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In the world of ecommerce, there is no greater thorn in the side of shop owners than cart abandonment. When you look at the data, which reveals that cart abandonment is somewhere between 80 to 85% across the board — it’s clear that this is a problem aching for a solution.
The reason cart abandonment is so high is because the checkout process is often over-complicated, requires too many clicks, asks the customer to provide too much information, the list goes on. There is so much friction involved that customers with intent to buy never reach the point of conversion. But what if that process could become seamless?
Domm Holland, the CEO of Fast, believes he’s achieved that frictionless experience thanks to a democratized one-click checkout solution that works across the internet. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Domm explains how that one-click solution works, and why it isn’t the answer to a payment problem, it’s actually solving an identity problem that permeates every industry.
Main Takeaways:
- It’s a Long Road Home: It is a common misconception that the checkout process happens simply when the customer hits the buy button. The truth is that there are many steps to the checkout process, and in most cases they have not been optimized — that’s why cart abandonment rates are so high. In order to get customers to stop abandoning their carts, ecommerce platforms are doing everything they can to create a frictionless experience every step of the way.
- One and Done: One-click ordering is the gold standard of frictionless checkout. Although some sites claim to have one-click checkout, you often are still multiple clicks away from actually finalizing an order, especially when you’re visiting for the first time, which requires you to fill out identification fields. By solving the identity problem for the consumer and by batching orders on the backend for merchants, Fast created a solution that delivers a true one-click checkout experience across the internet that can be installed directly on product pages.
- Open Your Mind: In the future, ecommerce will not take place only on ecommerce websites. From social media, to influencer content, to videos and more, one-click shopping will be coming to all of those channels so you will neve have to leave one site to shop on another. This means that opportunities for enterprising ecommerce minds will be there for the taking and those who take action quickly will unlock the value of a frictionless shopping experience and win customers for life.
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
Key Quotes:
“Fundamentally what Fast is solving for is actually an identity problem, and payments is just one component of that.”
“How can we make it fast and easy for people to buy things? And how do we make it fast and easy for people to login? How do we make it fast and easy for people to securely use their data online? It’s a very different value problem and our product strategy differs because we’re out there trying to solve a consumer problem and most other companies aren’t.”
“The average cart abandonment is 80 to 85% across the board… If you’re doing less than that, then you’re doing above and below industry average, so maybe you think that’s good. The reality is, it’s appalling. 80 to 85% of your customers who have given clear intent to purchase are leaving without buying something. So even if you’re below that, I don’t think it’s good enough. It’s not good enough because one, you’re missing out on a lot of sales. And two, your customers are just having a terrible experience.”
“Every single site that has Fast on it, you will see a Fast checkout button on the product page. This is really the biggest difference because the fastest way and easiest way for somebody to buy something is from the point that they’re looking at what they want to buy. It’s one click to be finished and ordered from the point that you’re looking at the product with Fast. And that is just such a big difference. It’s an actual one click check out. Whereas every other solution isn’t one click anyway. The payment, it’s normally at least two or three or five clicks.”
“Merchants typically just say no to having PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, on the product page. And it’s because the fear is, and an absolutely warranted fear, is that it will reduce average order values. It will reduce the average items per order. It will increase delivery costs. It will increase shipping costs. And they don’t want to do that. Merchants don’t want to reduce the amount of money that they’re making.”
“75 and 80% of every single checkout on Fast is from the product page. So it is absolutely overwhelming the impact that it has to businesses….we are making it easy for people to buy things. People are buying things. People are buying more things. So businesses make far more money, can increase their order values, can increase the average items per order, can decrease their shipping cost, can decrease their payment cost, and yet still be increasing conversion rate much higher than they are now. And decreasing abandonment.”
“We’re giving consumers a home to manage their information. And that means when you buy things, give you a home to manage those purchases. When you subscribe to things, give you a home to manage those subscriptions. We really just think, “How do we provide a really secure and centralized spot for consumers where it puts them in control of their data?” As opposed to leaving businesses to being in control of their data.”
“It’s so amazing to see all the value that you can unlock by enabling frictionless commerce. The idea of this sort of click and buy has been this nirvana or the epiphany of what people really want, and we’ve never gotten there. That’s exactly what Fast has delivered. So suddenly you can open up ecommerce opportunities everywhere.”
Mentions:
Bio:
Domm Holland is the co-founder and CEO of Fast, the world’s fastest online login and checkout platform. An entrepreneur and self-taught engineer, Domm has founded and scaled companies in the logistics, transportation and technology sectors.
