EU Retailers Pivot to Seamless One-Click Checkout With Choice

Shopping cart abandonment — an online retailer’s worst nightmare.

According to Jérémy Pinto, co-founder of French retail tech firm JUST, research shows that of the 70% of online carts abandoned in France, half of them are abandoned due to an overly complex purchasing journey, which often includes setting up an account and filling in the same information and forms repeatedly with each purchase.

For eMerchants, that abandonment amounts to an average of 42% of their customers lost in the process, a high cost to pay in these tough economic times.

To address these overlooked customer pain points, JUST offers a one-click purchasing solution which spares online buyers the burden of having to create an account, while democratizing the shopping experience for online merchants.

Related: Leading Online Retailers Make Customer Experience Part of the Product

“The first time you click on the ‘buy now with one-click’ button, we ask you to enter your checkout information. And once you fill it out and complete your first purchase, you can now use JUST on all online websites that offer the solution,” Pinto told PYMNTS in an interview.

In six months of launch, the one-click purchasing solution provider has onboarded 60 online brands including French eShops L’Avant-Gardiste, Puissante and Noo — and according to Pinto, they have since recorded an increase in their conversion rate by 30%, coupled with an 11% drop in the cart abandonment rate.

When it comes to competition, Pinto’s view is that it’s not “very tough” in France or in Europe more broadly, even though they are starting to see new players entering the market. In terms of markets where they see huge growth potential, the U.K. tops the list, followed by Western Europe — mainly France, Germany and the Netherlands — and then Southern Europe, where countries like Spain and Italy have fast-growing markets.

However, one factor that cannot be overlooked when doing business with these different markets is the issue of the fragmented European market.

“Germans prefer bank-to-bank payments while the inter-bank online payment system iDEAL is widely used by people in the Netherlands, so we need to adapt our product to [different types of] payments methods and the specific needs of each market,” he explained.

And given the growing variety of payment options, he said the focus should no longer be on payments, but rather on simplifying the purchasing journey — regardless of how customers pay.

“What we are selling is not payments, it’s experience, and the experience [expectation] is the same in every country,” he said. “[The goal is therefore] to embed the maximum number of payment methods in the solution and at the same time, keep the same seamless one-click checkout experience.”

Buy, Return, Refund Quickly

For a region that is home to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), considered one of the toughest data privacy laws in the world, protecting customers’ data should be a key priority of any company doing business in Europe. It’s why Pinto stressed that their solution is compliant with GDPR standards, and that selling customer data is not an option.

“JUST is co-owner of the data we collect, and the main use of that information is simply to fill the form on the website,” he noted.

He added that while many consider the GDPR regulation too stringent, it shouldn’t be the case if customers are informed on how their data is being used. Moreover, left to him, “GDPR is good for Europe.”

See also: PayPal’s Fraud Chief Says ‘Story-Based’ Analytics Can Fix eCommerce’s Weakest Link

Moving forward, the French FinTech startup will continue its work aimed at simplifying the interactions between merchants and consumers, with plans to move beyond payments on mobile applications to expanding payments to use SMS messages, or through direct Instagram messages.

One area where he also sees significant growth potential is the post-purchase experience. It’s the reason why their future plans will involve building an application, first for merchants and then consumers, to follow up on purchases and access a one-click return feature they can use to get refunded easily.

“Here at JUST we believe that purchase and post-purchase are extremely connected. This is what Amazon did for many years. You buy very quickly, you are refunded very quickly, [and] you can return your product very quickly,” Pinto pointed out.

It’s a message he’s shared with merchants in their network, which is simply the fact that having the best products, or the most sophisticated websites, won’t get them far if the shopping experience is bad.

“Consumers won’t come back to your website because the most important thing they care about is the experience they had and how fast they were able to pay,” he said.

Sign up here for daily updates on all of PYMNTS’ Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) coverage.