Base44 Wix Payments: Best Practices for Merchants Using Wix Payments
6 min
In this article
- Contact information
- Clear pricing
- Refund or return policies
- Shipping and delivery information
- Privacy policy, and terms and conditions
- Customer disputes
- Chargebacks
Wix Payments for Base44 is is currently only available to select users in the U.S
Wix Payments for Base44 lets you accept payments directly in your app or site. The best practices below help you build trust with customers, reduce disputes and chargebacks, and keep your Wix Payments account in good standing.
Contact information
Having easy‑to‑find contact details in your app works to your benefit in many ways. Clear communication enhances your customers’ experience and helps you avoid disputes and chargebacks.
- If you do not have a contact form on your app to receive messages from customers, make sure to mention your phone number, email address and an estimated response time. That way, your customers are not left waiting to hear back from you.
- Consider adding a link to your Facebook page or other social channels where customers might get a quicker reply.
- Reply in a timely manner to show your respect towards your customers and your business.
- By allowing regular back‑and‑forth with your customers, you can prevent future problems that may come up down the line.
- Document every communication between you and your customers. This is a “must do” for cases like a dispute.
- The more contact methods you provide (for example, email, contact form, social media links, phone number), the more your customers will trust you and your business.
- You must include the physical address of your permanent establishment or location in the footer of your app. If the business does not operate out of a physical location, include a mailing address for correspondence instead.
- To ensure customers know the entity they are doing business with, add the name of your legal entity or individual entrepreneur to your app, or disclose your Doing‑Business‑As name (this may be your own name as a sole proprietor). We recommend adding this to the Contact Us section of your app, but you can also add it to your app’s footer.
Clear pricing
Displaying clear prices with no hidden fees in your app is essential. Below are some tips that have proven themselves to be useful with merchants around the globe.
- Remember that customers view your app on different devices, such as phones and tablets. Make sure your layouts and fonts keep prices easy to read on all screen sizes.
- Verify that the text is clear and that the colors stand out so prices are easy to notice.
- Show the full price for each product or service, including the currency.
- Make sure any additional fee, such as shipping or handling, is clear and easy to understand before checkout. This helps prevent questions and misunderstandings, and reduces the chances that customers feel they were misled in some way.
Refund or return policies
Removing, or even moving, your refund policy to a different area in your app and making it less accessible or visible to shoppers could cause your account to be suspended.
There are more guidelines you should take into account before making changes to your existing refund policy:
- Your refund policy needs to be concise and easy to understand.
- Make sure your refund or return policy is visible wherever customers review or confirm their purchase. You can also add it to a central “Policies” or “Help” section in your app.
- Your refund policy needs to comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the regions where you operate.
- You can avoid disputes and complaints by making your refund policy visible and easy to find.
- Offering a refund or assistance to your customer is a great way to maintain your good reputation as a merchant.
- It is important to keep your customer happy. Sometimes, refunding or replacing an item is the best solution, even if the customer has made a mistake.
- Many refund requests are submitted because the item was not as described or because the service or item was not received. Clear descriptions and communication help reduce these cases.
Shipping and delivery information
If you sell physical or digital goods through your app, including accurate shipping and delivery information is a must. Your business benefits from positive feedback and word of mouth when you maintain open and honest communication with your customers.
Physical goods - what customers need to know
- Total cost of shipping - this needs to be clear and easily found.
- How will the item be shipped? Local post, UPS, Fedex?
- When will the item be delivered?
- Tracking information if available. This is crucial for locating items that weren’t delivered.
- If the item is not as described, are shipping fees returned to the customer? Is the customer liable for return-shipping fees?
Digital goods - what customers need to know
- Once payment is made, how will the digital product be delivered?
- Can the customer trace the download of the product on their end?
- If the product isn’t as expected, what options are available to the customer?
A satisfied and happy customer will recommend your services/products to others. Unfortunately, that same can’t be said for an unhappy and dissatisfied customer. If you do not make the required information visible to your customers, it could lead to (amongst other issues) negative feedback about your business on various social media platforms, as well as suspension of your account.
Privacy policy, and terms and conditions
Every app should provide a privacy policy. This is a statement that discloses the ways your app collects, uses, discloses, and manages the data of its visitors and customers. The privacy policy fulfills a legal requirement to inform a visitor about how their data is processed.
Your privacy policy should explain, in simple language:
- What data you collect from visitors and customers, such as names, email addresses or payment details where relevant.
- How you use, store and share that data.
- How long you keep data and how customers can request access to or deletion of their data, where applicable.
Customer disputes
As much as you try to please your customers, unhappy customer experiences do unfortunately occur. Naturally, these experiences are not always avoidable and are part of doing business online.
If (for any reason) a customer is dissatisfied with a purchase made on your app, they have the right to contact their bank and dispute the charges and/or purchase made at your establishment. In the majority of cases banks do tend to side with their customers, but you can lessen the blow by following some important basic steps:
- Respond to customer calls and/or emails in a timely manner.
- Consider refunding to close the dispute - this is even more recommended when dealing with a digital product.
- Keep records of emails and calls with clients. These can be used in disputes and could become the deciding factor in your favor.
- If it’s a digital product and you can prove the item was downloaded and used, this is imperative in proving your case. Records of emails/calls to your business requesting support for a digital item can prove the item was received and that you have assisted the customer.
- If a physical product, receipts showing it was delivered and signed for are no-brainers for resolving disputes and stating your side of the "story".
- If the refund request was received in the first 7 days after its delivery, did you comply?
- The "the customer is always right" principle is even more relevant when it comes to online purchases made by electronic payment methods. Regardless of the facts, the bottom line is that banks want to keep their customers happy, even if they’re wrong - not necessarily fair, but true.
Chargebacks
Sometimes a payment dispute can result in a chargeback from the customer’s bank. If you have been conducting business online for a while, you may already be familiar with chargebacks. Just in case you have not yet received one, here is a brief explanation.
A chargeback is a demand by a credit card provider for a merchant to return the funds to a consumer, following a fraudulent or disputed transaction. Unlike a refund request, where it’s just between you and the customer, a chargeback gets the banks and the credit card companies (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc.) into the mix, and it’s not a good thing.
Keep the following points in mind:
- Any chargeback requires time and resources from everyone involved. If you receive a chargeback, you also incur a chargeback fee.
- With a chargeback, the payment funds are taken from you and returned to the customer, even if you already provided the product or service.
- In addition to losing the transaction amount and fee, your business may be “marked” by the bank. The more chargebacks you get, the more banks and credit card companies may view you as a risky merchant.
- Your primary goal should be to keep chargebacks to a minimum and resolve customer disputes before they turn into chargebacks.
Regardless of who’s right or wrong, chargeback "points" are never removed from your record. The more chargebacks you get, the higher your chances are of being labeled as a "risky" merchant and then suspended from Wix Payments and/or other payment providers.
