Retail Sales are Directly Affected by the Customer's Online Experience
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The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has recently released data that shows a notable decline in purchases at shops and department stores by Australians. Retail sales volumes saw a decrease of 0.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2023. With cost of living pressures weighing on the minds of consumers, retailers will continue to feel the squeeze from increasingly competitive markets. 

Qualtrics defines good experience as the combination of three factors;
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1. Was the customer successful in purchasing?
2. Was the process smooth and easy?
3. Did they come away from the interaction feeling good?

In fact, 92% of shoppers who scored their experience highly were more likely to purchase from that company. Delivering a superior digital experience is key to staying ahead of the pack. 

In this case study we’ll explore how a small eCommerce team at Blue Bungalow is using Insightech’s Experience Analytics platform to delight their customers and achieve higher online sales. We’ll also cover how they get ROI from not just access to powerful data but help from Insightech’s experienced support team. This team are analysts themselves who are passionate about helping customers get ROI even after the initial onboarding phase is complete. Let’s dive in!
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About Blue Bungalow

Blue Bungalow was established in 2012 to extend Queensland's lively beach lifestyle throughout Australia. Over time, the brand has broadened its offerings beyond beachwear, and its clothing is now worn by women worldwide. They boast a huge range of over 3,000 styles and more than 150 brands. The company prides itself on personalised customer service, a key reason for its sustained customer loyalty since its establishment. They are an online-first business with dedicated websites for both Australia and New Zealand, but have a physical retail store in Brisbane which services their loyal local customers.

The Challenge to Solve

Blue Bungalow services a more mature segment of the online fashion market in Australia who have typically been used to shopping in-store, rather than online. These challenges were amplified by broader market trends such as the COVID-19 pandemic which  forced more shoppers online than before. 

Blue Bungalow’s eCommerce Manager Rafaëlle Champagne told us “Our number one challenge is always to make the experience as easy and seamless as possible.”

While the strategic vision was clear, before adopting Insightech it was quite challenging to know what website design changes were making the digital customer experience easy and seamless or what elements were driving customers to make that first purchase online. The team decided to stop driving in the dark and use data to drive future decisions.

Growing Online Retail Sales with Insightech

Use Case: Page Optimisation
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Blue Bungalow is fortunate to have a highly loyal and engaged customer base who frequently leaves reviews. Interestingly, Insightech data showed only 15% of shoppers visiting product pages would see these reviews. Blue Bungalow with the help of the Insightech team and platform was also able to measure that those shoppers who saw reviews actually converted at a rate 4X higher than normal.

“Reviews work very well for us and consistently increase our conversion rates by 4X across both mobile and desktop,” said Blue Bungalow’s eCommerce Manager.

An analysis was conducted using Insightech on customers who saw product reviews on product pages versus those who didn't. The analysis concluded that reviews significantly boosted conversion rates but only if shoppers actually saw them.

As Rafaëlle put it, “This was a big finding for us as only a small percentage of our users that visited product pages would see these reviews - this is now something that we keep in mind when redesigning pages on the website or even planning marketing activities” says Blue Bungalow’s eCommerce Manager.

In this particular example, they learned increasing the number of users seeing reviews from 15% to 20% could increase their total conversions by 5% or more. In response, the Blue Bungalow team rolled out clear CTAs driving shoppers to see and interact with reviews on their site. An increase, even by a few percentage points, in the number of people seeing these reviews correlated to a direct increase in weekly orders. This key finding is now taken into account when redesigning pages on the website or planning marketing activities.

Use Case: Quickly identifying and resolving website issues before they cost sale
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Using Insightech, Blue Bungalow promptly identifies errors/bugs which can result in missed revenue opportunities. This includes determining if an issue is a technical or human error and measuring how many shoppers were affected by it. Speed is key to success here and Insightech has helped reduce the turnaround time from when an issue is first noticed through to developers deploying a solution to resolve it.

Rafaëlle told us, “Prior to using Insightech, we were in the dark and would wait for several reports of site bugs or performance issues before escalating to our developers. Insightech has made both the investigating and the communication piece easier for us.”

With Insightech, Blue Bungalow’s small eCommerce and Marketing team can run an analysis to isolate other sessions that have encountered the same bug, facilitating swift action. This results in a considerable saving of developer hours that would otherwise be spent trying to replicate the issue! Another benefit is that by measuring the conversion rate impact of each issue it’s now a simple process to prioritise developer time so the highest impact issues get resolved first.

Implementation, adoption and results
Implementation was as simple as installing a single line of code on their website. The onboarding process was further enriched with workshops and continuous support from Insightech's team of expert analysts, all aimed at ensuring Blue Bungalow's continued success.

One unexpected advantage was the increased confidence within Blue Bungalow's customer experience team. They felt more capable of pointing out issues like discount code or payment errors at checkout. As these issues didn't impact all users, identifying them and assessing their conversion impact could be challenging without Insightech.

Insightech has simplified collaboration between teams. For example, it became easy to flag urgent issues with developers by sending an email listing problems alongside associated session replays. This not only streamlined the process but also saved countless hours that would have otherwise been spent on the investigation. 

‍“I was able to send an email to my devs, urgent here are the issues #1, #2 and #3, here are the replays and assign notes to each replay inside the platform - it was so easy! This saved us hours of dev investigation. Insightech is just a great tool to collaborate between teams.”

- Rafaëlle.

Next steps‍‍

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