In online retail, it’s essential to stay on top of the ever changing nature of our industry. We’ve all seen the rapid growth that eCommerce has experienced over the past few years, so it’s only wise to keep your eye on the ball when it comes to new up-coming developments, releases and technologies in our rapidly advancing world. Along with them, technological developments bring huge commercial opportunities which cannot be ignored.
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For this week’s instalment of our step by step series analysing specific elements of Locayta Freestyle Merchandising®, we’re taking a look at Locayta Search® spell-correction and considering the benefits, implications and practicality of its deployment.
For today’s fashion retailers eCommerce opportunities are ripe for the picking across the globe and across consumer markets. Russian fashion is the latest player storming the scene, with the online fashion market growing at an impressive 40% in the last year alone. Our own client Tesco Clothing have cornered the market in Eastern Europe, whilst in the US almost 70% of high income American males are now choosing eCommerce channels for their luxury purchases from the likes of Rolex and Luis Vuitton.
As we started last week here and here, this is the third in our step by step series where we’re taking an element of Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® and considering the benefits, implications and practicality of employing each specific technology. Today we’re taking an in depth look at Locayta Product Recommendations.
Locayta Product Recommendations: What are they?
Product recommendations are a vitally important marketing strategy for ecommerce retailers. Locayta stands out from the crowd with their ability to provide retailers with personalised and highly relevant product recommendations, offered to their customers in real time either on site or via email marketing.
Using behavioural algorithms, Locayta Product Recommendations are a combination of generic recommendations based on the collective intelligence of your site, plus personalised recommendations based on your users’ past and present behaviour. Locayta tracks the individual user journey to adjust product recommendations according what has been searched for, added to basket and purchased by both the individual customer and all other previous users. With consistent dynamic updates, day to day selections and search behaviour influence recommendations the minute your users click.
Locayta Product Recommendations also work in conjunction with Locayta Balance Factor® to produce Locayta Product Accessory Recommendations. This technology selects specific accessories to match the products your users are viewing. As with all Locayta Product Recommendations, accessories can be filtered and weighted by any type of attribute, including size, price range, colour, new in and more.
The ecommerce benefits: What can you gain?
Locayta Product Recommendations are unique in their ability to provide targeted suggestions resulting in dramatically improved conversion rates . 80% of online purchases are affected by product recommendations. Implementing this technology increases both average order values and average revenue per visit. Product Recommendations can also be customised to match your objectives with your customers’ preferences, giving you increased business management control.
Locayta‘s technology is specifically designed to help you enhance your sales and conversion rates. As part of the full Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® package, Locayta Product Recommendations have increased sales across the web by up to 19% for clients, including Tesco, boohoo.com and Paperchase.
Leading by example: some client experiences
Mark Wakeley, Change Manager at Tesco, appreciates the potential of product recommendations to deliver guaranteed returns as well as the technology’s ability to build a loyal customer base. “Locayta’s product and accessory recommendations ensure that customers have quick access to the outfits they seek” he explains. “It’s about offering convenient service, helping customers to choose the ideal look for them, and ultimately increasing conversion rates and order values by pointing them towards extra products that will complement their main choices.”
Adrian Spence, Head of Ecommerce at Paperchase, points out the labour saving benefits of the system, “Our products are all about driving newness and offering fresh collections,” he explains. “At Paperchase we’re now thinking more strategically about product recommendations in order to increase AOV“.
The first steps: Where do you go from here?
Amongst the many services available from Locayta, Product Recommendations come fully integrated into the Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® platform. To see Locayta Product Recommendations in action and find out more on Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® services as a whole, visit www.locayta.com today.
When it comes to optimising your eCommerce platform, it’s essential to have control of every facet of your merchandising. Some services control individual aspects of your online merchandising with specific technologies, but juggling several different interfaces at the same time can be both time consuming and costly. Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® uniquely allows you to manage key elements within a single platform. That means that for the first time you can exercise total control over your online sales performance.
