal (at least for traditional 1099's; I don't know if the same rules apply to 1099-K's...haven't looked), it was h…

Do payment processors even have to send you 1099? If I'm not mistaken, Google Checkout and PayPal did not send me 1099 - I just had to report all the revenue received from them myself.

This is a good question and I would really like to see it answered.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#119

I work in the same co-working facility as an education-based startup that switched from using PayPal(where user gets redirected to PayPal) to Stripe (completely branded checkout) and their conversion rates increased 40% overnight and have stayed at those levels. After digging into their API, we're actually building our new company, MoonClerk, on top of Stripe's API. We'll basically be an abstraction layer on top of S…

How is this possible? Through Paypal customers can also pay with credit cards, and even more. They can use checks, or bank transfers (very important in Europe where credit cards are not as popular), etc. Why would usage of Paypal decrease conversion compared to pure credit cards? My guess is that a lot of customers don't know what Paypal is and don't realize they can just use their credit card.

And the PayPal flow is godawful - direct to a new page, get prompted to: 1. Log in. 2. Create Account. 3. Enter payment deets. (Small text near bottom of page, not always available, depending on the merchant).

Even if you have an account, they don't consistently keep my default payment method - often switching back to my bank account even when I've made a CC my default.

This all adds up to a level of friction that I hate, hate, hate, hate as a user. I can understand people abandoning a purchase at that point.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#120
post #36
post #5

Or spend a few hours, get a merchant account through a bank and authorize.net with much lower fees and a pretty standard API. Tons of classes to use authorize.net with and super simple... no point of adding ANOTHER layer... charging with a merchant account is trivial.

That's what a company I worked with did, and I thought it was a bad decision. The per-transaction fees are lower, but there is a monthly (or yearly) cost. The API is big because it covers so many cases that you probably won't use. Plus there are fees. Sure, they'll let you do e-checks (every customer wants those, right?), but that's a fee. Return? That's a fee. Chargeback? Fee. Process transactions in real-time inste…

I would use stripe for my products store but with authorize.net we are on 1 day delay deposits. Stripe is 7 days. With seasonal sales and inventory/advertising costs 7 business days is a long time.

We use stripe for everything else we build for clients though, and it's awesome.

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