One of the issues that always seemed to crop up when I was working in the network space was keeping people on site whilst making transactions. Site owners were reluctant to redirect traffic to merchants for a number of reasons, the acquisition trail would now be out of their hands, they would be unlikely to purchase products from multiple retailers and the amount of impressions generated for the site owner would be effected.

On the plus side the purchaser has more confidence in submitting payment details through a trusted retailer, the retailer (merchant/advertiser call them what you will) would be seen as the point of contact for delivery and quality of service issues etc. There are to my mind then pros and cons to developing an on site payment solution.

To me though this is of secondary importance to why people have visited the site in the first place, and once again it comes back to down to the nature of the traffic viewing the site. To me completing the transaction on site will be a boon to shopping focused sites. How much better for an incentive or loyalty site to be able to process a transaction and then suggest other products that the visitor might be interested in, as someone who’s just purchased a hi fi, how about this speaker/headphone system. This would be much in the way that travel aggregators look to upsell you with insurance or car hire, hotel transfers etc.

For those sites whose traffic is there not with the intention of shopping in the first place though, personally I doubt that it would have much affect. The issue is not what the visitor does, but why they are there in the first place. Accepting on site transactions as part of a broader monetization strategy would make sense, but it’s a piece of the puzzle and not the whole of the solution.

Rob, MD, One