All in one: everything you need in one place
Made up of intelligent site search, product recommendations and visual merchandising, Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® is one of the most technically advanced ecommerce search and merchandising solutions available. It operates exclusively from a single control panel, reducing your need to outsource and delivering increased operational efficiency as well as speed, accuracy and reduced costs.
The flexible multi-faceted design enables you to configure the functions you require. You can customise performance in accordance with your personal retailing strategies, whatever they may be. The technology plugs straight into your existing ecommerce platform to manage every aspect of search, product display and recommendation functionality within one powerful tool kit.
The Results
Because you can customise Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® to your own preferences you can achieve the targets and key objectives on your wish list. Key deliverables include:
- Delivering tailored search results for the end customer to increase purchase probability
- Growth in overall sales performance, increased conversion rates, average order values and average revenue per visit.
- Higher retention rates and improved customer satisfaction with reduced clicks to purchase.
What’s more, Locayta Freestyle Merchandising®‘s adaptable structure has the ability to simplify the complex challenges that you, as a retailer, may be faced with.
What they say…
Locayta boasts a industry leading client list who opt in to their preferred services within the multi-faceted Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® platform.
Chris Griffin, Head of Ecommerce at urban-wear retailer Superdry says “Locayta offered the perfect combination of tools to control our search and merchandising”.
Ecommerce Manager, Fabrice Druelle at Prezzybox agrees. “It’s a very usable platform. The dashboard is simple to get to grips with and you can really play with the technology. Locayta offered us a tool we simply couldn’t find elsewhere.”
Catherine Turner, Ecommerce Manager at Boohoo, outlines the advantages of the single platform. “For us the ability to opt in manually where we need to is the key win” she says.
Want more?
Uniquely, Locayta covers the complete range of merchandising disciplines on a single platform, providing a dynamic, robust and scalable merchandising solution that delivers increased online revenue and reduced costs. For more information on the services available from the Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® platform, visit www.locayta.com.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock you’ll know that 2012 is a big year for UK retailing. The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and London 2012 are both key seasonal ecommerce opportunities with unlimited potential for merchandise, themed products, special promotions and more.
Run a search right now to see how many internet retailers are jumping on the occasion-led bandwagon – and onto the front page of Google. Are you ready for the flurry of online buying we’re expecting as these events finally hit?
Plan for every occasion for ecommerce success
Back in March Retail Technology publicised seasonal advice for ecommerce retailers. Retailers need to follow best practice actions “around 60, 45, 30 and 15 days prior to each seasonal peak” said Keith Bird, eSellerPro Chief Executive, adding that “in an era of convenience where the consumer expects what they want, when they want it, through whichever channel they want, it’s not an option for retailers to fail to keep up with seasonal demand.”
Mr Bird is quite right – it’s not just Summer’s patriotic celebrations we should be planning for. Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day and more all present prime sales opportunities. Let’s look at how you can optimise your ecommerce site to ensure that you pick up every opportunity during these key periods.
Optimise average order values the British Museum Way
One of Locayta’s key clients, the British Museum Company, are showing the world how it’s done when it comes to the Diamond Jubilee. They’ve developed extensive merchandise – and as a massive UK visitor attraction with a global footfall, the ecommerce potential is huge. Where they’re really getting ahead on revenue though is in their cross-selling and up-selling strategy.
Not only are BMCo pro-active in intelligent product recommendations across their range, they’re making clever use of cross-sells with the British Museum’s own site, as Head of Ecommerce Fabrice Druelle recently told me: “We have re-schemed our site to make maximum use of product recommendations and give visitors a whole new look and feel with more cross-selling opportunities”
Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® is powering this strategy with product recommendations that respond in real time to user search and basket preferences. The ability to integrate with the main British Museum site, and constantly update suggestions automatically maximises business potential.
Powering seasonal celebrations with Prezzybox
As Prezzybox have discovered, refining search options to suit occasions is key to conversion rates. Locayta search has helped them get this down to a fine art. A vast array of gifts is superbly categorised on their site giving logical, clean search functionality for shoppers. But on special occasions they need to be able to adapt both categories and search criteria quickly.
