Expanding testing coverage across payment methods and borders drives customer retention in the trillion-dollar e-commerce industry.

Applause, a world leader in testing and digital quality, today released the results of its first Digital Payments and Localization Survey, which revealed that most users will abandon apps that are poorly localized or have payment issues. The impact to business is significant, with 41% of respondents having encountered an issue that prevented a recent purchase.

With global e-commerce sales estimated to exceed $6.3 trillion by year-end (Statista), organizations’ success depends on comprehensive digital quality. Yet, despite developers’ investment in localization and payment testing best practices, they are not meeting global expectations for facilitating transactions on apps and websites.

This was the conclusion drawn by the more than 6,700 software developers, QA professionals and independent consumers worldwide who participated in the survey, which explored digital payment and localization testing strategies as well as user behaviors and preferences.

Key findings:

• 41% of consumers encountered an issue that impacted their ability to make a payment recently. With high cart abandonment rates contributing to an estimated $111 billion to $136 billion in lost revenue for U.S. retailers each year (Retail TouchPoints), development teams must increase their focus on software testing and other quality assurance techniques to ensure seamless functionality.
• 76% of consumers are likely to abandon a transaction if their preferred payment method is not accepted. According to the survey, credit/debit cards continue to be the most popular method, preferred by 78% of U.S. consumers, with mobile/digital wallets a close second at 68%.
• Despite growing consumer demand for mobile/digital wallets, providers are not keeping pace. 62% of software and QA professionals say customer preferences drive which payment methods to accept, but are misaligned with consumers as only 56% of them accept mobile/digital wallets.
• Developers are focused on localization, but continue to test by "dogfooding" which limits coverage and introduces bias. While 66% of organizations surveyed are working to adapt their customer journeys and checkout processes to regional and cultural norms, more than half (59%) rely on in-house developers and QA staff who are native speakers to test apps for each language.
• 52% of consumers have abandoned an app due to poor localization, contributing to revenue loss from cart abandonment. Effective localization – particularly translation accuracy – is critical to retaining users. Respondents shared the top localization issues they have encountered: 48% of app responses used incorrect words or syntax, 40% assumed local knowledge with which they were unfamiliar, and 38% had misspellings.

“Choice and speed are top of mind for consumers. If they can’t quickly make a purchase with their preferred payment method, they’re not going to continue on with the experience,” said Luke Damian, Chief Growth Officer, Applause. “Digital payments is a complex landscape. Beyond transaction processing, developers need to think about returns, exchanges, receipts, rewards programs and more. Every aspect of the customer journey is an opportunity to drive customer satisfaction and retention, which is why expanding test coverage through crowdtesting is so critical.”

He added: “Innovators like Accor, one of the world’s largest hospitality brands, come to Applause for payments and localization expertise and experience high ROI. Community-based testing ensures the user experience is optimal, no matter where their customers are located or what payment instrument is used.”

“As an international business, Accor relies on Applause to ensure customers all over the world can seamlessly book and pay for hotels through our e-commerce platform,” said Rémi Lakmeche, VP E-Commerce Engineering, Accor. “Applause’s global community of digital experts enables us to perform live payments testing in real scenarios with real payment instruments, so we can identify and address potential issues quickly. It gives us a high level of confidence about the quality of our product to our customers.”

The Digital Payments and Localization Survey is part of the State of Digital Quality content series from Applause. Additional insights from the survey can be found on today’s related survey blog. The third annual State of Digital Quality Report, which analyzes a representative sample of its testing data and reports on the most common flaws in digital experiences in several industries, will be available in September 2024.

About Applause

Applause is a world leader in testing and digital quality. Brands today win or lose customers through digital interactions, and Applause delivers authentic feedback on the quality of digital assets and experiences, provided by real users in real-world settings. Our disruptive approach harnesses the power of the Applause platform and leverages the uTest community of more than one million independent digital testers worldwide. Unlike traditional testing methods (including lab-based and offshoring), Applause responds with the speed, scale and flexibility that digital-focused brands require and expect. Applause provides insightful, actionable testing results that can directly inform go/no go release decisions, helping development teams build better and faster, and release with confidence. Digital-first brands rely on Applause as a best practice to deliver the digital experiences their customers love.

Learn more at www.applause.com.

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