Case Studies
How Bolt increased Bag Riders' checkout completion by 433%
433%
increased checkout completion with Bolt
25% decrease in total abandonment rate
21% YoY top-line growth
Leading air suspension retailer Bag Riders has come a long way since they were founded in an apartment in Vermont in 2009. When the business began, the founders and college friends Will Fisher, John Hall, Alex Kepchar, and Kevin McGovern bonded over their love for cars and aimed to build a one-stop ecommerce shopping experience for air ride kits that they searched for and never found themselves.
By addressing customers’ needs, Bag Riders became the first online store that took the complexity out of air suspension shopping. The company empowered customers to configure their own custom air suspension kits, a speciality type of suspension that allows for the vehicle's height to be adjusted via a controller mounted inside the vehicle. The technology enabled each driver to have a lowered "race car inspired" driving height and, using the air ride controller, raise the vehicle as needed such as for speed bumps and steep entryways.
As a customer-centric company, Bag Riders’ leadership started looking for ways to increase sales while reducing shopping friction, and the decision to go with Bolt One-Click Checkout was a no-brainer, according to Hall, Bag Riders CEO and CTO.
“After onboarding, we saw an instant improvement in conversions with a faster checkout,” Hall said. “Bolt’s checkout experience was universally loved by our team.”
The numbers spoke for themselves. After integrating Bolt in 2021, Bag Riders saw a whopping 433% increase in checkout completions, which was “outstanding,” according to Hall.
In addition, Bag Riders also saw a 21% YoY top-line growth in Q2 and 19% in Q3 which contributed to the company's overall growth, as Q2 and especially Q3 were typically slower for Bag Riders’ sales.
The company also saw a 25% decrease in total abandonment rate. Hall said switching to Bolt and leveraging Bolt’s customer support instantly helped his team see where the various points of friction were for the customer in their online store. As a result, Hall said his team removed big friction points such as the login screen before purchasing a product. This immediately led to higher conversions.
“I was thankful for the insights from the support team. I felt like they were advocates and helped me convince the Bag Riders team that we really had to get rid of the login wall,” said Hall. “We had a really exceptional summer [in 2021] which I feel that Bolt was a contributor to.”
Internally, one of the other most impactful outcomes for Bag Riders was the shift away from managing fraud on their own. With Bolt’s fraud protection, small businesses can remove costs associated with hiring an outside fraud protection service. Prior to Bolt, Bag Riders suffered nearly $100,000 in losses related to fraud/chargebacks–which was a huge hit, especially for a small business.
Since switching to Bolt, Bag Riders has only lost two merchant-liable chargebacks, both of which were customers claiming "product not received" despite proof of delivery, for a total of $1,200. This is a significant drop from nearly $100,000. Reducing the labor costs and fraud are benefits Bag Riders continues to reap with Bolt.
“This is obviously an immense improvement and not considering the ‘lost bandwidth’ and labor cost associated with having our employees performing this duty,” said Hall. “Continuing to see improvements on Bolt’s side such as Single Sign-On (SSO), really keeps me inspired and invigorated to keep implementing new features that reduce friction and make the customer journey on Bag Riders.com as easy as it possibly can be.”
Bag Riders is looking to take advantage of the Bolt Network and its tens of millions of shoppers worldwide (and growing) to expand beyond the U.S. market and into Canada.
What’s next for Bag Riders? Hall and team are planning to expand their footprint in Canada, and taking advantage of Bolt's one-click checkout to deliver a seamless checkout experience to more Canadian car enthusiasts.
“After onboarding, we saw an instant improvement in conversions with a faster checkout. Bolt’s checkout experience was universally loved by our team.”
John Hall
Bag Riders CEO and CTO
Previous Stack
- Fraud Prevention: Manual
- Payment: Braintree
- Checkout: M2 Checkout