Blog Archives

• RETAIL SEGMENT: Home and Garden Improvement
• PRODUCT: Recommend™
• CHALLENGE: Homebase sought to optimize its website experience for customers— taking stock updates, trends or personalization into account—while gaining visibility on impact for any implemented initiatives. They also sought to change the manual process for updating related items on its product pages.
• RESULTS: Following the implementation of RichRelevance Recommend, Homebase:
  • Averaged one additional item to the shopper’s cart
  • Increased the average order value by 30%
  • Attributed nearly 10% of online revenue to a Recommend influence (over 12 months)

“RichRelevance have been a pleasure to work with, providing very helpful and timely support through our implementation as well as advice and guidance since going live. We are now looking to leverage their consultancy services to see what further benefits they can provide.” – Todd Coughlan, Commercial Optimization Executive, Homebase.

Homebase is a leading home and garden retailer selling over 38,000 products for the home and garden. In addition to more than 265 large, out-of-town stores throughout the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, it has a growing internet offering at www.homebase.co.uk.

Confronted with a manual process to update related items on product pages, Homebase sought a personalization solution that would not only relieve pressure on internal resources, but would also help them improve the customer experience.

In June 2014, Homebase partnered with RichRelevance to implement the Recommend™ product recommendations solution.

Not only does Recommend automate personalization functionality, saving significant internal time and resources, but also the recommendations drive revenue and relevance to consumers through its relevance modelling. The ensemble modelling leverages over 125 algorithms, which compete for the opportunity to respond to each shopper request, taking into account user details and the context of the request. This advanced algorithm gives shoppers the right recommendations and helps drive sales and basket size. Recommend also gave Homebase the ability to analyze performance at a granular and top-line level as well as perform intelligent tests to further optimize performance across the mobile, application and desktop devices.

In addition to the revenue driving capabilities, Homebase really liked Recommend for its intuitive, self-learning ability to constantly test and optimize for the best recommendation, based on shopper interaction. This helped Homebase cut resource costs by freeing up internal resources to be more strategic, rather than tactical in their daily responsibilities.

“RichRelevance provided a complete recommendations engine for us which we felt was the best choice for a sustainable solution moving forward,” said Paul Canavan, Head of Digital Programme & Operations at Homebase.

Since implementing Recommend in October 2014 across category, item, cart and add-to-cart pages, Homebase has seen on average a 30% increase in cart sizes for those customers who interact with product recommendations. Plus, customers who engage with the Recommend product are proven to add (on average) one additional item to their cart.

Paul Canavan added: “We’ve seen particularly good results since the addition of the mobile and tablet channels, with the ‘add to cart’ placement demonstrating really good uplift. It’s not always about basket size; sometimes it’s just as important to recommend similar products that the customer may prefer. The use of RichRelevance technology is a great way of highlighting the product range we have.”

In addition to the increase in basket size and average order value, following the implementation of RichRelevance Recommend, over the last 12 months nearly 10% of online revenue could be attributed to a Recommend influence.

Because Homebase is so happy with the success of Recommend, the company has decided to invest in a resource to fully manage the Recommend product. The resource allocation demonstrates how the company understands it can further increase its positive performance by trialing new placement locations and merchandising strategies, which are included as part of the Recommend product. This resource will also focus on optimizing the system by testing and learning using the data provided through RichRelevance, as well as producing new metrics and key performance indicators (KPI) for the business to understand the purpose and performance of the tool.

• RETAIL SEGMENT: Books
• PRODUCT: Recommend™ & Engage™
• CHALLENGE: With one of the largest direct competitors, Amazon, plus a large inventory and a high number of gift browsers, Book People needed a solution to give them the ability to wow their customers through highly personali`ed experiences.
• RESULTS:
  • Increase of £7 per basket through Recommend
  • 70% increase in conversion through Engage

“Both Engage and Recommend have given us not only the opportunity but also the confidence to be sure that that we are showing the right content and product to the right customer at the right time.” – Richard Stone, Online Merchandising Executive, Book People.

Founded in 1988, Book People is an online bookstore with over 7 million users. Book People has a large inventory of over 200,000 books which it sells via its ecommerce site bookpeople.co.uk. Book People has one of the largest direct competitors in Amazon therefore remaining competitive against such a heavy weight is a constant challenge. With the book sector dominated by gift browsers rather than shoppers purchasing for themselves, it is often difficult to second-guess shoppers interests and to grab their attention quickly, especially given their large catalog of books.

Book People sought to create innovative, engaging and personalized customer experiences to improve conversion rates and remain competitive without presenting the customer with too much product choice.

With an increasing volume of mobile traffic browsing books, but with conversions happening via their desktop site, Book People needed a solution which would work seamlessly across all their touch points – website, mobile and tablet.

