D2C sales made smarter and swifter with Shiprocket Checkout

The road to checkout is paved with good intentions. D2C (Direct-to-Customer) brands invest considerable time, money, and resources to draw customers to their sites and entice them to buy. These companies leverage various channels, including email, social media, and search engine optimisation only to have customers add items to their carts before abandoning them.

According to Statista, cart abandonment rates have been growing steadily, reaching a staggering 70% since 2013. Customers drop off before checkout for a variety of reasons—poor user experiences, the absence of an Estimated Date of Delivery (EDD), no return policy, as well as unclear and complex payment options can deter one from completing a transaction, thereby impacting a brand’s bottom line.

Checking out of the Shopping Experience

Blackberrys Menswear, one of India’s first luxury menswear clothing brands with over 1,200 brick-and-mortar stores, forayed into e-commerce two years ago. It quickly discovered that checkouts were a vital part of the shopping experience since many customers chose to drop out at this point—even before the payment gateway.

According to Paritosh Bindra, Vice President - Ecommerce, Blackberrys Menswear, “We have done anything and everything, right from getting the customer through social media and Google, all the way to the website. Then, when we brought the customer to the checkout page, almost 80% of people dropped out. This happens for multiple reasons. One of them being address details. Customers may have filled in their address details but have trouble, for instance, with the pincode, and so, they drop off.”

Smooth sailing with Shiprocket’s smart solutions

With checkouts being a pain point for both customers and brands, tech and ecommerce enablers like Shiprocket have taken it upon themselves to create swift and seamless checkout solutions. The company’s Smart Checkout solution is powered by a suite of intelligent solutions, such as streamlined checkout, a large database for address prefill, responsive UI, aftersell features, an intuitive dashboard, smooth payment gateway integration, BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) options, and an Exhaustive Discount Engine. Additionally, the Checkout solution enables brands to showcase EDD, similar to the biggest marketplaces in India. This feature is currently unique to Shiprocket, unmatched by any similar solutions offered by any other players.

These features offer brands the opportunity to increase conversions, reduce RTOs (Return to Origin), build brand trust, and mitigate cart abandonment. D2C brands can transform their sales strategy with Shiprocket Checkout’s personalised user experiences, industry-leading and accurate address prefill rates, multiple payment gateway options, and easy integrations.

The buck stops at checkout

The story of Blackberrys’ online sales neatly dovetailed with Shiprocket Checkout.

Blackberrys analysed data from its own website and recognised it had a problem with conversions. The source? Checkout abandonment due to time spent filling in customer address details.

Turns out, a large percentage of customers on the company’s online store were dropping out midway through filling in these details while another estimated 25% left afterwards when clicking on payment options. Unlike ecommerce giants like Amazon, brands like Blackberrys couldn’t provide pre-filled details to customers to improve the checkout process.

“What we realised, over a period of time, is that if this process is not smooth for a consumer, then there is an issue with us,” said Bindra.

A smart solution to match the savvy shopper

Blackberrys began to explore several solutions with players from the logistics and shipping sector. The objective was to find something that would streamline its operations and drastically reduce this two-to-three-step process for customers.

This is where Shiprocket Checkout made a difference. With features like one-click and one-page checkouts, intelligent address prefill, and easy payment gateway integrations with PayU, Razorpay, Billdesk, Cashfree, Easebuzz, and Cred, the solution made the experience quick and convenient for consumers.

Shiprocket was also able to provide Blackberrys with updated payment methods. In the last few years, India has witnessed the rise of digital payments, as reflected in the growth of total digital payment transaction volumes from 2,071 crores in FY 2017-2018 to 13,462 crores in FY 2022-23, at a CAGR of 45%. UPI-first checkout and BNPL integrations in Shiprocket’s Checkout solution helped Blackberrys stay abreast of the customer’s evolving payment preferences.

Additionally, Shiprocket paired UPI-first checkouts with unique discounts, strategic promotions, and personalised offers to encourage customers to buy their products through convenient payment channels.

According to Bindra, it all boils down to Shiprocket’s depth of experience and knowledge in the field of logistics. He said, “Shiprocket has a footprint in terms of understanding who the consumer is and what their address is because they've been delivering so many shipments for multiple partners”.

Armed with a database of 140 million data points to enhance address prefill, Shiprocket was able to provide accurate details for 95% of Blackberrys’ customers. The company expects this number to increase as it continues to build its database for customer address details.

Predicting and paring down return to order

Return to Order (RTO) is a retailer’s nightmare. A CNBC report revealed that retail return fraud is at an all-time high, with customers refusing to receive or return orders, leaving retailers to field the costs. Blackberrys worked in tandem with Shiprocket to address the problem of RTOs by accessing Shiprocket’s vast customer database.

Shiprocket placed checks into the system to alert Blackberrys of customers with a record of high RTOs. Blackberrys would then offer prepaid options, through Shiprocket’s COD to Prepaid Conversion Feature, which discourages COD transactions by charging a fee at checkout. These measures have led to an increase in prepaid ratios and a 20% reduction in RTOs. The company aims to take this further by personalising the shopping experience for Blackberrys’ shoppers.

For instance, Shiprocket may have a profile of a customer as a repeat RTO offender. However, if the customer happens to be a loyal Blackberrys customer, they should still receive the option of COD. Ultimately, the menswear brand is looking at reducing its RTO ratio to around 8% this year and is actively working with Shiprocket to achieve this.

At present, Shiprocket provides personalised experiences through customised colours, discount banners, and buy-now buttons to match a brand’s guidelines.

What’s next?

Bindra remains pragmatic about this year’s goals, sharing, “At the end of the day, your conversion never goes over and above 1-2%. Even if you make a 10% shift in that 1%, that's a big conversion when traffic is at a higher level.”

Shiprocket Checkout, on the other hand, has already rung in the new year with a big collaboration. The ecommerce enabler is partnering with Scandinavian caller ID application Truecaller to reshape the online shopping experience. This partnership allows 3 lakh shiprocket merchants to simplify their onboarding process through a one-tap, number-based, OTP-less verification process. This feature, combined with Shiprocket Checkout’s one-click feature will empower merchants to deliver lightning-fast checkout experiences, boosting sales conversions by upto 60% and taking sales to a new level in 2024.