Don't Sleep on Checkout. How Casper Has Boosted its Conversion Rate

A sleep company that sells mattresses, pillows, sheets and other accessories, Casper was having nightmares about its commerce platform migration from a legacy system. However, after a lengthy overrun in project timeline, Casper was ready to go live on Salesforce Commerce Cloud. With that go-live came a stated goal to improve its checkout conversion rate, according to Casper's CEO Joe Megibow.

"It was very important for us to remain checkout control," Megibow says. "We were looking for a solution where we could still maintain the checkout experience but also bring accelerators into checkout, including reducing the number of steps and bringing a network onto the platform that we didn't have at that point."

After a thorough vetting process, Casper chose to partner with Bolt, a platform that provides retailers with best-in-class customer conversion through seamless and secure one-click checkout. Bolt met Casper's stated requirements, enabling the sleep brand to maintain control over checkout while also providing a consumer network and the potential for conversion improvement. Casper went live with Bolt in February 2022, with Megibow noting the ease of integration on Salesforce.

Bolt now accounts for a "very large percentage of engagement" in Casper's checkout process and has delivered against expectations, Megibow says. In fact, Bolt has produced a significant recognition and conversion boost for Casper, especially during tentpole shopping events such as immediately following the Fourth of July holiday. For example:

• Bolt recognizes 17.5 percent of all sessions where a user enters their email at checkout.
• Bolt logged-in shoppers convert 19 percent higher than guest shoppers on Casper's website.

Reinvesting in the Digital Infrastructure

Following years of underinvestment, Megibow and his team are focused on rebuilding and reinvesting in Casper's e-commerce business. That means implementing solutions such as Bolt and exploring its full range of services. That includes "Checkout Everywhere," which allows retailers to bring customers into pre-populated, checkout-ready pages seamlessly — from social platforms to QR codes and store displays. For example, Megibow cited the prospect of adding checkout to Casper's blog, which is a high source of traffic for the retailer.

"The ability to start extending checkout onto other properties and places is interesting to us and one that we are absolutely planning to take advantage with Bolt," Megibow says. "If we've done our job and educated the consumer on why us, we don't want to put anything in the way of the customer to just quickly and easily make that transaction."

For Casper, like many other retailers and consumer brands, a large percentage of those transactions are occurring on mobile devices, making ease and speed of checkout that much more important. Megibow noted that around 80 percent of Casper's site traffic is coming from mobile devices. Also, as expected, Casper sees more conversions on desktop vs. mobile. Many consumers are shifting from mobile to desktop at the time of conversion for ease of checkout. However, with Bolt one-click checkout, Casper is expecting that mobile conversion rate to increase.

"If you eliminate the checkout friction, which is the hardest part of checkout on mobile, it does open up opportunities," notes Megibow. "One reason we have the checkout [conversion rate] that we do get on mobile is because of our partnership with Bolt."

Growing Customer Lifetime Value

As Casper has aged — the once splashy startup is now 10 years old — so too have its first customers, who tended to be in their 20s living in smaller apartments in urban markets when the company first launched. By maintaining relationships with those existing customers, it opens up opportunity for follow-up purchases. Those customers who were single and living in their first apartment are now married with kids and their needs have changed — more guest bedrooms, more children's bedrooms. It's not just the single bed anymore.

Megibow notes that are two primary reasons consumers buy a mattress: one, wear on their existing mattress, which incidentally is a good time to upsell them to a more premium product and, two, a life event such as getting married or having a child.

"These events create moments where mattresses get purchased," Megibow says. "As we've built a customer base for the last decade and they're going through their life journey, we are seeing a lot of opportunity with that customer. It's really nice to see we have a repeat [purchase] rate. This category you think of as one-and-done, but a much bigger percentage than I would have ever expected of our customer base is repeat."

As Casper continues working to build loyal relationships with both existing and prospective customers, Bolt will be part of the strategy.

"We wouldn't be looking for expansion with Bolt if it wasn't working," Megibow says. "We want to make sure Bolt does what we want it to do, which is try to create as frictionless checkout experience as possible."

The conversion numbers show it is.