In June 2014, Book People started using Recommend™ to increase customer conversion and accuracy of the product recommendations displayed on bookpeople.co.uk. Recommendations are dynamically curated for customers through the RichRelevance sophisticated personalization engine based on 140+ algorithms.

Richard Stone, Online Merchandising Executive at Book People explains how Recommend works: “Recommend ensures Book People always gives customers products they will enjoy, whether that’s books by the same author, price range or genre. The engine also powers “often bought together” products where two products are offered as a bundle, ensuring value and simplicity for our customers.”

Recommend enables Book People to analyze the whole customer journey across all touch points rather than on individual sales channels. This means they can secure an order when it’s right for the customer rather than push a conversion when the customer isn’t ready. All the data gathered via user IDs is in the personalization engine, so will improve and further personalize the customer experience when visitors decide to browse next or purchase. Recommend also provides Book People “ recommend™ with the ability to identify shoppers across multiple channels, therefore pick up the journey where the customer left to improve the experience for the customers.

Richard went on to share some of the results Book People are seeing from Recommend. “The results speak for themselves, customers who interact with personalised recommendations on bookpeople.co.uk spend an additional £7, that’s the equivalent of an additional item in each order.”

The majority of customers coming to Book People’s website are for children’s books, where value is a known sales driver. However while Book People want to secure a sale they don’t want to give away deals to everyone and forfeit overall revenues. In order to identify the shoppers own interests, Book People needed to build shopper profiles based on previous purchasing history, coupled with analyzing against other similar users in order to understand what would resonate with individual shoppers. To help them achieve this, in January 2015 Book People added an additional layer of personalization for their customers through RichRelevance Engage™.

Engage creates highly relevant content experiences to captivate every customer. RichRelevance maps individual shopper behaviour against its advanced shopper segmentation and targeting tools to work out exactly what content will resonate best with customers, all with precision and minimum effort for Book People, yet helping to get shoppers to the products and offers they want faster. The content powers the whole website, excluding informational pages such as FAQs and Help Pages.

Since implementing Engage, Book People has been able to reduce the time absorbed by merchandisers on what they should feature on the website by handing over content decisions to the personalization engine, entrusting what’s displayed to the power of data rather than second-guessing what customers want. Effectively the power of the experience lies with the customer and they get a personalized experience as they would in any traditional bookstore.

Lauren de Bray, Online Merchandising Manager explains the impact of Engage to Book People. “Engage is probably one of the most important tools we are using to drive the online business forward and master the brave new world of personalization. It enables us to prioritize our customers needs and ensure that we are fulfilling their desire for value and engaging them with a relevant, hand-picked range of product and promotions, precisely and consistently”

After introducing Engage, Book People saw an immediate spike in engagement with the content on their site. The customers who engage with personalized content are 70% more likely to make a purchase than those who aren’t exposed to personalized content. Customers who click through on personalized content spend nearly 5% more per order than those who only viewed the personalized content.

• RETAIL SEGMENT: DIY and Home Improvement
• PRODUCT: Personalized Recommendations and Advanced Merchandising
• CHALLENGE: To showcase the full range of products and sell more complete solutions
• RESULTS: 65% increase in items per order and 28% increase in spend from those interacting with recommendations

Leroy Merlin is a home improvement and gardening retailer with 400 retail stores across the world. A major player in the global DIY market, Leroy Merlin offers products and solutions for DIY, decoration, construction and gardening. Each country operates as independent business units.

In 2017, Leroy Merlin Italy wanted to create a more personalized experience for customers on their website www.leroymerlin.it by incorporating personalization and machine learning to accelerate product discovery and ensure it was easy for their customers to locate all the items needed for a project. Leroy Merlin Italy aimed to increase items per order and customer satisfaction by helping guide their customers with intelligent and comprehensive project- based recommendations.

With so many product SKUs across a wide range of categories, Leroy Merlin Italy sought a solution that would enable them to easily optimize and reduce manual merchandising, while also allowing them to maintain control of their brand when appropriate. After analysing and testing several solutions and tools, Leroy Merlin Italy selected the best performing provider, RichRelevance, to be their strategic personalization partner based on their sophisticated AI that offers the right mix of automation and control.

Lionel Devidal, Digital and Ecommerce Director at Leroy Merlin Italy, explained “Through the RichRelevance solutions we were able to automate the recommendations based on two desired outcomes; showcasing compatible items based on what the shopper was purchasing as well as surfacing similar products the shopper may not find otherwise.”

Leroy Merlin Italy displays 2 placements on the product page; one designed to cross sell related products and the other displays similar products the customer might also like. To ensure customers receive guidance across their entire shopping journey, Leroy Merlin Italy has instrumented recommendations at every interaction point, on the add to cart and wishlist pages as well as within remarketing and abandoned cart emails to shoppers.