He previously founded and served as CEO of Tow, an on-demand vehicle towing platform in Australia that processed more than $50M in transactions. During his tenure there, Domm was awarded the top spot on the Deloitte Tech Fast 50 and recognized as the Brisbane Young Entrepreneur of the Year.
Domm has worked across Australia and the U.S., working in national and multinational telecommunications and technology companies, including Dell, with deep cross-function experience. Domm’s background provides him with a unique perspective that spans R&D, sales and operations, all of which have contributed to his vision for Fast.
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Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce
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Transcript:
Stephanie:
Hey everyone. Welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postals, co-founder at mission.org. Joining us today, we have Domm Holland, the co-founder and CEO of Fast. Domm, welcome to the show.
Domm:
Hey Stephanie. Thanks so much for having me.
Stephanie:
Yeah, I’m really excited to have you. It’s actually perfect because I was just going through a very poor checkout process, and I was like wow, what a perfect interview I have coming today. I think it took about 25 fields to fill in [crosstalk] and I was like I need Domm in my life. So tell me a little bit about Fast. What does Fast do, and how are you guys different?
Domm:
Yeah, so the simplest way to think of us is we’re a one click checkout for the entire internet with no passwords. So it’s a button that you’ll see on websites that says Fast Checkout. When you click it, you’ll instantly buy whatever you’re looking at. And that could be a single item, so our button often sits above the add to cart button. So you can click Fast Checkout and just by the product instantly that you’re looking at. You don’t have to go add to cart, view cart, checkout and then go through 20 fields like you did, and then get to payment. It all happens in one click.
Domm:
Or you can click add to cart and sort of buy 20 items on the store and then use Fast Checkout at the end. Once you’ve used Fast Checkout to buy something, then you can track all your deliveries in one place. You can download all your receipts in one place. You can instantly reorder items you’ve ordered before through Fast from your Fast feed. So we have this fantastic and aggregated post purchase experience, which means again, you don’t have to scramble to go back to remember the name of a site you bought something from a month ago and click a link from Gmail and then log in with a password you created for one store to try and find delivery date or something else. So yeah, we just try and make life easy and fast for consumers.
Stephanie:
That’s amazing. So what led you to creating Fast? Was there a problem that you encountered yourself or what excited you about the payment ecosystem?
Domm:
Yeah, so originally it wasn’t a payment problem. And fundamentally I think what Fast is solving for is actually an identity problem and payments is just one component of that. The original inception was I’m married with two little kids and my youngest child was in hospital for a few weeks, so we had my wife’s grandmother staying with us and helping us out. One night she was sitting at the kitchen table ordering groceries for us and forgot a password and just couldn’t order groceries. One of the largest supermarket chains in Australia, turn over $70 billion a year, just couldn’t figure out how to charge a little old lady’s credit card a couple hundred dollars for some food because of some broken string of text.
Domm:
It was just like a hard lockout. For her to be able to buy food, it didn’t make sense. So at the time, I’ve got a [inaudible] of a passwords authentication system that can be used on ecommerce sites. The idea is granny could’ve just identified herself and then easily logged in and bought the groceries. But I think that I put it online, I had tens of thousands of people use it in a couple days and realize this is a big opportunity.
Domm:
But fundamentally, passwords aren’t a problem, they’re a symptom. Again, the problem is that each business requires us to re identify ourselves, which means create new account, create a new password. Login with this password created for one store. Fill in all these fields and forms from scratch. Give them payment information from scratch. Again, from a subscription standpoint, if you lose your credit card, suddenly your Netflix subscription doesn’t work. Your [inaudible] subscriptions don’t work. Everything is cut off because everyone has these siloed pools of data for us.
Domm:
So that’s fundamentally what we solve for is just you not having to continually tell everyone who you are. I’m 33 years old. My name and date of birth and basic information hasn’t changed in over three decades, yet I have to keep filling in forms and telling people as if it’s brand new information. It doesn’t make sense. So we solve for that and make that really easy. And payment is a part of that, an integral part of that, because it’s part of the consumer experience. A lot of our consumer interactions involve financial transactions.
Domm:
But a lot of the time, it’s just fundamentally making it easier for people to leverage their identity online.
Stephanie:
That’s awesome. So earlier you were mentioning about your name and age not changing. What does the back end look like to solve for identity, and why hasn’t this been done before?
Domm:
Yeah. Look, I think that there are companies had the opportunity to do this before. I think Facebook really had that opportunity. But [inaudible] didn’t go down the identity space, they went down the advertising road. So rather than use your data to make your data portable and easy for consumers to use, they chose to your data for advertising.
