Okay, so it's not a no-brainer, but upon reading the article: How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment: 10 No-Brainers, I feel compelled to add the 0th no-brainer: Don't Reject, Redirect! What does that mean? It means that if there is a failure in a customer's credit card payment after they click buy due to your fraud controls, AVS/CVV rules, or an error, don't leave that sale on the table.
If you were running a store and had trouble swiping a credit card, would you just tell the customer to go away? Of course not! You'd swipe the card a few more times, try hand entering it, and if that didn't work, what would you do? You'd ask them for a different form of payment.
Why can't you do the same thing online? YOU CAN! Here's how: if the credit card payment fails, put up an error message (make very sure the customer realizes the payment has failed, they need to know or the next step won't work) and offer to redirect them to PayPal or another alternate payment method (don't do it automatically, it's just going to confuse people, and you'll definitely fail to convert the sale that way). They can even try the same card there to fund the transaction if they want. The fact is, you have nothing to lose - they already clicked buy, if you give them a way to pay that is not much more work, more often than not, they'll take it.
Simple enough, right? The key point is messaging, though. Unless it's clear that the payment has failed to go through (explain that even though they might see a temporary authorization online on their credit card statement, no money has or will be pulled from their account - somebody will check and they'll call to complain and/or yell - trust me on this one), you won't get people clicking to log into PayPal. Would you?
If all else fails, put up the phone number, e-mail address, or online support information to give the customer a chance to understand what happened, and correct any mistaken information (DO NOT HAVE THE CUSTOMER CORRECT PAYMENT OR OTHER SENSITIVE INFORMATION OVER UNSECURED E-MAIL OR CHAT!).
