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“When I started, we had a very small warehouse where we sold laptops online. Now, we have a £400 million turn over and we sell in multiple categories.”
“When I started, we had a very small warehouse where we sold laptops online. Now, we have a £400 million turn over and we sell in multiple categories.”
Ecommerce Director Nathan Paul has seen a lot of growth and innovation in his 20 years with Buy It Direct Group (BID). Today, BID is one of the UK’s largest online retailers and sells across seven distinct brand sites from consumer-focused Better Bathrooms and Appliances Direct to more business-oriented Servers Direct.
"We focus on understanding, and defining, our customers and on offering great value," explains Nathan. "But 'value' will mean different things for each audience. On Laptops Direct, the value is a better deal and next-day delivery. On other sites, it's about offering different and better products."
"My job is getting more people to the website, getting people who are on the site to buy, and getting people who buy from us to buy from us again," says Nathan.
Offering great value can attract more visitors to BID's sites, but checkout conversion is critical. As Nathan says, the market is constantly evolving. AI and short-form video are changing how shoppers discover products and sellers while economic concerns are causing them to be more careful in their spending.
"Customers might choose to hold back from the top brands and go for a range below," he suggests. "And I think that brand loyalty is decreasing. That gives us a real opportunity for our own-brand products."
Checkout conversion was a challenge across all BID sites, and the business experienced a lower conversion rate for customers on mobile compared to desktop.
"Like most ecommerce sites, we were seeing around 50% of customers dropping out at the checkout stage," Nathan explains. "If the checkout process is slow, people begin to overthink their purchase, they get distracted, they get into doubt mode. So, the quicker you make checkout, and the less you ask the customer to do, the easier you get around those issues."
When Nathan heard about Fastlane by PayPal, he was keen to test it on BID’s sites.
Fastlane helps to accelerate transactions by enabling shoppers to checkout with their email address and a One Time Passcode, helping improve conversion on both mobile and desktop.
If they already have a Fastlane profile, customers’ payment and shipping details are auto-completed. If not, they can quickly create a profile during the checkout process and use the information for future checkouts at any Fastlane-enabled site.
As Nathan Says, “Fastlane recognises past customers, not just from our website but from any PayPal-using website. It auto-completes their information in a customer-friendly way and they don’t need their card. Fastlane reduces clicks and time and prevents shoppers getting distracted. That helps improve conversion.”
BID deployed Fastlane in May 2025 and it is now live on all its main ecommerce sites. As a result, checkout conversion is 28% higher than on non-Fastlane transactions.3 The average checkout time is now 26% faster at just 195 seconds.4
"It's a significantly quicker checkout process," Nathan says. "In fact, I'm surprised that Fastlane increased conversion as much as it has. That's helped increase our revenue, increase our number of new customers and improve our customer experience. Fastlane has been really positive for Buy It Direct."
BID has been a PayPal merchant for over 10 years and it was Nathan who first introduced PayPal into the business.
"We continue to see benefits. We see the commercial gains. PayPal facilitates our credit offerings and PayPal powers all of our payments. Our relationship with PayPal has been good for our business," Nathan confirms.
Looking ahead, BID has growth plans for each of its brands which, Nathan says, effectively double-down on Buy It Direct's core strategy of understanding its customers, offering great value and providing a fantastic customer experience. Fastlane by PayPal will be a central part of streamlining and improving the checkout experience.