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Case Studies

Clarins UK Invests in Continuous Testing and Learning

30 Markets worldwide

10 Experiences/month

Innovating with Confidence: Clarins UK Strategy for Feature and Product Launches

Clarins uses testing and experimentation for all feature or product launches on their site. Learn how it informs their work and how they measure impact with AB Tasty.

Clarins is the number one global company for premium skincare and beauty products with a commitment to responsible beauty and an entrepreneurial spirit that informs everything they do. Their vision is to promote well-being and cosmetics for all women.

With over 150 markets around the world, the UK market is one of the strongest performers so we popped over to the Clarins UK office to speak with Roisin O’Brien, e-commerce trading manager, and Alejandra Salazar, e-commerce content manager, on their experimentation strategy.

Both Roisin and Alejandra use testing and experimentation as part of their everyday work. Their priority is to create the best experience that they can for their users. Data gathered from testing is analyzed to help them better optimize and personalize the customer experience.

The Importance of Continually Testing and Experimenting for Clarins UK

For Clarins, experimentation is woven into the fabric of the company. With the help of AB Tasty, their global team has enabled the company to become a leader in digital transformation, launching e-shops around the world and ensuring a consistent brand experience online and offline.

Clarins only pushes out significant features or products online once they have done testing first. As Alejandra describes it, “For us, backing up all experimentation with data is very important. The importance is that customers find products and what they need on the website, rather than complicating their journey.”

For us, backing up all experimentation with data is very important. The importance is that customers find products and what they need on the website, rather than complicating their journey.


Alejandra Salazar
E-commerce Content Manager

In order to drive that experience, both in-store and online, experimentation and optimization are key to how they continuously improve. Experimentation enables them to try out new ideas, improve the customer journey as well as reach their commercial targets.

We wouldn’t be able to drive the numbers that we do without being able to test the experiences that we offer. We always run tests on new promotions and offers to make sure that we’re delivering a great customer experience as well as ensuring the commercial priorities of the website 

Roisin O’Brien E-Commerce Trading Manager

Two variants that allowed the Clarins UK to effectively promote their gift sets with AB Tasty

Testing Gift Set Promotion

Because of this culture of experimentation, the UK team has deployed many different tests on their site – and shared those results with the global team.

One of their most successful tests was one where they encouraged users to opt for a gift set when shopping for certain items. Using AB Tasty to badge different products that were available as a gift set on the product listing and description pages, this simple test not only increased awareness, but also improved the transaction rate.

Roisin confirms: “Testing, experimenting, optimizing are all really important to continually improve on what we are already doing” We wouldn’t be able to drive the numbers that we do without being able to test the experiences that we offer. We always run tests on new promotions and offers to make sure that we’re delivering a great customer experience as well as ensuring the  commercial priorities of the website.”

      

Adding the wishlist functionality to the product listing pages and the product description pages allowed users to save their favourite products and remember to purchase them later on.

Creating a wish list for customers

Many e-commerce managers are aware of how important the PDP pages are to tell the story of your brand. Today, they can often be the point of entry for your users on your site, which means they need to quickly communicate a sufficient amount of information about your brand. With that in mind, using AB Tasty, Clarins was able to provide an option for visitors to create a wishlist on these pages.

This test meant users could save a product they liked, or keep an eye on their favorite products to buy them later. The test proved to be a success as it resulted in a boost to their basket page views and a 1.84% increase in transactions.

As Alejandra explains, “By adding the wishlist option, you’re simplifying the customer’s journey and you are also making their decision a little bit simpler once they decide to convert.”

AB Tasty helps Clarins to test and experiment at speed. In a short space of time, they can assess whether new features or changes are working on the site in order to give a seamless customer journey. As Roisin points out, “We’re really passionate about continually optimizing what we’re already doing well, whilst also testing new theories to drive a great customer experience.”


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Case Studies

King Living Increases Revenue 15% by A/B Testing on Site

+15% Clicks

+15% Overall Revenue

King Living is an award-winning Australian furniture retailer that has made a name for itself through selling bespoke items. After noticing a substantial number of drop-offs, King Living utilised AB Tasty to run two experiments to better understand consumers’ purchase behaviour, and, in turn, make data-driven decisions to improve user experience and generate more sales.

Improve product findability for customers

King Living’s website was very content heavy, and customers often had to navigate through content blocks before reaching the product. The team hypothesized that this resulted in drop-offs because it took too long for customers to find what they were looking for.

With this hypothesis in mind, King Living chose to experiment by hiding secondary navigation and displaying products before content. This move resulted in 15% more clicks on product images and 90% increased revenue for all of King Living’s ‘Jasper’ packages.

Consumers are more likely to take action if the information they are seeking is clearly presented to them. In this case, images were more effective than descriptions in communicating what the product was.

Through this experiment, King Living also discovered that their customers do not need a button to go to ‘Products’, which influenced the company’s Product Listing Page and Product Detailing Page redesign.

We noticed that our users don’t actually need a button to go to ‘Products’, so that’s influencing our design decisions in the whole PLP, PDP redesign.

Vanja Stace, King Living Chief Experience Officer

Improve customer conversion by building stronger call-to-action

King Living noticed a substantial number of drop-offs on their check-out page, and pinpointed a few areas for improvement regarding their call-to-action (CTA) – inactive appearance, usage of internal speak and lack of focal point. These factors combined resulted in a CTA difficult for customers to comprehend.

