How an IaaS provider can make payment for services more convenient: 2 simple rules
Previously, we have repeatedly talked about our experience in optimizing internal services and general development of the service in the direction of increasing the convenience of working with IaaS even for those who have not experienced server administration and are far from the IT sphere as a whole.
A couple of examples:
Today we decided to discuss the topic of convenience of making payments for IaaS services and share our experience with various payment gateways.
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/ Photo by Alexander Baxevanis / CC
Transition to new technologies is always stress. Often, people are not ready to abandon the usual tools in favor of more effective new products. Instead of blaming them for this, it is worth figuring out the real benefits of innovation.
As an example, IaaS. This service did not appear yesterday, but a significant portion of companies are still afraid to give control of their IT infrastructure to the outside. At the same time, the maintenance of its own server fleet is becoming increasingly costly: it is necessary to pay wages to administrators and maintain their hardware.
Our experience in introducing new products led us to the following conclusions.
In order for people to quickly understand your product, you should think about how much you are an open company. Ease of use of any functionality is a subjective concept, therefore, additional work will be required here.
From the speed of reaction to messages in the profiles of social networks and maintaining a corporate blog, for example, on “Habrahabr”, to topical guides, in which simple words give answers to the most common questions, step by step instructions and tips for beginners are given.
All this is necessary so that people can act independently - without calling the support service with a request to sort it out.
One of these solutions, which we decided to use, was a special calculator that allows you to quickly assess the level of necessary expenditures on certain cloud resources. It is available for use even by non-IT professionals.
We started with the fact that we placed it on the site’s main page, but later on we slightly revised this approach and identified three main services for which we can get a calculation:
This decision allows you to instantly establish the necessary expectations regarding the potential costs of cloud resources and decide on cooperation.
/ Calculator for VPS / VDS, which includes including a link to additional information - articles on the category " Tariffing and billing "
In addition to providing general information, openness also means promptly informing customers about failures and problems with the provision of an adequate level of service. Even large providers encounter such situations, there are also technical difficulties with the payment gateway - this was exactly the problem we had to solve at the end of 2014 during the “fall” of the Money Online systems.
We were forced to inform about the events to all clients whom this fault could affect, and to offer other options for resolving the situation. In addition, we quickly examined alternative payment gateways and started connecting them.
And here we come to the second rule.
Sophisticated interface, technical problems, high load of support services - all this does not bother your customers. Few people are interested in delving into the details of the structure of your business processes and the various difficulties associated with the work of your IT specialists.
Difficulties with the Money Online payment gateway prompted us to analyze alternatives. We started with paypal. He was also chosen due to the presence of a substantial stream of foreign clients who would like to pay for our services using this service.
Independent study of the documentation showed that working with the PayPal API requires numerous “dances” you know with what. The PayPal support service refused to help and suggest a way out of the situation, therefore completion of the integration setup required us to take various tricks from the development point of view. Anyway, we entered into a direct agreement and safely added PayPal as a new payment method.
Next, we took up the connection of Robokassa, the more familiar gateway for the Russian-speaking segment of the Network. It was not without similar difficulties, but communication with colleagues from Robokassa made it possible to eliminate a number of outdated descriptions in the API documentation and move on. As a result, this payment gateway was also set up safely.
As these gateways are used, we have made sure that they complement Money Online well and insure the situation in case of further technological difficulties. Nevertheless, we considered other options that potential partners offered us.
That is how we started cooperation with the PayMaster payment system, which offered us favorable terms on commission and a very convenient API. At the moment we have configured all the available PayMaster integrations and plan to use this payment gateway as the main one (including with the option to connect recurring payments).
The technological impeccability of service and the availability of all systems is a critical factor. The absence of failures and the availability of alternative tools allows us not to deal with situational micromanagement of individual problems with payment (although previously we had to repeatedly “get into the situation” and extend the service to a number of clients during failures on the payment gateway side).
Such nuances may not affect your revenue the first time you enter them, but they will definitely change the attitude of your customers to what you do for their convenience. It is this approach that makes it possible to talk about trust, which serves as the starting point for stable and long-term growth of the company.
