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Peter Christian is a family firm with a tailoring heritage dating from 1860. Today, it is mostly online and provides menswear to a discerning demographic of males aged around 40 and older, in the UK and around the world.
“The quality of our products and service are what keep customers coming back,” explains Marketing Director Max Alderton. “At heart, Peter Christian is all about looking good and feeling great. We’ve created a unique voice for traditional casual wear.”
We sat down with Max to discuss how Fastlane by PayPal is helping streamline the checkout experience and meet the needs of Peter Christian’s customers.
Peter Christian had seen increased web traffic over the previous 12 months, but this had come at a cost and was not generating the same uplift in revenue.
“We’ve had more add-to-bags but a lower checkout rate. There’s a lot more browsing, but browsing’s expensive – ecommerce sites pay a lot for traffic,” Max explains.
The balance of the firm’s online traffic has also changed.
“This year, for the first time ever, mobile is our main source of traffic. Because we have an older demographic, we’ve previously been desktop-heavy.”
“But mobile checkout is hard when the customer has to type in every single thing,” Max continues, “because you’re competing with every notification that comes across their screen in those three minutes.”
Peter Christian’s shoppers expect high levels of service. “Our demographic is especially demanding. They are slower to move to mobile but, once they move, they expect everything to be easy. The customer experience is critical for us.”
The Peter Christian ecommerce site runs on BigCommerce and has used PayPal since the beginning.
Max needed a solution to deliver a secure but streamlined experience for customers using guest checkout, especially on mobile.
Max found the solution in Fastlane by PayPal.
By enabling shoppers to checkout with just their email address, Fastlane accelerates guest checkouts, helping improve conversion on both mobile and desktop. For Peter Christian, that means less friction and more sales.
“Fastlane accelerates our BigCommerce guest checkout with a secure, 2FA [two-factor authentication] solution for both mobile and desktop,” says Max. “Conversion at checkout is the burning issue for everyone in ecommerce and Fastlane helps solve it.”
Before Fastlane, I was concerned our checkout had fallen behind customer expectations. But now, we can deliver exactly the guest-checkout experience our customers expect.
Max Alderton, Marketing Director, Peter Christian
“When we switched on Fastlane, it just worked,” says Max. “We had no problems, no dropped transactions and no customer comments.”
Checkout conversion is now 38.3% higher for Fastlane transactions than non-Fastlane ones.
Guest transactions through Fastlane by PayPal are 34.7% faster than non-Fastlane transactions and average checkout time is close to two minutes, at just 143 seconds.
The business has also seen a 2.0% improvement in authorisation rates.
As Max explains, “These results mean we have to work less hard for traffic. We can get more from our existing traffic which means we can expand further and invest more in our products and service.”
As mobile is increasingly important for Peter Christian, Max is investing more in video content, Facebook and email.
“Everyone picks up emails on their phone, now,” he says, “so optimising our mobile experience has been critical.”
“PayPal has been a solid part of all of our growth,” says Max in summary. “We have a very good relationship and PayPal was key when we were growing the US market, because American consumers didn't know us. Now, with Fastlane, we can deliver exactly the checkout experience customers expect on mobile – a channel that’s increasingly important for us.”
Download the Peter Christian Case Study now.