It hasn’t always been easy. Until last year manual input was intensive. Then CEO Zak Edwards discovered Freestyle Merchandising and our unique technology Balance Factor®. Search categories are quickly updated via the central dashboard, plus Prezzybox can influence results according to their own product placement strategy. Check out our recent blog for full details on how Balance Factor works.
Get mobile to make the most of seasonal ecommerce
We all know that multi-channel is a must these days, and Marketwatch‘s recent report confirms that 55% of shoppers now purchase online with their smartphones. This March 50% of all online flower orders were placed on a mobile. It’s hardly surprising when you think about it. We’ve all been caught out with a last minute occasion purchase and mobile technology offers a convenient consumer solution.
The issue isn’t just one of sales volume – it’s one of conversion and retention. Internet Retailing reports that bounce rates are 40% on mobiles (10% higher than on tablets). More worryingly, they point out that 61% of shoppers are unlikely to return to a site after a negative mobile experience, and 40% will turn to a competitor site.
If you’re looking for a quick and cost-effective way to get your site onto shoppers’ phones take a look at Locayta M-Commerce. It’s a click to buy iPhone shopping app that supports our full features set. Because the app queries your website directly customers can browse your full product range without any changes to your e-commerce platform. They are then transferred directly to your site’s checkout to complete the purchase wherever they are.
Across the ecommerce sector we’re dedicated to providing retailers with innovative solutions that achieve a high return. Our clients know it – the likes of Tesco Clothing , boohoo.com, Superdry and Paperchase are all transforming conversions and revenue with Locayta. Want to know more? Get in touch – we’ll be happy to help!
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Read more:
Ecommerce vendor published seasonal advice Retail Technology, March 2012
The global rise in “always-on” shoppers is driving ecommerce MarketWatch April 2012
Retailers losing 1 in 20 sales through lack of mobile enabled sites Internet Retailing April 2012
The opportunity of responsive design Silverstripe, April 2012
As we did earlier this week, this is the second in a series where we’re taking an element of Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® to analyse the workings, merits and necessary considerations in employing a particular technology. Today we’re taking an in depth look at Locayta Balance Factor®.
Locayta Balance Factor®: What is it?
Locayta Balance Factor® is a unique, exclusive and highly original online merchandising tool only available from Locayta. Working with the data on your site and pre-determined preferences set by yourself, Locayta Balance Factor® ultimately gives you control over product sequencing on every single page of your ecommerce site.
Generated dynamically, Locayta Balance Factor® combines rules based metrics with your own chosen retailing priorities including price, margin, newness and/or stock availability. It then analyses your priorities and weights results to order the sequence of your products on category pages accordingly.
Locayta Balance Factor® can also be applied to search results pages. This means you can control the sequencing of products in search results to boost items to the top in line with your retailing strategy. Whether you’re looking to push products with a higher profit margin, popular products, new products or products with high stock levels, Locayta Balance Factor® in search puts you in the driving seat like never before.
The ecommerce benefits: What can you gain from implementation?
Locayta Balance Factor® is unique in its ability to give retailers total control over where and when sales occur. This means that as a retailer, if you need to promote certain products to hit margins, clear stock or highlight popular products, for the first time strategic control is at your fingertips.
Locayta‘s technology is specifically designed to help you enhance your sales and conversion rates. As part of the full Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® package, Locayta Balance Factor® has increased sales across the web by up to 19% for clients, including boohoo.com, Superdry.com and Prezzybox.com .
Leading by example: some client experiences
Chris Griffin, Head of Ecommerce at Superdry.com, currently employs Locayta Balance Factor®, ““Locayta offered the perfect combination of tools to control our search and merchandising. Our merchandising is much more effective and easy to manage, plus the system has undoubtedly driven revenue. Our e-commerce strategy has experienced four figure growth. We’re now aiming to roll out Freestyle Merchandising to eight further international sites in the next few months.”