Domm:
I don’t think that from Facebook’s perspective, I don’t think it was a bad decision. Facebook makes a lot of money from doing that. But it’s just a different… they can’t then become your trusted source of data, if they’re using your data for advertising as their primary source of revenue, then it’s not really your trusted source for holding your private and sensitive information.
Domm:
So I think that there’s been opportunities like that and I do think that advertising tends to kill identity products really quickly. But I think the other reality is that people have just kind of thought about things differently, or they’ve been solving their own problems, or they’ve been solving for business problems instead of consumer problems. And things like Apple, Apple building an ecosystem that you can now do log in sometimes, you can do check out if you’re on Apple device on some sites and with some cards and that type of thing.
Domm:
They’ve got limited context, but basically they’ve got solutions to make it easier for people to perform certain actions if they’re within their ecosystem. Same thing is kind of true of Google. Same thing is true of other ecommerce platforms for stores that are on those platforms. And basically what these companies are doing are reinforcing their existing ecosystems. Or further monetizing their existing base of merchants. But they obviously don’t want to reward people who aren’t in their ecosystem, right?
Domm:
And so they’re fundamentally solving a different problem. Like for us, we’re trying to solve the problem of granny being able to buy groceries, like how can we make it fast and easy for people to buy things? And how do we make it fast and easy for people to login? How do we make it fast and easy for people to securely use their data online? And it’s just a very different value problem. Our product strategy differs because we’re out there trying to solve a consumer problem and most of these companies aren’t. I think that’s the primary difference that you see shine through in products.
Stephanie:
Got it. I read that you are a self taught engineer, so tell me a little bit about that, and are you doing the engineering at Fast or no longer are you doing that?
Domm:
Yeah. Yeah, I’ve been programming since I was 13, 14. I’m 33 now, so a long time. I always liked to build things, always been fascinated with computers and programming and technology in general. I learned C programming when I was 13, 14 and been building ever sense. I fell in love with it. I built the original Fast V.1. Up until recently actually it was completely built and maintained by me. We now have a very big and strong engineering org and I can say unequivocally that no, I no longer build the Fast infrastructure. The team keep me far away. I don’t think I’m the enterprise grade engineer that we need internally. But I’m still very technically involved and involved in a very close level at the product side. Very opinionated as how products should work, obviously.
Domm:
Allison, my co founder and I, both have very strong visions as to how we think the future of identity, future of payments, future of commerce should work. And really want to see that come to life through our products.
Stephanie:
That’s great. So what was the first thing you built when you were 13? Do you remember?
Domm:
Yeah. So the first program I ever wrote was a script to determine if a word was a palindrome. My ex stepdad actually was a computer scientist and a programmer. He, myself, and the sys admin of a university in Australia, each wrote our own version of the script and then measured the speed and had a competition to see whose script would perform the fastest calculation. It was the first-
Stephanie:
That’s great. How it all got started. I love that. So with everything that’s happening right now with the pandemic, I can see a very big problem happening around new scans that are coming back because you have a lot more people who are now using digital payments that maybe they weren’t doing that in the past. It seems like there’s a big opportunity there for people to take advantage. So how are you guys approaching this landscape now? Is it different now than it maybe would have been a year ago, the problems that you’re having to solve around security?
Domm:
Yeah. Internally, we’ve been absolutely focused on security since day one. So we hired a VP of security before we hired our first engineering manager. We really built out the security function very early. Honestly for a company of our stage, I would unequivocally say had the most sophisticated security posture of all. We have a lot of different programs in place. And really it’s because we’re managing data and payments. It’s essentially our business. So we’re just very intentional and have been about embedding into our culture as a culture of security and privacy from day one.
Domm:
And it’s a really important piece. The reality is that it’s not that interesting from a consumer’s perspective. They’re far less interested in security than they should be. So that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t care about it, it just means that we don’t talk about it a lot. It’s not a benefit that’s going to drive consumers in droves to sign up for Fast. One click check out drives consumers and drives to sign up for Fast. But the reality is, we need to keep them safe when they do, and security is an integral part of that. Same thing is true of merchants and in reducing fraud and charge [inaudible] and so forth.
Domm:
So we invest a lot into that at every level of our product from application design perspective and a system design perspective and infrastructure and internal policies and whatever else. We think about it a lot. The reality is that our product is extremely well poised to reduce both consumer fraud or merchant fraud and identity theft and so forth because we sit as an identity solution, as first and foremost. So when it comes to making a transaction, typically everyone’s transactions are siloed. Everyone’s data vaults are siloed. So every store is operating independently. They’re kind of only looking at their own historical data primarily as the determinant risk. Whereas the beautiful thing about Fast is that because we sit across every store, because you can use your identity hold with Fast at every different merchant and all the different sites across the internet, we can in a really sophisticated manner, help to reduce that risk because we can gauge risk against your profile and past purchases and log in history and so forth, and identify anomalies. So it really means that we can keep consumers far more safe than basically any other solution.
