Goal: Improve customer experience through financing options and a streamlined checkout

ProAudioStar is New York City’s largest independent music retailer, offering the latest equipment for musicians of all kinds. The company is also a popular e-commerce brand, setting itself apart by offering topnotch customer service, competitive prices, and an efficient, customer-friendly shopping experience.

Based in the heart of the Brooklyn music scene, ProAudioStar has been a go-to retailer for DJs, producers, and artists since 2006. Staffed with local musicians who are passionate about their craft, ProAudioStar has made it their mission to help as many people as possible afford their gear.

Alternative payment options help more musicians afford big-ticket gear

By introducing financing to their website, the company has acted on this mission—presenting customers with the option to break down purchases into manageable monthly installments. Allowing shoppers to pay for a big-ticket music items over 6, 12, or 18 months brings an otherwise out-of-budget purchase into reach for many

ProAudioStar was intent on finding a financing partner that would please shoppers. With a mission to make the banking industry more honest, modern financing company Affirm was a clear standout. Prioritizing simplicity and transparency, Affirm shows customers exactly what they’ll owe up front—eliminating the uncertainty associated with traditional credit.

And through smarter underwriting that quickly and more accurately assesses credit risk, Affirm makes financing available to more people who can responsibly repay. And given the ProAudioStar’s emphasis on a hassle-free customer experience, Chief Operating Officer Rob Blatt credits Affirm’s ease of use as among its most crucial selling points.

“With Affirm, a lot of things just made sense. The UI was just beautifully streamlined,” says Blatt.

A better shopping experience with Affirm’s prequalification feature

So when given the option to make the process even simpler, ProAudioStar was quick to jump on board. Affirm’s Prequalification feature allows shoppers to determine whether they qualify for credit—and for how much they qualify—just as they begin their shopping experience. This means when shoppers are browsing ProAudioStar’s site, they’re armed with the full knowledge of their spending power with Affirm.

For ProAudioStar, this knowledge translated into a 33% AOV lift, compared to Affirm’s AOV before the Prequalification feature launched. When customers knew upfront what their credit eligibility was, they found themselves able to afford more, like that new amp in addition to their guitar. Purchases that would otherwise be saved for later are becoming possible today.

It gets better: once a customer has checked out with Affirm once, the Prequalification feature will automatically notify them of their credit eligibility upon future ProAudioStar visits, including email notifications of how much they have left to spend and when it will expire. This streamlined process allows for a simpler, quicker checkout process. It’s also encouraging more conversions: the loan volume for the seven weeks following Prequalification’s launch was up 35%, compared to the seven weeks prior.

Blatt says that, since launching Prequalification, ProAudioStar has been seeing many Affirm customers return to use Affirm again—a probable result of returning shoppers’ ability to check out in a matter of clicks. The company has created their own widget to draw customers’ attention to Prequalification, and plans to call out its advantages in future email blasts.

For ProAudioStar, financing options have helped make music gear accessible to more customers. The new Prequalification feature has served to streamline an already efficient process, creating a maximally quick, simple, and customer-friendly user experience.