Prezzybox.com reports, “It’s been a revelation. We have total control. We use Locayta Balance Factor® to adjust the weighting of search and category results, meaning that as well as responding to user behaviour we can add our own stock control and promotional strategies into the mix. We have the ability to create filter criteria to match seasonal promotions, gift categories and internal variables. Most crucially, because every decision we make can be applied automatically across every category we’ve eliminated any margin for error and ensured that our customers experience accurate results every time. It’s no exaggeration to say that we saw conversion rates increase overnight when we started using Locayta.”
The first steps: Where do you go from here?
Amongst the many services available from Locayta, Balance Factor® is a unique offering and comes fully integrated into the Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® platform. To see Locayta Balance Factor® in action and find out more on Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® services as a whole, visit www.locayta.com for a quick, FREE and easy demo.
Our discussions to date have addressed how Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® can optimise your eCommerce platform as a whole. Now we present the first in a series where we take each particular service in turn and discuss the workings, merits and necessary considerations in employing the particular technology.
Complete our survey and win an iPad 3!
As ecommerce merchants we recognise the scenario – and as customers we’ve all been there ourselves. There you are, ready to make that exciting purchase, but the supposedly empowering tool that we call online shopping is behaving like a petulant child. You can’t find what you want, you don’t understand how the site works, displays are unclear, pricing changes when you checkout…it’s almost they’re deliberately trying to put you off! Take a look at this brilliant video from Google that shows what would happen if you transferred such experiences to the physical world.
Tongue in cheek this might be – but Google illustrate an important point. Econsultancy reports that over £1 billion of online business was lost in 2011 due to abandoned transactions. That’s serious stuff.
In a previous blog I showed the importance of creating a visual merchandising experience akin to the high street for retaining and converting visitors. With conversion rates still woefully low across the sector (The State of Retailing Online reported conversion growth in 2011 but the starting point of 2-3% is hardly a commercial utopia), it’s vital to adopt sophisticated tactics across your site to ensure that users enjoy their experience with you. Here are some key ways in which you can do exactly that, using real case examples from Locayta’s key clients.
Get your ecommerce search running like a dream
It’s hardly an earth shattering statement to point out that the more accurate your search results are, the more likely customers will be to buy. Get this one wrong and you’ve lost out straight away. But if you’re using an outdated black box engine that promises personalisation, the chances are it’s delivering exactly the opposite.
That’s because assumptions are made based on group targeting rather than on genuinely individual behaviour.
What’s more, consumers are getting wise – take a look at this frustrated blogger’s indictment of online retailing techniques. Genuine personalisation is a long way off, he suggests. In fact the good news is that it’s here right now.
Locayta have developed intelligent behavioural and ranking algorithms that track individual user behaviour and can make intelligent decisions as to that user’s preferences at that minute. They cooperate with merchandising rules – defined by the retailer – to optimise product placement in response to search queries and your own retailing rules.
The proof is in the pudding, of course. That proof comes directly from our clients including boohoo.com, Superdry and Tesco Clothing – all of whom have reported increased conversion rates since using Locayta Freestyle Merchandising®.
Tempt customers with clever recommendations the Tesco Clothing way
Tesco have certainly enjoyed their share of the press this week due to their planned shake up. In fact, Tesco Clothing is dominating the European market share with sales up by 12% in the past year alone. Tesco clearly recognises the value of ecommerce with plans to invest a further £150 million in their online performance.
One of the tools in their armoury is Locayta Product Recommendations. Again, they respond directly to the user’s real time behaviour – but can also be weighted to the retailer’s strategic priorities behind the scenes thanks to Locayta Balance Factor®.
Take it from the horse’s mouth. Our recently published IRX2012 article includes an interview with Tesco Change Manager Mark Wakeley, who confirms that “the ability to control product and accessory recommendations makes sure that customers have fast, convenient access to the outfit they seek, ultimately increasing conversion rates and order values.”
