Each shopper has a unique journey. They have specific goals and preferences, and as a result, have different expectations of brands and retailers.
Retailers are striving to connect and engage customers, regardless of their unique preferences, by embracing personalization. While ratings and recommendations have become more commonplace, new tools and technologies empower retailers to personalize different phases of the browsing and buying journey.
SABON, a luxury bath and body fragrance shop, uses technology from Dynamic Yield to personalize its prime real estate: The e-Commerce homepage. Known and hailed for its high-quality products, exceptional service and packaging and store design, SABON strived to create a memorable online experience that reflected the environment of its 130 stores.
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During Black Friday weekend, SABON experienced a 35% uplift on sales over 2013, as well as a 20% boost in homepage order value and 60% increase in page views.
“Personalization is a must nowadays,” said Inna Uretsky, e-Commerce and Marketing Manager for SABON. “Consumers expect a better shopping experience and want to be more engaged. And better engagement means higher conversions and sales.”
Automating The Personalization Process
Initially, SABON sought a solution to help boost conversions during the most competitive time of year: The holiday season. The retailer also needed a solution that was flexible and turnkey enough to allow team members to make site changes on the fly.
“One of our biggest issues was implementing new changes on our site, especially during the holiday season, since the competition is high, and actions and reactions must be quick,” Uretsky said in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “We needed a solution that would allow us to create changes without having to go and change the code, or be dependent on the creative team.”
Now, SABON has the ability to customize the experience based on each customer. During the 2014 holiday season, the retailer optimized the slideshow on its homepage by uploading different variations of products, sales and offers to guide customers through the sales funnel. The retailer also has created various banner images that are tailored to align with specific customers and delivered based on their unique behaviors.
“We broke down the home page and other pages into units, and created various banner images that we uploaded through Dynamic Yield, and let the Dynamic Yield tool work its magic,” Uretsky said. “From that point onward, Dynamic Yield’s automated algorithm engine tested the variations on different types of users, and dynamically delivered the top performing variation per user according to real-time results.”
Some key takeaways from the holiday season included:
- Returning customers are more inclined to click on a single-item promotion based on past purchases than generic sales and discounts.
- “Free shipping” offers had a significant impact on conversions.
Because it met and exceeded goals for the holiday season, SABON plans to add new variations to existing experiments, and even create new ones.
“We also plan to tag additional site areas to receive more data on our users,” Uretsky explained. “We can use Dynamic Yield Smart Objects personalization and automated conversion optimization for our external, third-party campaigns as well.”
