Ex-Grab, Tencent exec’s startup aims to cut drop-offs from shopping carts

Ecommerce businesses keep track of their retail conversion rates to ascertain whether their advertising spend has been channeled effectively. Advertisers are often told that a change in the color palette of their website, font spacing, or images lead to higher conversion rates.

These are basic, run-of-the-mill A/B testing best practices, which can help drive conversions. These efforts may only lead to small, single-digit increases in conversion rate – unlikely to shoot into the ideal 10% or greater conversion ticket.

Photo credit: IPSOS

However, achieving greater conversion rates takes more than just aesthetics and statistics. Lazada, one of Southeast Asia’s biggest ecommerce spaces, has also seen heavy drop-offs from shopping carts since 2015, an industry source told Tech in Asia.

An efficient customer journey is key to pushing instant purchases. However, when customer encounters page redirects and extensive form-filling, they generally tend to leave before completing the purchase. This is called cart abandonment or “drop-offs.”

The Arrow team/ Photo credit: Arrow

A Singapore-based company co-founded by Liat Beng Neo, a former executive at Grab, Ant Financial, and Tencent, aims to address this issue. To reduce the number of drop-offs in ecommerce, Arrow’s specialized checkout solution simplifies the online shopping payments process.

The company’s co-founders also include Sebastian Roervig and Sudhan Raj.

Tapping into the money

Established in January, Arrow keeps tabs on purchases and stores encrypted data only for shopping. It eliminates the need for users to enter their personal data, including passwords, credit details, and addresses when making a purchase.

The startup’s seamless checkout solution for ecommerce companies can function out of conventional marketplaces like Lazada, Tokopedia, and Shopify. Arrow can be embedded across applications, mobile apps, and websites, allowing over 60 merchants today to collect payments from the platform with a single click.

Photo credit: Arrow