Many retailers don’t think about the payment process before the checkout screen. But a simple and easy to use payment process can have a ripple effect across your entire site if utilized correctly.

Offering Affirm’s pay over time option is a great start. By integrated Affirm into your cart and checkout messaging, you are giving customers a way to make their purchase more affordable. Many of our retail partners also place “as low as” messaging on their product pages to encourage window shoppers to become paying customers.  After implementing Affirm, our merchant partners have increased conversion by up to 20 percent and see a 10 percent lift in revenue per visitor.

But if the checkout, cart and product pages are the only three places you mention a pay over-time option, you are missing a large part of Affirm’s potential.  Your sales will see substantial and positive growth after placing the Affirm’s offers and messaging across all pages. It will fundamentally change a visitor’s shopping behavior become one of your most powerful conversion tools. Moving your Affirm messaging up your marketing funnel will drive significant revenue results.

Below are the most important pages to communicate a pay over-time option:

1. Plant the seed in off-site outreach

Use your social channels and email outreach to get customers thinking about an alternative payment option before they even navigate to your site. Peak their curiosity and communicate just how affordable your products are to entice them to click to your home page. One Affirm user, Richard said: “When I shop, I look to see who partners with Affirm and that is often the factor in deciding if I buy or not.”

2. Get customers to invest on the home page

By placing a banner ad or hero image on the home page with as low as messaging, your customers know not to be scared off by the listed price. Communicate that they can create a payment plan that works for them to mitigate the sticker shock up front. A banner ad allows your shoppers to become invested in your products without focusing on price.

3. Change browsing behavior on the category page

Many shoppers search for items based on the price. This is why many e-commerce category pages have a low-to-high price filter. By adding as low as messaging on this crucial page, you can change a customer’s entire browsing behavior. Instead of looking for what they can afford in a lump sum, they will start thinking about how much they can afford per month. And once they commit to a purchase, there's no surprise about what they will owe. 

One of our merchants, Reverb, saw such great results that they even created a 0% APR promotion filter in their search bar to help consumers find the best deals.

4. Send better abandon cart emails

More than 75 percent of shopping carts are abandoned due to price. You can entice a budget shopper to complete their purchase by promoting a pay over-time option in an abandon cart email. You are providing an actionable solution that makes the purchase more affordable and is personalized to the customers budget.

5. Build a relationship after purchase

With a pay over-time option the customer journey doesn’t end at the checkout page. In fact, it’s just the start of the customer-brand relationship. You will have continued contact long after a shopper has received the product and will be able to re-engage them at precisely the right moment. After buying with Affirm, 66 percent of customers repurchased within the year. Continued communication with your customers during the payment process encourages a lifetime of loyalty. As an added, bonus Affirm's 83 Net Promoter Score reflects onto your brand creating a halo effect. A customer that is happy with their payment method will also view the associated retail brand better.  

The average internet user sees 11,250 ads per month. It takes clever marketing to rise above that noise. Communicating an alternative payment method will make your brand stand out from the crowd and radically changes your relationship with the consumer. By providing a pay over-time option, your brand shifts from a simple retail store into a trusted ally who cares about their financial health. Your goal isn’t to bust their budgets, but to work within them.