Case Study: How to Persuade Users to Change Their Payment Behaviour

This retail brand offered their customers an option to create a credit account through which they could spread the cost of their purchase over multiple instalments. A key business goal was to increase the number of credit customers.

Over the past year, we conducted several experiments to help change customer payment behaviour from cards to in-store credit account. Our creatives talked about the pay-with-credit option before the checkout buying journey, as multiple pieces of research showed that the earlier a customer was acquainted with the pay-with-credit option, the higher the chance of them using that as their primary payment mode.

Hypothesis and Psychological Technique Applied

We believed that reminding the user of the option to spread the cost on the basket page will encourage them to commit to their payment choice. The actual choice of payment was offered later in the checkout journey.

We also hypothesised that this would lead to higher average order values because when paying with credit, customers can spread the cost over several months and don’t have to worry about shelling out a large amount immediately.

This employed the Mere Exposure Effect, which postulates that humans tend to react more favourably to certain stimuli the more they were exposed to it.

Experiment

Through previous experiments, we had already introduced the pay-with-credit option to customers at various touchpoints in their journey before reaching checkout. So instead of adding longer messaging, we decided to keep it short.

We built two Variations for this experiment:

1. Variation 1 had ‘Spread the Cost’ as the secondary CTA.
2. Variation 2 had ‘Spread the Cost’ as the primary CTA, and ‘Pay with Card’ as the secondary CTA.

While clicking on either would lead the customer through the same checkout, clicking on ‘Spread the Cost’ (primary CTA) would ensure that the customer is consciously making a payment decision and would stick with it.

Results

From the observed data, we were able to see that Variation 2 showed a higher probability of being better than the Control on Mobile.

Learnings

Both the Variations of this experiment proved to be successful on Mobile, delivering higher conversions and credit transactions, but Variation 2 did better. On Desktop, however, conversion rates for both variations remained relatively flat and inconclusive.

Overall, the value in new Pay-With-Credit sales on mobile outweighed the flat conversion rate change on desktop and delivered additional credit customers. As a result, it was rolled out to all users on both devices.

Multiple experiments in the pay-with-credit area have cumulatively contributed to a significant rise in credit account uptake, average order values, and conversion rates. These experiments together show that presenting credit as a choice earlier in the buying journey helps users stick with that decision later.