eCommerce is an industry that grows every year as we become one with our technological society and realize the ability to get whatever we want from our mobile devices. I explained this to my very traditional grandmother as having a genie in a bottle - whatever I want, whether it's pizza, trash service, or festive decorative pillows, can all be obtained through our magic lamps.
Crate & Barrel is the company that has gotten its ecommerce down to a science. Rated as the #1 eCommerce Checkout by Baymard Institute (2014), Crate and Barrel uses live and constant testing to figure out what nuances may lead them to generate more sales (Kohnen, 2013).
 |
| Figure 1: Crate & Barrel, 2014. |
Joan King, E-Commerce Director of Site Management at Crate & Barrel, gave a lecture at the IRWD 2013 web design and usability conference in Orlando last year. In it, they discussed how to run testing regularly to keep improving upon your ecommerce website's success. "The answer was in A/B and multivariate tests which is when an element on your website appears different to different viewers" (Kohnen, 2013); then, they ran analytics to see which options led to more conversions.
For instance, "Add to Cart" was put up against "Buy" for a purchase button link on the items' pages. Checkout buttons were tested in colors like green, red, and black. Even the navigation system was tested, and found favor with consumers with a more traditional drop-down navigation.
The verdict? Tiny changes in wording or color increased conversion rates by 20% (Kohnen, 2013). Looking at their current website, blue appears to have been the color that sold the most items, and the wording "Add to Cart" seemed more appealing to consumers than "Buy" (Crate & Barrel, 2014).
Also, simplicity went a long way - King also said that when shoppers were given fewer options, they had higher conversion rates (Kohnen, 2013).
 |
| Figure 2: Crate & Barrel, 2014. |
King's take-away message was to be constantly testing, but not anything that you wouldn't want live on your website for shoppers to see.
Testing like this should be done for a period of about two weeks to get enough data to see a clear picture of the results (Siroker, 2013). You can use Google Analytics to do this, or you can use a program like Optimizely, which shows your website as individual elements and allows you to change those elements for testing (Kohnen, 2013).
As a personal review, I will start out by saying that I'm not much of an online home wares shopper. I am very much a flea market/yard sale/antique shop aficionado, so I am much more likely to find my favorite throw pillows at a neighbor's garage sale. However, the simplicity of the website does draw me in to do a little more poking around and see what else they could be doing to reign in their data and use to to optimize sales.
Event tracking is a very useful method of analytics during the holiday season. Crate & Barrel could easily use it to track the sales and use of their coupon codes during the week leading up to and the week after Black Friday. Black Friday is starting to wane in popularity as the #1 shopping day of the year for the holidays, as retailers put out earlier and earlier sales to capitalize on the frantic excitement of the start of the shopping season, eager to turn those slow fall sales into profits for the last fiscal quarter of the year (Columbus, 2014).
- Thanksgiving sales went up a staggering 14.3% this year over 2013.
- Average order value on Thanksgiving was $125.25, down 1.8% over 2013 (Columbus, 2014).
"IBM explains this slight reduction in average order value due to shoppers becoming more comfortable and digitally savvy in how they use online coupons and rebates to secure the best bargains" (Columbus, 2014).
 |
| Figure 3: Columbus, 2014. |
Crate & Barrel has a great opportunity here to use event analytics and consumer surveys or feedback to capitalize on the usage of coupons or rebates in Thanksgiving or Pre-Black Friday sales. In doing this, they could raise their holiday sales even more!
In what other ways could Crate & Barrel (or similar ecommerce sites) capitalize on this year's Black Friday data using A/B Testing or Event Analytics?
Susan
Resources
Baymard Institute. (2014). Top 100 e-commerce sites. Baymard.com. Retrieved December 8, 2014, from http://baymard.com/checkout-usability/benchmark/top-100.
Figure 1. Crate & Barrel. (2014). Decorative Pillows. Crateandbarrel.com. Retrieved December 8, 2014, from http://www.crateandbarrel.com/decorating-and-accessories/decorative-pillows/1.
Figure 2. Crate & Barrel. (2014). Merrie 12" pillow. Crateandbarrel.com. Retrieved December 8, 2014, from http://www.crateandbarrel.com/merrie-12-pillow/s647139.
Columbus, L (30 Nov 2014). Analyzing Black Friday sales using IBM's digital analytics benchmark. Forbes.com. Retrieved December 8, 2014, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2014/11/30/analyzing-black-friday-sales-using-ibms-digital-analytics-benchmark/.
Kohnen, C. (27 Feb 2013). How Crate & Barrel keeps their website looking awesome: testing. Examiner.com. Retrieved December 8, 2014, from http://www.examiner.com/article/how-crate-barrel-keeps-their-website-looking-awesome-testing.
Siroker, D. (11-13, Feb 2013). eCommerce Testing. 2013 IRWD Web Design & Usability Conference. Lecture conducted from Orlando, FL.
No comments:
Post a Comment