monetise the-maybes-white-paper

transforming multi-channel personalisation

Monetise the MaybesHow personalisation converts browsers into buyers

www.peerius.com

1

“If I have 3 million customers on the Web,I should have 3 million stores on the Web”Jeff Bezos

In a fast evolving retail landscape, where the battle for customers and revenue is being

fought on many fronts, where should retailers seeking instant advantage focus their

efforts and investments?

The answer is to give more customers what they are most interested in more of the time.

The way to achieve this is personalisation. Specifi cally, the introduction, improvement and expansion

of personalisation tools across ecommerce activities – for demonstrably increased revenues,

maximised return on investment in traffi c building and painless implementation.

“The secret of success in personalisation is a rapidly deployed solution, that can be painlessly

managed on an on-going basis and which delivers stable, predictable ROI.”

Roger Brown, CEO, Peerius

Get personal

“The key is to make sure that personalisation improves site performance and the customer experience, so that browsers’ buy and sales revenue increases.”Roger Brown, CEO, Peerius

It’s not easy to fi nd a commentary on

the future of ecommerce and retail

that does not highlight personalisation

as a key component of success.

Econsultancy describes personalisation in 2013

as “…back big time. In part this is simply because

more companies’ digital capabilities have

matured to the point where they are actually

in a position to do it rather than just talk about

it. In part it is because customers simply expect

Amazon-like capabilities on all sites. In part it

is because most companies aren’t struggling

with getting traffi c to their digital presences

but they could be converting much better.”

Accenture’s Technology Vision 2013 report

goes further, suggesting that organisations that

build deeper and richer digital relationships

with their customers in order to deliver more

personalised experiences and interactions,

are winning the global race to thrive.

Personalisation can take several forms; typically

an ecommerce site will personalise content, email,

recommendations, landing pages and navigation.

More detail is provided later in this paper.


2

Millions of pounds are invested in attracting visitors to retail websites everyday. IAB’s

October 2012 research reported that in the UK, digital advertising spend was somewhere

in the order of £2.6 billion for the first six months of the year, of which 59% was

paid-for-search.

In addition, Cap Gemini statistics show that less than 4% of all e-Retail site

visitors make a purchase; 96% of visitors leave a site without buying.

Traffic conversion: Make the horse drink

The goal must therefore be to increase browser to buyer conversions.

Personalisation ensures that the page a visitor arrives on, either via a PPC

campaign, organic search, advert or email promotion, the content is as

relevant as possible to that visitor based on their reason for clicking.

The Hut Group

Average order value (AOV) increased by 7.8%

Conversion rates increased by 39.9%

Revenue per visit increased by 48.7%

It is a recommendations solution that is simply smarter than

anything else on the market. The Peerius solution combined

with our platform means that The Hut Group and Peerius

can remain agile to the customer opportunity

Andrew Booth, CMO, The Hut Group

1. Ashley Friedlein The four Ps of Personalisation http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/11328-the-four-ps-of-personalisation [accessed 20/02/2013] 2. Accenture Technology Vision 2013

www.peerius.com

3

Peerius now has over fi ve years’ data from over 100 different retailers, which demonstrates

the impact of personalisation on converting browsers to buyers. Much of this data is from

A/B split-tests – data that is immune from the bias of before-and-after comparisons.

Here are two case studies from Peerius clients.

The facts: How personalisation drives revenue

Fashion

Figure 1 shows A-B test data demonstrating how a site performs with recommendations manually selected

by retail staff against recommendations driven by sophisticated recommendation algorithms. The site is a

major fashion brand and the data was recorded over six days and 170,447 visitor sessions.

Figure 1


4

Health and Beauty

These results are from a UK high street health and beauty brand. The data is

taken from a month of trading, during which there were 1,433,804 user sessions.

Figure 2

Not on the high street

31% increase in average order value

78% boost in average units per order

The Peerius SMART-recs engine doesn’t look at ‘a customer’,

it looks at our customers’, to understand what they’re

interested in and connect them to the perfect products.

Dave Thomson, Head of Product Management,

Not on the high street

3. IAB http://www.iabuk.net/about/press/archive/uk-digital-ad-spend-grows-126 [accessed 20/02/2013] 4. http://www.uk.capgemini.com/news-centre/news/online-conversion-rates-drop-by-55-in-5-years-as-purchasers-become-shoppers/

www.peerius.com

5

Painless gains

Personalisation involves some of the most

complex mathematics and logic to deliver

intelligent results. However, from a retailer’s

point of view, the right solution can be a

cost effective and low risk implementation

that can be deployed quickly with next

to no disruption to the operation.

More importantly, the gains are well

documented and predictable:

• Retailers providing personalised ecommerce

experiences convert more browsers to buyers

• Personalisation done well is proven

to drive revenue growth

• When so much investment is made in

attracting visitors to a site, it makes sense

to ensure that they can achieve their goals

when they arrive

• Implementation is low risk, causing

little disruption.

Defi ning personalisation

There are many ways retailers can

personalise the online shopping experience

and drive more revenue, including:

• Recommendations: Drawing on sophisticated

algorithms in hybrid combinations with

hints and/or filters to offers alternative or

complementing products as a browse

advances towards the checkout. A good

recommendation deployment can increase

sales by as much as 20%.

• Content: Content presentation is built around

a user’s preferences and behavioural patterns.

They see the most suitable content for them

on every page, whether the content is images,

articles, banners, promotions, documents or

any other piece of html content.

• Email: Solutions of varying capabilities exist,

ranging from what amounts to a simple mail

merge to dynamic tags that updates an email

with live information. Using the right

personalised email approach has resulted in

email conversions increases of up to 18%.

• Navigation: Personalised that allows a site’s

navigation to be moulded around the user.

A dynamic category listing based on the

behavioural patterns of an individual, and any

merchandising strategies that are in place,

means customers see more things they are

interested in on their path to purchase.

• Landing: Personalised landing pages relate

to a user’s entry point on a site via PPC ads.

Intelligent solutions allow retailers to

dynamically generate dedicated landing

pages for each and every keyword in a PPC

ad campaign – to dramatically reduce bounce

rates and increases browser to buyer

conversion.

Charles Tyrwhitt

36% increase in average order value

24% increase in average units per order

The Peerius SMART-recs differentiator

is its intelligence”

Jennie Blythe, Head of Web

Development and Trading,

Charles Tyrwhitt


6

Conclusion

Retail operations are changing swiftly and there is an array of opportunities

for ecommerce decision makers to choose from. Maximising the personalised

functionality of a retail site can deliver quick results in terms of increased

revenue, is inexpensive and can be implemented without disruption.

By monetising the maybes, personalisation can be a quick win.

Lovehoney

Average units per order up by 43%

Average order value up by 74%

“You plug Peerius into your system and it just works, running

silently in the background to drive sales. That’s great, but we’re

a company that’s keen to experiment and there’s huge scope to

tweak and tailor to our very specific needs”

Matthew Curry, E-commerce Manager, Lovehoney

Find out how advanced personalisation from

Peerius could increase your conversions and drive

revenue, to deliver instant ROI.

Visit

www.peerius.com, or call +44 (0)20 3397 4940

Units 207-211,

Great Guildford Business Square,

30 Great Guildford Street,

London SE1 0HS

T: +44 (0)20 3397 4940

F: +44 (0)20 3397 4950

www.peerius.com

monetise the-maybes-white-paper

Marketing