After adding an alternative credit financing program, evo’s average order value jumps 150% among customers who use the option.

When Nathan Decker, director of e-commerce at evo, added a financing option on the site’s product detail pages in mid-October, he expected it would lead shoppers to increase their spending. But he didn’t anticipate shoppers who used the option would have an average order value 150% greater than the site’s other customers.

The outdoor gear and sporting goods e-retailer is working with credit financing service Blispay Inc., to allow shoppers who apply for a line of credit to immediately receive approval so she can purchase the item. Evo’s average basket size is about $220, and shoppers who purchase via Blispay have an average order value of $550, Decker says.

Here’s how Blispay works: On the product detail page a consumer clicks on the “No Payments, No Interest on all purchases over $199 +2% Cash Back! Learn More” button. The browser opens a new tab, which opens a page on the Blispay website that also has evo branding on it. Even though the shopper is taken off of evo, Decker was not concerned about cart abandonment as the page is co-branded and it’s very clear to the shopper what is happening, he says. The shopper then creates a Blispay account and enters her name, cellphone number and Social Security number. Blispay gives her a dollar amount that she is approved for a line of credit to spend at evo—or anywhere else that accepts Visa—and a credit card number she can input on the checkout page.

A shopper has six months to repay Blispay at no interest, or else she will incur a 19.99% monthly APR. A shopper also receives 2% cash back on the purchase. Evo receives the payment as it normally would from a credit card, and it pays its normal Visa credit card processing fee of about 2% for the Blispay transaction, Decker says.

Decker has considered adding alternative financing for a while because the products evo sells are generally higher-ticket items. The retailer, which also operates three physical stores, often hears such comments from customers as, “I’m waiting for my next paycheck so I can’t afford that,” or “I’d love to get that bike but I’ll settle for this one.” Offering a financing service will help those shoppers convert, Decker says.

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“We feel, from talking with our customers, a service like this would be helpful for both prospective and existing customers,” Decker says.

Evo has only offered the tool for a few months, so the number of consumers using the feature is a small percentage of the total, Decker says. Still, he is pleased with the rollout and the trends he is seeing. For example, a shopper was on a product page for a $2,000 mountain bike, applied for credit and Blispay approved him for $4,500. That shopper went on to buy a $4,500 bike, Decker says.

“The services seem applicable to anyone in the spot where they are looking to buy luxury hard goods or expensive equipment,” Decker says.

Evo added the Blispay messaging to the product detail page to help drive incremental sales, Decker says. Evo doesn’t advertise Blispay on the checkout page for a few reasons, he says. First, the feature is receiving good traction where it is, so adding it elsewhere isn’t a high priority. Making a change to the checkout page involves more technical changes, and Decker says he has more control over the messaging on the product detail page making it easier to integrate. In fact, quick integration that did not interfere with checkout was one the main reasons evo chose Blispay instead of other vendors that offer credit financing, he says.

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“We were honing in on the holidays, with the site code freeze and cutoff date in October, I was under the gun to get something done quickly with as light of technology as possible,” he says. It took a few hours to integrate the messaging on evo’s site, and about a month to deploy the technology from the time evo started talking with Blispay to when it went live, Decker says.

As the e-retailer redesigns its checkout page, evo will integrate Blispay within the next few months, he says. The new checkout page will have about a dozen small tweaks, such as having a coupon code deduction on the total price at the top of the page instead of having customers scroll to the bottom, Decker says. Evo also will add a shopping cart to the process, as right now customers either select go to checkout page or continue shopping when they select a product. A shopping cart is a useful step for consumers to compare products, he says.

Evo also hopes to deploy Blispay at its three physical shops, so consumers can apply for financing on their smartphones while at the store, Decker says. Evo is No. 430 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide.

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