“We are very happy with the RichRelevance solution, it’s been very easy to set up strategies and customize rules, which is good seeing as we have a lot of advanced merchandising rules to ensure the compatibility of all our products! We also have the flexibility to strategically boost specific products when we want to.” Commented Lionel.

Leroy Merlin Italy has utilized RichRelevance’s best in class Personalization Services to garner best practices, guidance and insights in addition to leveraging tests to optimize the placements and strategies on the website. They have been delighted with the results as Lionel explained:

“There is no doubt in my mind that the RichRelevance personalization consultant has had a very positive impact on the success of our personalization efforts. Their ability to fine tune the engine and continually optimize means our results continue to improve.”

After just 6 months of going live with RichRelevance solutions in December 2017, Leroy Merlin Italy can attribute 9.5% of revenue to personalization. Leroy Merlin customers who interact with recommendations spend 28% more with 65% more items per order. Furthermore, the cross sell placement on the add to cart page, which recommends items related to those in the cart has a staggering 8% click through rate. Out of those items viewed over 20% go on to be purchased.

“RichRelevance personalization has allowed us to propose more complete solutions to our customers based on their specific needs and interests. We have a high engagement with recommendations on the site, and it is clear from the results that customers are valuing the recommendations being made. We are excited by the prospect of adding more placements to other pages on our website as well as the homepage, and the results this will bring for Leroy Merlin Italy.” Concluded Lionel.

• RETAIL SEGMENT: Arts and Crafts Discount Retailer
• PRODUCT: Personalized Search
• CHALLENGE: To improve the functionality and performance of the on-site search function
• RESULTS: 36% attribution for online sales

The Works is a retailer that serves over 22.5 million customers each year – stocking 40,000 different products including books, toys, gifts, stationery and arts & crafts at discount prices. Selling over 1 million products each week, The Works appeals to anyone looking for a wide variety of products at great value prices.

Lack of Functionality and Performance Data with Current Solution

The Works has been working with RichRelevance since 2013, employing product recommendations and content personalisation solutions across its website www.theworks.co.uk. As ecommerce sales have grown as a percentage of overall sales, The Works were looking to improve other areas of their website. In 2017 they started to look for a new onsite search solution, as their current solution lacked functionality as well as performance data on how it was working.

Alex Beard, Online Trading Manager at The Works takes up the story. “Previously, we’d employed an out of the box solution. It was restrictive in its functionality and performed very poorly at a subjective level. I say subjective, as we had no data to help us understand how it was performing at an objective level.”

Focus on Connecting Shoppers with Exactly what they Search for

The Works reviewed several onsite search solutions, including a thorough benchmarking analysis. In the end the decision was easy, and The Works chose the RichRelevance personalised on-site search solution, Find™, due to its ability to connect shoppers with exactly what they were looking for, as Alex explains:

“After meeting with RichRelevance, it was apparent that they’d created a solution that really focused on providing the most relevant results for the customer. We felt that RichRelevance had a better understanding of what we required from our site-search. We had no interest in all of the “fluffy” parts of search that others were pitching us (like SEO benefits) and only had an absolute interest in making sure customers found exactly what they were looking for when they came to our site. After a thorough competitor benchmarking project, we found that Find was the best solution to do this for The Works.”

Find performance is extremely positive

RichRelevance implemented Find™ on theworks.co.uk in just 12 weeks to ensure they were up and running in time for the 2017 Peak Trading Season. During the peak season, 36% of The Works online sales can be directly attributed to the implementation of Find™. Since peak trading, Find™ has continued to help The Works optimise searches for key terms over Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Easter. Their Findability score has remained strong, as has their conversion rates.

“We are delighted with the performance of Find. After a strong start over peak trading, it has helped us achieve great like for likes in January and February of this year, of 20% and 45% respectively.”

“We can see customers have been finding what they want, and quickly. The results being returned are more akin to customer expectations.”

The Works are continuing to optimise their implementation of Find™ and are also now looking at personalising their listing pages with the RichRelevance Discover™ solution.

• RETAIL SEGMENT: Pureplay department store
• PRODUCT: RichRelevance Engage™
• CHALLENGE: HP wanted to create a direct, personalized relationship with each customer from the moment they first use their new HP device.
• RESULTS: HP used RichRelevance Engage to create HP Jumpstart, a personalized companion app that encourages and inspires every customer with a highly relevant content experience.
  • HP Jumpstart will be HP’s largest direct customer channel by the end of the year. 
  • The new companion app has yielded a greater than 30% increase in engagement as compared to the generic template HP used in the past. 
  • Quality of engagement has improved as more than onethird of customers engagement in welcome content and minutes of use has doubled since our pilot began.

