Ecommerce Site Sales Surge 20% by Reducing Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate
Rapid economic change coupled with the changing value of money has triggered the need for employing alternate solutions to fulfill the indispensable needs of the common man. There are times when you are in a dilemma when it comes to buying high-end consumer goods.
Shopping Cart Abandonment
The owners of a high-end specialized goods retail company approached us in a bid to rejuvenate their dwindling sales. Their main concern was the huge number of unattended orders on their site leading to abandoned shopping carts.
There are several reasons associated with shopping cart abandonment, a common issue being the lack of money to make purchases. The owners had an awareness of a potential solution to their woes and it was a payment gateway named ‘Affirm’.
Initially, the merchant was a tad bit apprehensive of proceeding with Affirm, considering the cost incurred in building the feature as there were no contributed modules in Drupal for Affirm. The merchant partnered with Zyxware Technologies to evaluate the cost and the benefits. Zyxware proceeded with creating a custom module for Affirm right from scratch, which then was integrated into the existing site.
What is Affirm?
Affirm allows easy and quick financing without credit cards for payments within the US. Affirm assures ‘Pay over time, on your terms, with fixed monthly payments. Affirm allows consumers to pay for items in monthly installments with a simple and transparent fee.
Users can either sign up for an account at the Affirm website or add it as a payment option on the checkout page of their online partner stores. Users are allowed to take loans at check-out at select online stores.
How Affirm financing Works?
An insight into the working of Affirm is best described below:
- The Customer purchases with Affirm on checkout
- The Merchant captures and processes order
- Affirm then settles the full amount with Merchant and services the loan directly with Customer
Highlights of Affirm
Paypal and Authorize.Net are the most sought-after payments gateways worldwide. Even though both merchants & developers are comfortable with their integration into e-commerce portals, the same doesn’t apply to a few customers. The purchase of premium products with full settlement always create a financial step down in their monthly budgets.
The hassles of applying for a loan is another barrier when it comes to purchasing their favorite products. Interestingly, though, the number of customers seeking loans is quite high. This scenario forced the merchant to integrate “a system” which would help these customers to move their wish list into the shopping cart and fulfill orders on time.
A system that
- Provides instant loans to end consumers on the go
- Provides instant full payment capture for merchants
- Help in easy integration to e-commerce portals
An inevitable question during implementation was 'What happens if my customers don't pay?'.
Affirm assumes the credit risk from the customers and pays the merchant in full as soon as the transaction is captured.
Boost in Sales
Zyxware as the technology partner had the opportunity to integrate Affirm payment gateway on the e-commerce site.
The owners were in for a surprise on the first day itself after the deployment of the feature. They were able to recover the development cost fully and within a period of 2 months, the site witnessed a rapid growth in the sales of premium goods. The site was able to generate revenue from 46 new orders placed through Affirm, which equated to an increase of 20% in their sales.
Zyxware, with the permission of the merchant, released the customized Affirm modules for Ubercart and Drupal Commerce under GPL (General Public License). To know more about how we can help your business integrate solutions to your website or to know more about Affirm or module customization, please get in touch with us!
Thank you Jyothish Sebastian and Smitha V. Nair for providing their inputs for this article.