Stephanie:
Yeah. That’s really great. I think anyone who is working with you would feel really good about having those safety measures in place because I was just reading about how many people are now using debit cards, especially with contact less payments. But that a lot of merchants aren’t asking for pins anymore because it’s too much friction when it comes to payments. And I never even thought about that, that a merchant can be like, “Ah no, I’m not going to ask for the pin for your debit card because it takes too much time.” That’s a huge risk. Your debit card can be linked to your entire savings.
Domm:
Yeah. Look, absolutely. In Australia, we launched [inaudible] chip cards earlier than the US and really years ago [inaudible] chip cards were mandatorily introduced throughout the country, so we’ve been using them for a long time. We have less than $100 you don’t use a pin, and over $100 you do. That’s standard across the country. Whereas here, it’s almost like the wild west where some stores enforce a pin on any transaction, so a dollar or something like that, you still have to use a pin.
Domm:
And then some stores, I’ve done hundreds of dollars in transactions and had no pin. Yeah, I think there is something to be said about having a set of standards and a strong set of standards to protect both consumer and the bank or the merchant. One is, your risk as a consumer and suddenly not having food in your account. And that’s right, it’s a debit card linked to your real money. And if that account is drained, even if you’ve got protection from the bank or whatnot, it’s not going to come instantly. And so there’s a real risk for people, and then again from the merchant’s side, from card fraud.
Stephanie:
Yeah. Very scary. So when it comes to ecommerce shops, what tools are you integrated with right now? Who can actually use you? Or [crosstalk] in the future who do you plan to use, or who do you plan to partner with?
Domm:
Yeah, good question. So we launched last month in a partnership with Big Commerce. So every one of Big Commerce’s 60,000 merchants can offer a fast checkout to their consumers and to their shoppers. Next month our launch with support for Woo Commerce, another large platform with over a million and a half active merchants. And Magento after that. And then next year we’re going to be launching support for a Sales Force [inaudible 00:14:39]. I’m really excited to work with the Salesforce team and take their launch on commerce cloud.
Stephanie:
Amazing. I’m not biased or anything but I do think they’re probably going to be the best partner.
Domm:
Without a doubt. The reality is, a lot of the world’s favorite brands really do see it on Commerce Cloud, so it absolutely is a key partner and one we’re excited to get off the ground.
Stephanie:
Love that. So to shift over to the merchant mindset a bit, because that is who listens for the most part to this show, I was looking on your co founder Allison’s twitter and she had a stat on there saying that 50% of cart abandonment occurs at the payment stage in the US. And I wanted to hear a little bit about maybe a case study or metrics that you guys look at to see where a merchant should be looking at to see if their payment process is going well and how maybe… what is the average? What should they say like, “Oh, this is normal cart abandonment around this percent is normal, and this is too high”? How can a merchant think about whether they’re doing well or not?
Domm:
Yeah, great question. I think that there are so many ways to look at this. The average cart abandonment is 80 to 85% across the board.
Stephanie:
Oh wow. It’s higher than I thought.
Domm:
It’s phenomenally high. And so the reality is, if you’re doing less than that, than you’re doing above and below industry average, so maybe you think that’s good. The reality is, it’s appalling. 80 to 85% of your customers who have given clear intent to purchase are leaving without buying something. So even if you’re below that, I don’t think it’s good enough. It’s not good enough because one, you’re missing out on a lot of sales. And two, your customers are just having a terrible experience.
Domm:
Some people, like my granny story, it’s just actually a hard [inaudible 00:16:24]. They’re just unable to buy from you. Other people, it’s just so long and inconvenient that they’re just leaving. And the reality is, like we said, the typical flow is this add to cart, view, like everyone kind of thinks of checkout as a final stage of checkout. But it’s not. The process of buying something is add to cart, view cart, checkout, and then you typically ask them for your email first and then you try to work out if they’re a customer or not. If they are a customer, get them to log in. If they’re not, then say, “Do you want to do guest checkout?” Then you give them a whole bunch of forms to fill out. And then at the end you ask them for payment.
Domm:
So Fast is really different. Every single site that has Fast on it, you will see a Fast checkout button on the product page. And you can also see it on the cart page, and you can also see it on the checkout page. But it’s on every product page. And this is really the biggest difference because the fastest way, the easiest way for somebody to buy something is from the point that they’re looking at what they want to buy. It’s one click to be finished and order from the point that you’re looking at the product with Fast. And that is just such a big difference. It’s an actual one click check out. Whereas every other solution isn’t one click anyway. The payment, it’s normally at least two or three or five clicks or whatever. But it’s one or two or three or five clicks after you’ve done like ten steps to get to the payment section of checkout. And it’s really slow.
