In a recent InternetRetailing webinar, Learn how global brand New Era use personalisation to deliver real business value, we heard from Joey Moore, head of evangelism for EMEA and APAC at Episerver and Susan Doogan, head of direct consumer channels for Europe at New Era Cap Company about how the brand is using technology to approach the retail challenges of 2019. Here’s a bulletpoint overview of what they said.
- The webinar started with introductions to New Era – a global brand that sells more than 50m caps a year – and omnichannel technology company Episerver.
- It went on to look at how New Era has developed its ecommerce site, with content from different music cultures, from hip hop and jazz through to dance music.
- How and why New Era moved to Episerver
- The importance of the customer service for competition
- How commerce websites have developed: an overview, from ecommerce to experience-driven commerce
- Insights into the Episerver Digital Experience Cloud
The New Era experience
Selling in international markets
- 42 sites: what does that look like?
- Languages: English site translated into key languages: German, French, Italian and Spanish
- Currencies: UK sterling, feeds with different Euro prices
- Predominantly a wholesale business, 5% of business is online
- Importance of localising the experience eg. In Germany, pay after delivery.
Moving to the cloud
- How website deals with spikes in trading patterns, eg when NFL comes to the UK/Black Friday etc
- Data security
- Support
Personalisation
- For different geographical markets
- For different interests: when NFL launch, can personalise to people who are interested in NFL
- When manipulating the algorithm manually doesn’t work
- Recommendation bars: works well, and can be translated
- Switch it on, let it run itself
- Effect of collecting data
- Effect of recommendations/personalisation on higher order value, more units in the basket
Legal and compliance
- In Germany always had two signatures to sign up – double opt in. Added for the UK post-GDPR
- French law dictates when sales can be held: enables us to make sure we’ve complied
- Personalise home page around different event for different countries
Behaviour differences
- If you write your address in the UK, it’s a different order from Germany: personalising to make sure customer doesn’t have to guess.
- Payment methods: just launched Klarna, in UK and Germany. Not yet in France.
Using machine learning to boost average order rates
- 21% higher AOV: we see people put more items in their basket, which adds to higher order value.
- We also sell apparel: as we’re looking to grow that we’ve using algorithms to show to new brands.
Personalisation
- About 67% of people see personalisation through the website: because of home page “We’re looking at where else we can do it – it’s a no brainer for us,” said Susan Doogan of New Era.
- Gone from mainly mobile to mainly desktop: “we were worried about what it would be like, people coming through the mobile site are now more engaged with it.”
- Episerver’s Joey Moore said: “If you’re using personalisation on desktop, then you do think about how to use it on mobile as well.” Stronger impact when users don’t have to scroll through irrelevant information.
Episerver dashboard demonstration
- Dashboard shows measures such as CTR/% sales from recommendations, customer lifetime value.
- Access to portal: a link that we can go on and update at any point.
- Date range
- Live pricing as price changes are made.
- Customer lifetime value
What New Era will do next
- More A/B testing, including personalisation widgets.
- Adding new personalisation blocks.
- Episerver Find: personalising search results, following users’ preferences
The webinar concluded with a Q&A session that covered areas from GDPR to approaches to personalisation. Click here to view the webinar in full including the slides and the Q&A session and here to explore InternetRetailing’s webinar archive.
