Flexible deposits

We saw from user research, and from on-site data, that customers were interested in using a proportion of their part ex's value as part of their purchase, and cashing out the rest.

Solution

We saw this for customers paying in full by analysing basket totals when customers reached checkout - and increase in the number of basket totals that were a minus number.

Once we had allowed customers to cash out part of their value for pay-in-full orders (see below), we set out to allow finance customers to cash out some of their part-ex value as well.

Design and delivery

As mentioned, we began with pay-in-full customers, lifting the restriction around basket totals that were a minus number. There was a restriction put on how much money customers could cash-out while we proved the value of this, and that restriction was increased steadily over time.

Cashing-out for finance customers needed to work a little bit differently. We wanted to allow customers to set two variables at the same time: their deposit, and the amount they wanted to cash-out - this could quickly be confusing.

Testing with customers allowed us to sense-check lots of things: Did the language we used make sense? Could they understand the limits? Were they aware of the impact it had on their finance quote?

The final designs for this used an existing touch-point in the the customer journey - where the customer must deliberately "add" the part-ex to their deposit.

Once they did this, we could use an interstitial sheet to walk them through how the cash-release would work, and offer them a UI which our user testing had strongly suggested would be widely understood.

Outcomes

Whilst this feature didn't see a huge increase in terms of sales or conversion - the business impact was positive. Commission on finance deals is linked to the amount a customer borrows, and so by offering this flexibility in deposit, we saw that orders which used this feature generated more commission than other orders.