Bold Commerce Launches One-click Checkout Solution – WWD

Bold Commerce has unveiled the “Bold Checkout: Buy Now” solution, which allows brands to offer shoppers “Amazon-like one-click functionality directly from their owned channels, without sacrificing shopper relationships or checkout customizations,” the company said in a statement.

Bold Commerce said for most merchants, one-click checkout solutions are limited to third-party digital wallets and quick pay-now options, which include PayPal, Google Pay and Apple Pay. “While these solutions address retail brands’ desire to let shoppers check out faster, they introduce fragmented experiences and require brands to hand off their shoppers at the most critical moment in their shopping journey,” Bold Commerce said. “Brands that opt for them also have to compromise features that are important to customers and to their business model (e.g., in-store pickup or the ability to collect loyalty points as part of the buy now experience).”

Vera Bradley, Harry Rosen, Staples Canada, Pepsi and Mars Petcare are some of the brands already using Bold Commerce‘s flexible checkout solutions, which will now include the Buy Now options.

Yvan Boisjoli, chief executive officer and cofounder of Bold Commerce, said retailers have one checkout experience through their e-commerce platform, “and it’s costly and complex to change. Without the ability to improve, shoppers dropping off during the checkout process is a big contributor to the 70 percent cart abandonment rate experienced by brands industrywide. Our one-click solution demonstrates that it’s possible for retailers to both streamline the shopper’s checkout process and completely customize the entire customer journey.”

Asked about the impetus behind launching a one-click checkout solution and the value proposition for consumers as well as for retailers, Boisjoli told WWD that currently, retailers and brands “are under pressure to offer shoppers a very quick checkout solution or they’ll lose conversions. But the options for introducing one-click to their e-commerce sites and other channels have been fairly limited.

“Current one-click checkout solutions, such as third-party digital wallets and quick pay-now options address brands’ desires to get shoppers through checkout faster,” Boisjoli explained. “But as third-party vendors, they require brands to send their shoppers outside of their brand immersive shopping experience to an external checkout at the most critical moment in their shopping journey.”

Boisjoli said this is all occurring at a time when retailers and brands “are very conscious of the need to own customer relationships in order to drive retention and deepen loyalty.”

“With existing one-click solutions, retailers and brands have to sacrifice really important functionality that they want to offer at checkout (such as the option to buy online but pick up in store, accrue loyalty points with purchases or edit parts of their order),” Boisjoli said. “We launched Buy Now as an alternative to these options — a one-click solution that makes it possible for brands to customize their checkout based on the specific experience they want their shoppers to have while preserving the shopper relationship and increasing conversion.”

Boisjoli said it is important to note that 48 percent of all shoppers proceed from the cart into checkout — and then drop off before completing their purchase. “This is because the checkout isn’t optimized in the same way the rest of customer experience is,” Boisjoli said, adding that retailers can use the company’s one-click solution to offer shoppers “Amazon-like one-click functionality directly from their owned channels, without sacrificing shopper relationships or checkout customizations.”

Asked how Bold Commerce’s solution differentiates itself from others in the market, Boisjoli said until now, there hasn’t been a way for retailers to offer one-click checkout “without sacrificing shopper relationships or checkout functionality that shoppers have come to expect.”

“Bold Commerce’s Buy Now is the only one-click solution that can be customized to drive conversion while delivering brand and business consistency, across any owned channel,” Boisjoli told WWD. “Existing one-click options attempt to apply a brand’s look and feel to their otherwise standardized experiences.”

Boisjoli said Buy Now, on the other hand, “enables brands to customize every aspect of their checkout experience. Brands can integrate the features that they know drive conversion — think BOPIS, adding promo codes or loyalty rewards — directly into their one-click checkout.”

As a result, shoppers have access to “all the same information and functionality that they would during a standard checkout, only quicker. Shortening the path to purchase with one-click checkout shouldn’t require brands, or shoppers to lose these capabilities.” Boisjoli noted.

The Buy Now solution also enables brands to own the entire checkout experience, “meaning that they don’t have to exchange shoppers’ information with third parties to give shoppers access to quick payments,” the CEO explained. “Brands retain their customer data and relationships, which helps them to nurture long-lasting relationships.”

Boisjoli said brands can tailor the one-click checkout experience “based on the channel that customers are coming from.”

“For example, if a shopper is checking out quickly from social media, they’ll have less context than they would coming from a product page on a brand’s site,” Boisjoli said. “With Bold’s Buy Now, brands have the flexibility to include product details for that item right in the checkout flow to ensure shoppers get the information they need directly in checkout, no matter where they originate.”