3 Insights for Merchants Facing an Economic Downturn [Case Study]
Scrubs and Beyond is the largest supplier of healthcare apparel and accessories in the United States with over 140 stores nationwide. Since their first store opened in September 2000, the company set out on a mission to transform the routine shopping experience of buying scrubs and uniforms into something more exciting, personal, and fun.
More recently, Scrubs and Beyond had set a goal to revitalize their online store after observing a few competitors and realizing that some aspects of their shopping experience may not be up to par. According to Adobe’s 2020 Digital Trends report, companies that prioritized and effectively managed customer experience were three times as likely than their peers to have significantly exceeded their top business goals in 2019.
Being that Scrubs and Beyond’s mission is to deliver the best uniform shopping experience possible, they needed a way to analyze their site, isolate pain points, and make the necessary improvements – all quickly enough to avoid potentially losing customers to their competitors.
Optimizing eCommerce websites can be a complicated endeavor. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of elements on a given site that can affect conversion rate (CR), average order value (AOV), revenue per visitor (RPV), and other important metrics merchants rely on to generate growth. In addition, every step of the customer journey is an experience that may have be addressed on its own (more on this later).
After analyzing their site with HiConversion, an analytics and optimization app specifically designed for eCommerce, Scrubs and Beyond learned their checkout was the perfect starting point to make improvements.
1. Simplifying Checkout Process Increased Conversion Rate by 3.2% (Desktop) and 5.8% (Mobile)
Devices – Mobile, Desktop
Goal – Improve the overall checkout experience for the end user.
Experiment – The checkout page had a two-step process in order complete a transaction, so the key to increase the overall CR was to make the checkout process seamless and design tests that would keep users from abandoning the checkout process on the first step.
Results – Compared to baseline, the applied treatments were able to push +1.5% (mobile) and +21.57% (desktop) more traffic to that next step. Overall, this checkout campaign helped in increasing the CR by +3.2% (desktop) and +5.8% (mobile).
“We’re thankful that we chose HiConversion for our eCommerce intelligence solution. The resulting improvements to our customers’ path to purchase, especially on mobile devices, has far exceeded expectations. Their collaborative team has been continuously helpful in finding opportunities and solving difficult problems.”
– Andrew Figgins, Technical Product Owner, Scrubs and Beyond
Further analysis revealed that multiple calls to action (CTAs) on the company’s Product Detail Page (PDP) were fighting each other for users’ attention, which was increasing the bounce rate on the PDP and negatively affecting the rate at which users were moving to the cart phase (cart rate). These findings reinforced Scrubs and Beyond’s prior concerns about the product page possibly being too cluttered and inefficient.
Since there were a lot of elements to be tested, it was important to design the tests in a way that the final ensembles incorporated every combination without them conflicting with each other. After collaborating with the Scrubs and Beyond team and finalizing the custom experiment designs, HiConversion deployed the live tests on January 2, 2020.
2. Reducing Clutter on PDP Improved Cart Rate by 14.72% (Desktop) and 6.77% (Mobile)
Devices – Mobile, Desktop
Goal – Reduce clutter on PDP and increase cart rate
Experiment – Multivariate tests aimed to simplify CTAs on PDP and cut down on distractions while adhering to overall design of website
Results – Cart rate improvement of +6.77% (mobile) and +14.72% (desktop)
Throughout the optimization process, the Scrubs and Beyond team remained engaged in developing ideas and monitoring progress from their end. Collaborating on the experiment designs was crucial to finding a happy medium between HiConversion’s proposed testing ideas and Scrubs and Beyond’s existing website UX. The result was a significant increase in both mobile and desktop cart rate, leading into the next campaign which focused on improving the in-cart experience.
3. Adding Incentives Decreased Cart Abandonment Rate by 16.3% (Desktop) and 14.95% (Mobile)
Devices – Mobile, Desktop
Goal – Improve cart page experience and reduce cart abandonment rate (CAR)
Experiment – Apply treatments to cart page based on data retrieved from analysis
Results – CAR reduced by -16.3% (desktop) and -14.95% (mobile)
After studying Scrubs and Beyond’s cart page data, HiConversion identified multiple points of friction that could be leading to cart abandonment. Based on this data, the two teams collaborated on another campaign – this time, one specifically designed to reduce CAR on the cart page.
With this campaign, the aim was to bridge the gap between the PDP and Checkout pages by improving the overall cart page experience. The merchant noticed that a lot of their users were abandoning their carts and not completing the checkout process prior to HiConversion’s analysis.
As of now, the treatments have been showing promising results – currently, the winning ensemble is reducing the CAR by -16.3% and -14.95% on desktop and mobile respectively.
Translating Raw Data Into eCommerce Intelligence
With eCommerce sales of medical essentials up nearly 450% during the COVID-19 pandemic, Scrubs and Beyond took this opportunity to better align their shopping experience with their mission of being the best in the business. By deciding to carefully analyze their site before running any experiments, Scrubs and Beyond considerably decreased the potential risk of any treatments negatively affecting revenue. More specifically, the analysis uncovered exactly where friction was occurring, giving the team a clear roadmap for their optimization strategy.
“HiConversion enabled us to provide a better experience to our customers that could not have been achieved otherwise. Their team’s willingness to collaborate to solve difficult problems is second-to-none, and the results of our campaigns certainly speak for themselves.”
– Andrew Figgins, Technical Product Owner, Scrubs and Beyond
We’ve spoken to quite a few merchants over the years, and many initially share a ‘fear of the unknown’ when it comes to optimization – a fear that a test will go wrong or that a treatment won’t fit the design of the site, just to name a few examples.
eCommerce intelligence enables brands to overcome this with not just data, but actionable insights a marketer, UX designer, CFO, or just about any other team member can put to use right away. The more we learn about our sites and how our customers interact with them, the more we eliminate ‘the unknown’ and gain better control over our shopping experiences.