Additional materials on the topic:
A couple of examples:
Today we decided to discuss the topic of convenience of making payments for IaaS services and share our experience with various payment gateways.
')
/ Photo by Alexander Baxevanis / CC
Transition to new technologies is always stress. Often, people are not ready to abandon the usual tools in favor of more effective new products. Instead of blaming them for this, it is worth figuring out the real benefits of innovation.
As an example, IaaS. This service did not appear yesterday, but a significant portion of companies are still afraid to give control of their IT infrastructure to the outside. At the same time, the maintenance of its own server fleet is becoming increasingly costly: it is necessary to pay wages to administrators and maintain their hardware.
Our experience in introducing new products led us to the following conclusions.
Rule 1: Open Information
In order for people to quickly understand your product, you should think about how much you are an open company. Ease of use of any functionality is a subjective concept, therefore, additional work will be required here.
From the speed of reaction to messages in the profiles of social networks and maintaining a corporate blog, for example, on “Habrahabr”, to topical guides, in which simple words give answers to the most common questions, step by step instructions and tips for beginners are given.
All this is necessary so that people can act independently - without calling the support service with a request to sort it out.
One of these solutions, which we decided to use, was a special calculator that allows you to quickly assess the level of necessary expenditures on certain cloud resources. It is available for use even by non-IT professionals.
We started with the fact that we placed it on the site’s main page, but later on we slightly revised this approach and identified three main services for which we can get a calculation:
This decision allows you to instantly establish the necessary expectations regarding the potential costs of cloud resources and decide on cooperation.
/ Calculator for VPS / VDS, which includes including a link to additional information - articles on the category " Tariffing and billing "
In addition to providing general information, openness also means promptly informing customers about failures and problems with the provision of an adequate level of service. Even large providers encounter such situations, there are also technical difficulties with the payment gateway - this was exactly the problem we had to solve at the end of 2014 during the “fall” of the Money Online systems.
We were forced to inform about the events to all clients whom this fault could affect, and to offer other options for resolving the situation. In addition, we quickly examined alternative payment gateways and started connecting them.
And here we come to the second rule.
Rule 2: "This is a developer problem"
Sophisticated interface, technical problems, high load of support services - all this does not bother your customers. Few people are interested in delving into the details of the structure of your business processes and the various difficulties associated with the work of your IT specialists.
Difficulties with the Money Online payment gateway prompted us to analyze alternatives. We started with paypal. He was also chosen due to the presence of a substantial stream of foreign clients who would like to pay for our services using this service.
Independent study of the documentation showed that working with the PayPal API requires numerous “dances” you know with what. The PayPal support service refused to help and suggest a way out of the situation, therefore completion of the integration setup required us to take various tricks from the development point of view. Anyway, we entered into a direct agreement and safely added PayPal as a new payment method.
Next, we took up the connection of Robokassa, the more familiar gateway for the Russian-speaking segment of the Network. It was not without similar difficulties, but communication with colleagues from Robokassa made it possible to eliminate a number of outdated descriptions in the API documentation and move on. As a result, this payment gateway was also set up safely.
As these gateways are used, we have made sure that they complement Money Online well and insure the situation in case of further technological difficulties. Nevertheless, we considered other options that potential partners offered us.
That is how we started cooperation with the PayMaster payment system, which offered us favorable terms on commission and a very convenient API. At the moment we have configured all the available PayMaster integrations and plan to use this payment gateway as the main one (including with the option to connect recurring payments).
The technological impeccability of service and the availability of all systems is a critical factor. The absence of failures and the availability of alternative tools allows us not to deal with situational micromanagement of individual problems with payment (although previously we had to repeatedly “get into the situation” and extend the service to a number of clients during failures on the payment gateway side).
Such nuances may not affect your revenue the first time you enter them, but they will definitely change the attitude of your customers to what you do for their convenience. It is this approach that makes it possible to talk about trust, which serves as the starting point for stable and long-term growth of the company.
Additional materials on the topic:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/325976/
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