Domm:
So as a merchant, you can see very clearly in your analytics every stage of drop off. So from add to cart, how many people leave? From view cart, how many people leave? From checkout, from the email form, how many people leave? And so forth all the way down the train. Now if you’ve got 15 steps in that process, if you’ve got five steps in that process, then that’s a lot more than one step. It’s hard to have that levels of abandonment from a one step process. So that’s why Fast is really just so different in market because we take what is a much, much longer process and just simplify it to the NTH degree.
Stephanie:
Got it. Are you advising the merchants when it comes to minimums? Because I could see me finding, I don’t know, a mascara, it’s only a couple of dollars, having fast check out on there, how do you set that up for the merchants so that they’re still doing things and their profitable way but also allowing for that fast checkout, especially if they have lower priced items?
Domm:
You’re talking about my favorite point here. The fear of merchants, and absolutely warranted, the reason that they would not put any other payment buttons on the product page. So it’s not like no one else has ever asked to be on the product page, but merchants typically just say no to having PayPal, Apply Pay, Google Pay, like pick your payment button. They just say no to having it on the product page. And it’s because the fear is, and an absolutely warranted fear, is that it will reduce average order values. It will reduce the average items per order. It will increase delivery costs. It will increase shipping costs. And they don’t want to do that. Merchants don’t want to reduce the amount of money that they’re making.
Domm:
And the reality is, if you put an Apple Pay button onto a product page and a consumer uses that button, the merchant is guaranteeing that they’re only selling one item. So if it’s mascara for $4.99, then they’re only selling mascara for $4.99. As a consumer, it also means that a consumer is going to pay individual shipping costs for an item. So typically the shipping might be six, seven dollars or something. So a five dollar mascara is suddenly more than double as expensive. So as a consumer, it’s not a great outcome either. So it doesn’t make sense.
Domm:
Even on higher value transactions, even if the product was $50, a merchant still wants to bundle multiple products into a transaction. So they still aren’t incentivized to be pushing payment, like individual payment buttons onto product pages. The difference of Fast, and we spent a long time engineering something with this exact use case in mind, and it makes us absolutely different from every single payment button on the market because we’re not just a payment button, is that we natively integrate batching. Which means, as a consumer, when you click Fast checkout, you instantly buy whatever you’re looking to buy. The mascara, it’s yours. Now you can keep browsing.
Domm:
And then a couple of minutes later, you decide that you want to buy eyeliner, and you click Fast checkout on the eyeliner, and now you’ve got one order with two products on it. Not two orders of one product. So for the merchant, the average order value is now increased. The average items per order is now increased. They only have to fulfill one order. So they only have one box. It’s going to go out to the consumer, and so it’s only going to be one delivery cost to them. And they’re only going to be charged one transaction fee. So the consumer only has one charge on their credit card. The merchant only has one charge from Fast.
Domm:
It keeps average order value high, [inaudible] order. Even though we’re on every single product page, and I can tell you that between 75 and 80% of every single checkout on Fast is from the product page. So it is absolutely overwhelming the impact that it has to businesses, to every single business that takes on Fast, that the majority of these sales coming from product page. And it makes all the sense in the world, yet our average items per order is over two. And a lot of stores, the average items per order, even without buttons on the product page, is less than two. It’s like, 1.7, 1.6. So we are driving people, we are making it easy for people to buy things. People are buying things. People are buying more things. So businesses make far more money, can increase their order values, can increase the average items per order, can decrease their shipping cost, can decrease their payment cost, and yet still be increasing conversion rate much higher than they are now. And decreasing abandonment.
Domm:
Yeah. The button on the product page, the Fast checkout on product page, with our batching functionality, is just a next level for ecommerce.
Stephanie:
That’s really cool to hear, how that works behind the scenes. And I can definitely see that working well. I mean I’m even thinking about how many times I’ve added a bunch of things to a cart, especially on my phone, and then just forgot about it and came back and it wasn’t there anymore. And even within Amazon, I mean they have that Buy Now button, and I will buy the smallest things, just buy, buy, buy. I’m sure maybe they also batch that in the background, but it doesn’t matter to me because I’m just going through quickly buying things that maybe otherwise would have sat in the cart for a week.
