British clothing retailer Boden has turned to personalisation to make its customer experience more relevant to different segments of online shoppers – and seen a 18% rise in add to basket rates.
“The way in which people shop on our sites has changed as new devices are introduced and there is a greater shift to mobile,” explains Hayley Lingard, web optimisation executive at Boden. “We are focusing on optimising their experience regardless of the device they are using and personalising it based on their language as well as their browse or purchase history.”
With mobile dominating UK website traffic, Boden was keen to improve its mobile experience, having seen through data analysis that it wasn’t very clear that swiping showed more images and colour options.
“We tested adding a “Swipe for More” prompt on top of the main image on the mobile site,” says Lingard. “Learning from initial results, we tweaked the message, this time using Monetate’s Dynamic Testing as we were nearing our peak trading times. With the goal metric as ‘add-to-basket’, Dynamic Testing reduced the risk during a busy trading period. It was so successful that within a week, 99% of the traffic was being sent to the experiment, as the add-to-basket rate was seeing significant uplift. Overall we saw an 18% increase in add-to-basket.”
Launched last month, Monetate’s Dynamic Testing is a new machine powered testing capability as part of the Monetate personalisation platform, that helps retailers reduce risk and capitalize on early gains during testing. The technology assesses campaign performance in real-time, determining targeted experiences are performing best. Traffic is then dynamically allocated to the winning variant, enabling retailers to maximise ROI at a much earlier stage.
Lingard continues: “With real-time analytics the technology allows us to spot any anomalies almost instantly. We can also see real-time trends, make predictions, and feedback the most accurate, relevant and up-to-date data to the business.”
Boden also added product page recommendations through Monetate, recommending relevant products after a visitor had added an item to their online bag. For the UK, Boden saw a seven per cent increase in ‘average order value’ (AOV) when recommending girls’ accessories if a visitor added a girls’ product to their basket.
“By integrating our CRM data, we have been able to track specific customer segments, which gives us a greater insight in how we need to target and personalise towards these visitors,” says Lingard.
Mike Harris, VP EMEA at Monetate, says: “Boden has shown the wider retail community how personalisation can be executed effectively on a multinational basis. In an age where shoppers will browse and buy at any time of day, on any device, Boden has embraced a creative approach to personalising the experience for its customers. Further targeting and segmentation will help to provide an even more customised experience to new and returning visitors, to build on the already-impressive results they’ve seen.”