HP (#20 on the Fortune 500) is one of the world’s largest computing companies, creating technology to make life better for everyone, everywhere. The company’s mission is to engineer experiences that amaze, and HP produces more devices for more customer segments than anyone else in the industry.

Since the majority of HP devices are sold through retail channel partners, HP doesn’t control the customer experience or have a direct customer connection at the point of sale. However, they do own the ‘first boot’ – that critical moment when a consumer first uses their new device – and the subsequent customer journey through usage and discovery.

Drilling into the first boot experience, HP’s research found that robust product knowledge and software are major contributors to satisfaction, but pre-installed software and wizards are too generic to meet consumer needs. The company also found that the more customers spend time and explore, the happier they are with the new device and more likely to recommend to others:

• 90% of customers want to do more with their PC 
• 70-80% of user satisfaction is generated at first boot 
• 44-47% dissatisfied with pre-installed software experience  Software drives 50% of top 10 customer wants in next device.

Armed with these findings, HP looked to reinvent its approach to the first boot experience and beyond. Instead of treating every customer in the same way, HP wanted to provide a personalized experience to inspire, engage and assist customers in getting the most possible from their new device.

HP set strong criteria: the personalization strategy would need to scale to millions of customers without losing relevance; it needed to seamlessly integrate with HP’s existing and future product marketing assets; and it should automatically optimize in real time as new data and content entered the system.

Solution

HP turned to RichRelevance Engage to create HP Jumpstart, a trusted personal companion app that delivers a fully personalized content experience. Using advanced AI, the app engages new and returning customers with dynamic content that shows exactly why their particular product is spectacular. HP Jumpstart points to the accessories, software and services needed to meet an individual’s goals and anticipates evolving demands over time.

How It Works

Beginning at first boot, HP Jumpstart takes users through a series of nine dynamic screens and up to 30 content tiles that connect them with the most relevant information based on what they want to achieve with their new device.

Using advanced AI, every screen and every flow is personalized in real time from thousands of potential messages and differs by customer, segment and geography – presenting the most relevant experience from millions of possibilities. When the customer returns to the app, additional screens and suggestions are available based on up-to-the-moment goals, preferences & behavior.

For example, a U.S. customer buying a premium laptop may be immediately enticed to “Watch Netflix anywhere with a 360-degree hinge” or “Charge your phone from your laptop even when it’s powered down” – essential features that HP had no way to communicate in the past. Alternatively, for a hardcore gamer with a new desktop, HP Jumpstart can take on a totally different complexion with the personality, look and feel of what the HP gaming brand is all about.

Behind the scenes, Engage leverages nearly 300 contextual data attributes received by the Jumpstart app to power a dynamic, personalized content experience based on what is most germane to each customer segment. Advanced machine learning and AI maps individual customer behavior against advanced targeting and audience segmentation tools to display the right content within each screen – as well as determine the correct screens and flow.

Each HP Jumpstart experience is continuously – and automatically – optimized with advanced machine learning that eliminates manual A/B tests. All content is served directly from HP’s Content Management System, allowing HP to use every asset while relying on Engage to scientifically optimize customer response.

Results

“We want to tell the customer why their HP product is awesome – and make sure they are getting everything they need out of their purchase. Engage takes on the heavy lifting of determining when, where and how to get these messages to the customer in way that is helpful, not obnoxious. We provide the content options, and RichRelevance takes on the task of figuring out the right message and time to captivate the customer.” – Aron Tremble, Sr. Director of Software Experience & Products – Personal Systems, HP Inc.

Within six months of launching the Jumpstart companion app, HP has rapidly expanded Jumpstart to millions customers worldwide, and expects this to be the company’s largest direct customer channel by the end of the year. The new companion app has yielded greater than 30% increase in engagement as compared to the generic template HP used in the past And HP continues to record measurable boots in customer volume and quality of engagement, including significant increases in minutes of use each month and average monthly CTR.

HP continues to take advantage of new opportunities to use Engage to accumulate customer insights while delivering a personalized relationship the across the customer lifecycle. Ultimately HP plans to use personalized content to improve all aspects of its business: from awareness of devices, accessories and services through contextual help and predictive support for established users.

• RETAIL SEGMENT: Apparel
• PRODUCT: Find™
• CHALLENGE: With more than 2 million unique SKUs, Swap.com needed to move beyond basic site search to provide ‘true personalization’ that is instant, individualized, accurate and exceeds shopper expectations.
• RESULTS:
  • Delivered initial ‘out of the box’ conversion increase of 7.3% – the biggest conversion increase Swap.com has ever seen as the result of introducing a new tech capability.
  • Immediately enhanced brand perception & engagement by returning relevant results for queries averaging 2.2 words or less. Provide a better experience to high-value customers (40% of revenue comes from session with search).
  • The search experience at scale to help Swap.com understand if shoppers are locating the items they wish to buy.