Domm:
You’ve hit the nail on the head. So Amazon is the only other company in the world that batches like we do. And they only batch like that for Amazon.com. So Amazon Pay doesn’t do this. So what we have done is take that same functionality that the world’s largest ecommerce site built for themselves and given it to every single other merchant. And it’s just natively integrated out of the box. Merchants don’t have to do anything. They just integrate Fast and we do the rest. So it’s very, very sophisticated technology that decreases costs for business and everyone gets it by default. Yeah.
Stephanie:
Wow. That’s awesome. So I also just read that you guys raised 20 million in funding, and I wanted to hear a little bit about what you plan to do with that.
Domm:
Yeah. So we raised $20 million dollar series [inaudible] by Stripe. Obviously Stripe is one of the largest payment processors, payment infrastructure businesses. And in fact, Strive recently just partnered with Sales Force and Strive is going to be integrated into Commerce Cloud as well. And they’re sort of key partner of Commerce Cloud.
Domm:
Really, our goal is to enable as many consumers and as many businesses as possible to use Fast. So the money we raised is really to speed up that expansion. Our mission is to put these buttons on every website in the world, and partnering with people like Stripe, a huge distribution partner for Fast, and great partners for us. And we use Stripe’s payment processing, which underpins Fast. But yeah, we’re deploying the capital to build our network of merchants and offer Fast to every internet connected consumer in the world.
Stephanie:
That’s awesome. So how are you approaching international markets? Have you started doing that yet? How are you thinking about that roll out plan? Because it seems like it could be tricky since everyone has a different idea of how payments should work, or what they’re comfortable with, or how they pay.
Domm:
Yeah. It’s a good point. So we already have merchants in five countries. We can support merchants in 42 countries. So we’re expanding our roll out. And we support buyers all around the world, obviously. Ecommerce is kind of inherently global because you can buy from stores all around the world and have items shipped internationally quite easily these days. So there is definitely a large global component to our business.
Domm:
The reality is that typically payment processing has been dictated by merchants. And it’s a cost driven exercise. It’s more of a commodity product. And a consumer has no idea who Stripe is or [inaudible] or Braintree or these companies sit in the background that process money. Consumers don’t know them. The consumer just interfaces with the business, gives them their credit card details, and away they go. The reality is that with Fast, we’re a button system on the front end. Consumers get to know who we are, they choose to use the button because they get one click check out. It means that they get this entire post purchase experience for free that they didn’t get before. Finally they get all of their orders in one place, all of their products in one place. It’s a great experience for a consumer.
Domm:
And the consumer is now driving the decision as to how payment processing should be, rather than business. Now that’s not to say businesses don’t have a choice, obviously they get to put Fast on their website. But the reality is, the consumers are being far more active into which payment provider is being used because it’s being driven by that front end decision. And I think that that’s the biggest change that you’ll see moving forward is that a lot of payment decisions get remade by consumers as opposed to businesses.
Stephanie:
Yep. I love that. So have you heard any feature requests from these new customers that you’re onboarding that maybe you weren’t expecting? Since you just launched six weeks ago, I’m sure you maybe have a couple people being like, “Hey, I would like this or that,” and you’re actually building something that you weren’t planning to build before launching.
Domm:
Yeah. Look, our two biggest features that we get asked for all the time by merchants and consumers is returns and subscriptions. And we’re going to be supporting both of those very early next year. We want you to be able to manage your subscriptions through Fast, and as a consumer, this means we put all of the power in a consumer’s hand. So that all of the control, stuff that they don’t have. At the moment, they don’t get to see all of their purchases in one place. They don’t get to see rich receipt information. They don’t get to reorder products easily, so we’re giving them that.
Domm:
But the same thing is true for subscriptions. Where are all the subscriptions managed that come out of our accounts every month? It’s horrific, the state of subscriptions. And so we’re building that support for our subscriptions for consumers. And obviously for business as well, that means that it comes very easy. One click for customers to sign up for a subscription with you. So it’s a really great experience for both. And then returns as well. We want to make it easier for consumers to return things when they need to return things. And give them instant refunds on the money. Let them spend the money again straight away.
Domm:
And then the last one that I find really exciting is so we already offer the one click reorder from Fast from our online dashboard, but we’re going to be bringing out instant reordering of physical products. So you can scan a code on the back of your shampoo when you run out and more shampoo will come [inaudible 00:28:09]. You can do the same thing with ketchup in your fridge, and more ketchup will come. So basically, every consumable good in your house you’ll be able to reorder just by scanning the code on the back of the product.
