Online retailer JD Williams has become one of a small but growing band of retailers to embrace personalization marketing – rather than just optimization – to make its mobile offering more effective.
JD Williams, a leading digital fashion retailer with 140 years of experience had previously been using an optimisation solution, however with diminishing returns from optimisation alone, the retailer quickly realised that it needed to adopt personalisation to improve customer engagement and conversion, and turned to personalisation platform provider Monetate who were able to solve a number of business challenges.
Like many retailers JD Williams has seen a significant shift towards mobile traffic across their brands. Using Monetate, the brand was able to address this change, creating personalised experiences for visitors using mobile and tablet devices. The JD Wiliams team were able to quickly build, test and implement a bespoke mobile experience which generated an uplift of 18% in new visitor conversion within the space of two weeks – demonstrating the value of personalisation to the business.
Further test specific KPIs included an overall conversion uplift of 8%, revenue per session uplift of 12%, add to basket uplift of 4% and average order value increase of 5%.
Monetate’s easy to use platform enabled the eCommerce team to quickly start creating personalised experiences targeting segments of their audiences at scale and without reliance on 3rd parties. Additionally, with JD Williams in the process of moving onto the Hybris eCommerce platform, Monetate gave the business great agility to trade and merchandise the site while IT resources were engaged in the re-platforming process. The company was able to easily make changes to the site without having to wait for alterations to be hard-coded into a new update.
Finn Christo, Conversion Rate Optimisation Manager at N Brown Group explains: “The personalisation platform has enabled us to get started in a really quick an easy way. We have been impressed with the business impact that Monetate has had in such a short time and are looking forward to the next stages of the project.”
Along with seeing quick results above and beyond expectations, the technology has also had an unexpected, but positive impact on the internal team. Having used Monetate for almost a year the company has seen a change in culture as it has bought departments together, enabling JD Williams to become more agile. Finn continued “The level of excitement in the business is inspiring. We have full support from the executive team who understand that by moving the needle by just a tiny fraction the ROI is huge. Monetate lets us move that needle.”
The next steps on the path to personalisation are for the business to integrate its CRM data, containing large amounts of valuable customer information into the Monetate platform, giving it great scope for far deeper levels of personalisation. Ann Steer, Director of Marketing at JD Williams’ parent company, N. Brown Group, commented “Personalisation and the ability to deliver, individual relevant experiences are the single most important thing that will help us deliver business success.”