It’s also worth taking a tip from another of Tesco’s key strategies announced for the future: their “clicks and bricks” plan to expand the 770 store collections for products bought online. For the first time this will apply to all products and not just groceries. It’s a canny response to widespread evidence that 50 to 70% of shopper abandon their carts, and a key factor in this is the failure to show exorbitant delivery costs until the point of purchase.
Get your site updates streamlined for optimum profit
One of the issues we regularly encounter with new clients is the level of manual labour involved in keeping their sites up to date. With Locayta, that’s no longer a worry. Once the technology is plugged in (without any need to make changes to your own platform) you can control every aspect of your search, merchandising and product recommendation functionality via a single, simple to use dashboard.
Naturally you can opt in manually when you need to – but for many of our clients including Prezzybox this has made a massive impact – saving them “hundreds if not thousands of man hours” to quote Founder Zak Edwards.
Tempted? Contact us at Locayta today. It might just transform your ecommerce success!
Complete our survey and win an iPad 3!
While you’re here, why not take 5 minutes to win an iPad 3? Just complete our survey and you’ll be entered into the draw!
Read more…
UK shoppers abandoned over £1bn of online transactions in 2011 David Moth, March 2012
The State of Retailing Online (Forrester Research and Shop.Org, September 2011)
Ecommerce conversion rates: making visual merchandising matter Locayta, April 2012
Personalisation doesn’t work…yet Brian Manning July 2011
Tesco working to improve its clothing offer
http://www.just-style.com/analysis/tesco-working-to-improve-its-clothing-offer_id114098.aspx Just Style, April 2012
Tesco to invest £150m in online business ComputerworldUK, April 2012
Tesco the six point turnaround plan Telegraph April 2012
If you’re on the hunt for an active example of how to improve the results you’re getting from your eCommerce platform then look no further. Today we’re taking one of our clients, boohoo.com, and breaking down how and why they’ve employed Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® plus the benefits and proven results. boohoo.com‘s clever use of technology from Locayta has served to attract, convert and retain loyal shoppers as well as ensuring less clicks to purchase, increasing online sales, improving customer satisfaction and ensuring greater control over their online sales performance. How? Read on to find out!
When it comes to eCommerce success, there’s no denying that boohoo.com have had their fair share of it. The award-winning brand has seen a sales growth of 150% over the last year and are constantly evolving. With tens of thousands of products on site, ensuring the customer is able to find what they want is essential. Cue the first of Locayta Freestyle Merchandising®‘s solutions, Guided Navigation. Locayta implemented Guided Navigation into boohoo.com‘s site to allow users to specifically personalise their search and achieve targeted results. With options such as size, category, colour and price all determined, as well as Locayta‘s innovative spell correction capabilities, the relevance of search results is highly likely to convert to purchase.
A second of Locayta‘s features employed by boohoo.com is intelligent product recommendations. Order values can be significantly increased with the placement of complementary products alongside purchase considerations. By responding to individual customer behaviour in real time, Locayta‘s technology enables the dynamic placement of relevant and likely add on purchases in optimal positions on boohoo.com‘s site. Product recommendations can increase sales by 45%.
When it comes to visual merchandising, Locayta have all aspects of boohoo.com‘s site covered. The importance of visual displays online is obvious, but putting them into practice within eCommerce hasn’t always been so easy, until now. Locayta Balance Factor® is a bespoke technology that responds dynamically to boohoo.com‘s metrics data, such as stock availability, popularity and newness, to optimise the sequencing of their products on site to maximise conversion. Whilst boohoo.com can still manually manipulate the visual displays of their products in response to fast moving market trends, the real innovation lies in the automatic nature of this merchandising for time effectiveness, efficiency and convenience.
The unique ability to control the three key elements – visual merchandising, intelligent search and product recommendations – in a single platform, contributes to the rising status of Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® as well as to the success of platforms such as boohoo.com. Becoming market leaders in their own right, it’s not an exaggeration to say Locayta are revolutionising online merchandising all over the web. Want a slice of the action? Find out more on Locayta Freestyle Merchandising® by visiting www.locayta.com for a quick, FREE and easy demo.