Stephanie:
Wow. It feels like you guys are tackling a lot of different really important areas. I’m even thinking about some of those finance apps where they’re like, “Let’s analyze all the subscriptions that you’re subscribed to.” It seems like you guys are kind of building a dashboard that’s going to cover that, cover the reordering of things, covering returns. You guys seem to be doing a lot that a lot of other individuals have maybe tried to build one off products to solve.
Domm:
Yeah. Exactly. And I think that you think about all these spaces. This has been the problem. Everyone has thought of all of these things as disjointed problems. Again, the core thing that we’re solving is identity for consumers. When you walk into a doctor, you still have to fill in a paper based form. It’s crazy. Everyone just has these siloed information. Move address, you’ve got to tell everyone your new address again. The state of the world, the world is broken because of identity. So that’s fundamentally what we’re solving.
Domm:
So we’re giving consumers a home to manage their information. And that means when you buy things, give you a home to manage those purchases. When you subscribe to things, give you a home to manage those subscriptions. We really just think, “How do we provide a really secure and centralized spot for consumers where it puts them in control of their data?” As opposed to leaving businesses to being in control of their data.
Stephanie:
Yeah. Even thinking right now about every time I take my… I have six month old twins, I take them into the doctor, and I have to fill out the form twice with the same information. I’m like, “Ah. This is horrible.”
Domm:
Exactly. Yeah. One hundred percent. I think of doctors as the best use case for us, as to how annoying it is and how frustrating. Yeah.
Stephanie:
So what channels are you all using to get the word out? What do you see success? And I’m asking this because I was looking at your website and then on Instagram, bam, there was Domm talking to me saying, “Hey. You checked out our website. Where did you go?” And I was like, “Whoa. That was quick and awesome retargeting.” So what are you guys finding success in right now to get the word out about Fast?
Domm:
Yeah. So obviously social channels are great. We use all the major social channels. And a lot of different data retargeting tools. Especially for business customers, so these tools like [inaudible] really effectively target our core demographic. Really, for us, distribution actually comes through sellers. Sellers put the button on their website and really that’s the biggest window into consumers. That’s where we grow our fastest consumer generation. So we don’t typically have to try and actively build or really drastically, productively build the consumer network, because it comes through sellers. 90% of buyers, our first time Fast customers, they come to us through a merchant site.
Domm:
But now, after the first time that they fill in the form once, now they have one click check out everywhere else. Even on that site. Once they click Fast checkout on a mascara, then they fill in their details, then they keep browsing and then they buy the second product, and the second product is one click. And then the same thing is true if they come back a month later or a week later or whatever, they can buy again. So for us, it’s all about how do we bring on more merchants? And great thing about ecommerce is that every ecommerce site in the world is public. We can identify our entire market from [inaudible 00:31:44].
Domm:
We use Sales Force for our engine and we track virtually every ecommerce site in the world and know what technology they’re on and know what payment processes they use and target them accordingly. Through both sales and marketing. And partner with platforms Big Commerce or Sales Force, Commerce Cloud or so forth to better selling to those ecosystems. But yeah, I think really just want to make use of all of the tools and channels available to us, all the relevant ones at least, and reach people wherever they are.
Stephanie:
Awesome. So it seems like also that you guys are very far ahead of certain topics. Certain products that you’re building just feel far in the future that I didn’t think those problems would get solved in a year, but it seems like you guys are tackling them. So I wanted to hear what the future of online commerce looks like to you. In 2025, what will the process look like and how should merchants be preparing right now?
Domm:
Yeah. Great question. It’s so amazing to see all the value that you can unlock by enabling frictionless commerce. Is the idea of this sort of click and buy. And really it’s been this nirvana or the epiphany of what people really want, and we’ve never gotten there. And that’s exactly was Fast has delivered. So suddenly you can open up ecommerce opportunities everywhere. Not just through your site and then through some ten minute checkout process. If it’s one click check out, it means you could just pay 50 cents and read an article, or subscribe to the Wall Street Journal in one click. Or watch a movie in one click, or you can land on a site after seeing an Instagram ad and actually just check out in one click once you like the product. Or check out from an ad itself. Some frictionless. Maybe it is a mascara, a bundle or something that you see in an ad, and just one click purchase from the ad itself. That has been the nirvana of advertising for a long time.
Domm:
But it also means through social media, one click purchase through social media. If you do see an influencer promoting a product that you like or something that you do want, then just unlocking the value a lot sooner, and having less barriers for consumers to actually buy the things that they want to buy and enjoy the things they want to enjoy. So there’s a whole Rolodex of opportunity.
