E-commerce Insights: Add the Fifth ‘P’ of Marketing

A 2004 CyberSource study shows that merchants offering four payment options, such as credit cards, gift certificates, e-checks and PayPal, get 20 percent higher conversion than those offering just credit cards.

I suspect this 20 percent statistic is somewhat inflated by the fact that the best online merchants also are the most likely to implement additional payment types. But there are real gains to be had. PayPal spokesperson Sara Bettencourt claims an average of 14 percent in conversion lift after adding the PayPal payment method to a site.