The Retail Technology Company Reproduces the Impulse Buying Experience at the Time of Collection, Increasing Average Order Values and Enhancing the Shopper Experience
Bold Commerce, the ecommerce technology company that powers checkout and subscription experiences for leading retailers and DTC brands, announces its newest curbside checkout feature for brick-and-mortar and omnichannel retailers. Curb Up enables retailers to recapture the high-margin impulse purchases lost with the growth of curbside checkout by introducing upsell and cross-sell opportunities after an order has been placed and during pick-up. The new technology was designed to reimagine the experience of last-minute product discovery in the checkout area of stores–only it occurs on a shopper’s mobile device.
Retailers have long relied on impulse buying at checkout to drive incremental sales. In 2021 alone, shoppers spent $6 billion on items they discovered in the checkout lane. But in a new reality where curbside pickup and Buy Online Pickup In Store (BOPIS) are growing in popularity, fewer shoppers are going through traditional checkout lanes. This has left retailers scrambling to drive the same level of incremental revenue when catering to the growing number of consumers who opt for “click & collect” options. (In 2021, 56% of consumers used click & collect at least six times.) Omnichannel retailers, who sell both in-store and online, have addressed a similar challenge on digital channels, where they have recreated impulse buying scenarios through cross-sell and upsell opportunities.
Bold Commerce’s Curb Up functionality brings together this digital approach with in-person shopping to increase average order values and reunite shoppers with a familiar shopping experience during pick-up. Using Checkout from Bold Commerce, retailers can already make recommendations for add-on items before, during and after checkout online. Now, they can extend this functionality to the orders that will be completed at curbside or picked up in-store.
How it Works:
- As customers arrive at the store for order pickup, they are presented with an impulse buy pop-up.
- The pop-up offers them the opportunity to add one or more last-minute items–curated by the retailer–to their existing order, with a single click.
- Store staff are automatically notified about the new item(s) to add into the order.
A video of the Curb Up process is available here.
For major retail chains—including grocery, electronics, home goods and others—whose shoppers are increasingly ordering online but picking up in store, replicating last-minute purchases is critical to preserving the incremental revenue they’ve come to rely on at the checkout lane.
Because Bold Commerce seamlessly feeds all in-store and online business logic into its checkout technology, these omnichannel retailers can dynamically show inventory availability across all store locations and display only the impulse items available at each specific location when the customer arrives.
In June 2022, Bold Commerce teamed up with ecommerce agency Knit to build the initial Curb Up prototype. Knit works with retailers including Tractor Supply Co. and Kicking Horse Coffee.
“Consumer behavior has evolved over the last 36 months. Technology must as well. As consumers look for more digital retail interaction, we must find new ways to innovate the customer journey,” said Brad McCrory, CEO of The Knit Agency. “Curb Up is a disruptive innovation in the BOPIS process and I’m excited that Knit was able to participate in the creation of this innovation.”
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The early Curb Up prototype won the 2022 MACH Alliance MACHathon Integration Award, recognizing Curb Up as a solution that will allow retailers to “accelerate at MACH speed.”
“More than 50% of the top 1000 retail chains now offer curbside pickup to their customers, and this number is likely to continue increasing,” said Yvan Boisjoli, CEO of Bold Commerce. “One of technology’s roles in retail is to enable retailers to adapt quickly to widespread behavioral shifts. With the right checkout infrastructure in place, they’ll be able to do more than preserve the status quo when it comes to revenue generated at checkout; they’ll be able to play a more proactive role in creating net new opportunities for growth.”
A company like Staples Canada, who is already using Bold Commerce’s Checkout Experience to integrate online and offline purchases with its inventory and return processes, can easily begin benefitting from Curb Up.
Retailers using Checkout from Bold Commerce can launch their Curb Up programs in less than 10 days using Bold Commerce APIs. Curb Up integrates directly into retailers’ business logic, including store-level inventory availability, payments and other components of checkout that influence conversions.