Domm:
I think things like our physical reorder product is going to just unlock a whole new wave of opportunity again. Because it’s not limited to the [inaudible] who bought it originally. You could go to the supermarket and buy ketchup off the shelf and then take it home, and then when you’re finished, then scan the code. Anyone in your house could scan the code and instantly more would be delivered. So it’s not tied to a person, it’s tied to a product. I think having that ability to mix real well to digital transactions that simply will just unlock opportunities that we can’t even think about at the moment.
Stephanie:
I love that. I also think Tik Tok is big. My team always laughs at me about that, but I think about how many people I follow on there. And I was watching this one girl’s video where she had some cup off Amazon and she was just doing a silly review, and apparently millions of people bought this cup just because of her review. But she didn’t get any attribution back. And it would have been nice to have a Fast button in there where [crosstalk] buy that. I want that too.
Domm:
Yeah. Absolutely. We’re going to run tests of one click check out just from links in Twitter later this year. But yeah, Tik Tok 100%. We’ll be able to do it later this year from a QR code embedded in the Tik Tok videos or Instagram videos, which would give them attribution and affiliate fees and whatever else. But yeah, I think that there’s so much we could do and we’d love to really expect to work a lot more closely with some of the large social networks over the next 12 months.
Stephanie:
That’s really cool. Yeah, I’m excited to see where it transforms to. All right, so I want to shift over to the lightning round brought to you by Sales Force Commerce Cloud. This is where I’m going to ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Domm?
Domm:
Okay.
Stephanie:
All right. What’s up next on your podcast list? Do you listen to podcasts or do you just join them?
Domm:
Yeah. So actually I’m listening to Business Wars at the moment. I am really enjoying hearing about one, the war of two companies I think is kind of interesting. But the history of companies as well. I had no idea that the founder of Adidas, one, how Adidas got its name, and then two, the brother of the founder of Adidas started Puma. Anyway, I find these stories amazing, so I’m digging my way through the many seasons of that podcast.
Stephanie:
Oh, that’s great. So we have a podcast called The Story and we did a whole episode on the brothers and how they were building Adidas together and yeah, how they shifted over to having competing companies. It was a very interesting story.
Domm:
Yeah. Yeah. Amazing.
Stephanie:
What’s up next in your travel destinations when you can travel? Where are you headed?
Domm:
I am Australian as you can hear, and I’m just addicted to the sun. I’m like a lizard. So it’s always tropical beach. I’m hoping to be able to get to Hawaii. I’m optimistically, maybe naively optimistic about getting to Hawaii for Christmas. But anywhere with sun and water is my dream destination.
Stephanie:
That’s great. What is your most recent impulse buy? What did you hit Fast checkout on recently?
Domm:
So solo [inaudible] great merchants now, but at a product that we actually just used at a beach last night. And it’s a solo stove, so it’s a fire pit. Beautiful fire pits, and they are really an amazing product and we went down to Ocean Beach last night and busted it out for the first time. We bought that with Fast checkout from the product page. But yeah, that was a really, really nice product to buy.
Stephanie:
That sounds nice. I need one of those. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be?
Domm:
Oh. We’re thinking about this at the moment. Who would my first guest be? I do think that there’s lots of opportunity in ecommerce and a lot of the companies doing really interesting things, especially in the age of Covid. The world has changed so dramatically. I think Nike has been doing some really interesting things and rapidly changing their business model. Their CEO has come from a tech background. I think that would be a very interesting discussion to hear more about Nike’s ongoing strategy and what the brand looks like moving forward.
Stephanie:
That would be a good one. All right and the last one, what one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?
Domm:
Well I mean, I’ll give you two things. One is the obvious, which is Covid. It is drastically shaping ecommerce. The second one is logistics. Again, [inaudible] because of Covid, but with increased ecommerce demand. But logistics is definitely going to be interesting to see how logistics plays out and changes ecommerce. Especially democratizing the Amazon effect across the internet.
Stephanie:
Yep. Yeah, I completely agree. Well Domm, this has been a very fast interview. I think we did your brand justice by how quick and how many hits we had in here. Where can people find out more about you and Fast?
Domm:
Great. Yeah, thanks. I had a blast. People may have to listen at a slower speed because I know I talk quickly. Fast, F-A-S-T dot co. You go on our website, have a look. Sign up as a consumer. If you’re a merchant, hit us at sales@fast.co. We’d love to get in touch, or go to fast.co [inaudible 00:40:08]. Sellers, you can hit us on social media. We’re very active on Twitter. We’re active on all the channels, but Twitter is definitely our number one channel. You can go to twitter.com\fast and you can engage with the business. If you want to talk to me directly, twitter.com\domm, D-O double M.
Stephanie:
That’s a good handle. Perfect. Thanks so much, Domm.
Domm:
Pleasure. Thanks for having me.