In this experiment, they bolded the important points and translated internal speak into understandable language for consumers. King Living also made their call-to-action appear more visible by shifting away from grey, which is known as the colour of inaction. Through this experiment, King Living’s revenue grew by an astounding 15%.

Having an engaging CTA is important, even at the end of the purchase journey. Consumers are more compelled to follow through with their purchase when the CTA “speaks” to them. This makes a huge difference in minimising drop-offs.

“We had a 15% increase in revenue while that test was running – millions of dollars when you look at it in an annual sense,” Vanja says.

We had a 15% increase in revenue while that test was running — millions of dollars when you look at it in an annual sense.

Vanja Stace, King Living Chief Experience Officer

Experimentation via AB Tasty helped King Living minimise drop-offs, increase conversions and grow business revenue.

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Case Studies

How Hanna Andersson Experiments Its Way to Higher Lifetime Value

+8% PLP Clicks

+22% Purchase Rate

About Hanna Andersson

Adored by parents around the world, Hanna Andersson offers a wide range of children’s clothing and matching pajamas for the entire family. Founded in Portland, OR by Gun Denhart in 1983 as a purely catalogue company, the brand has since successfully made the transition to online sales.

Increasing Customer Lifetime Value

“One of our challenges is marketing our toddler collection,” explains Morganne Hatfield, Marketing Analyst at Hanna Andersson. “We recently combined the kids line and the toddler line into one collection. But toddler is a key demographic – if we can get moms to discover and fall in love with Hanna Andersson clothing for their young children, chances are they’ll stay loyal customers as their kids grow, increasing their overall customer lifetime value (CLV).”

Creating an e-commerce growth engine

Expanding a product line is a far-reaching goal that affects all aspects of a business. Morganne’s challenge was to figure out how to use Hanna Andersson’s website to increase awareness and sales. But where to start! The team could rewrite product descriptions, increase or decrease product image sizes, add customer reviews or implement a cross-sell bar…

The possibilities were endless: what was the best tactic to increase growth?

Experiment to increase uplift

Enter experimentation. Hanna Andersson’s SVP of Digital was a firm believer in the merits of testing and using data-driven rationales for optimization. Through a prioritized experimentation roadmap, the team could systematically test their optimization ideas, learn from the results, and implement winning variations. No more guesswork or time lost in internal debates. 

Is a picture worth a thousand conversions?

One idea Morganne was eager to test involved the default image shown on the product listing pages (PLPs) and product description pages (PDPs) of the toddler section.

When someone went browsing through the toddler collection, the first image on the page showed the clothing item sized for an older child – not a 1 to 3 year old. Though the product itself was identical, it certainly didn’t look the same when sized for a lanky seven year old versus a toddler still round with baby fat. Her idea was to test whether it was worth the effort to photograph the smaller sizes and use them for the toddler product page images. Would they convert better?

Morganne decided to test swapping out the default image with one where the item was sized for a toddler, but only if the user was navigating from the toddler section of the site. “I wanted to test if buyers would react more positively to the age-appropriate clothing, whether this would increase basket rate and overall conversion rate.”

Hanna Andersson control
Control
Hanna Andersson variation
Test

Significant revenue impact

After a quick set up, the test was live and results rolled in: the experiment was an absolute success. “I was honestly surprised by just how well it worked – clicks on PLPs increased by about 8%, and purchase rate on those items by 22%, which is huge. At the time of this test we only had a handful of toddler-sized items online. But we’ll soon be offering 100% of our line in these sizes, so if you multiply these results by hundreds of products, the revenue impact is significant.”

“Our merchandising team was thrilled”

Not only did the test have a positive impact on immediate business metrics, it was also another step in solidifying the marketing for the toddler clothing line.

“When I shared these results in our quarterly review, our merchandising team was thrilled,” explained Morganne. “Having this kind of data-driven evidence helps us confidently make strategic investments – this knowledge is really helpful,” concludes Morganne.

AB Tasty enables agility

AB Tasty’s ease of use was instrumental in the success of this experiment.  Without the marketing-friendly interface and widget library, it wouldn’t have been possible to get this test up and running in under a week.

 “It’s great to be able to use AB Tasty to launch these kinds of campaigns independently, without having to bother our dev team,” says Morganne. “We’re really pleased with the results we’ve had, and how agile the AB Tasty Customer Success team has been. The widget library especially – the countdown banners, NPS surveys – have been key in enabling us to be autonomous and launch campaigns fast. ”

Looking forward

This test on the toddler line was undoubtedly a success. But that doesn’t mean the testing ends. Continuous optimization is key to fully reaping the benefits of experimentation and personalization, and Morganne intends to continue perfecting the customer journey. “We dug into the data and realized that, although 70% of our traffic comes from mobile devices, there’s still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to converting that traffic,” explains Morganne. “We’re excited to see what more we can achieve with AB Tasty!”

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Case Studies

Cluse Sees an Uplift in Transactions With Product Landing Page Optimization

+1.12% Uplift in transactions

+2.39% Increase click-through rate to the PDP

Known for their modern, simple, and elegant watches & jewelry, Dutch watch brand Cluse has established itself as one of the fastest-growing accessories brands.

The Challenge

Cluse noticed that the bounce rate for their product landing pages was high and found that not many users clicked through to the product display pages. There was no clear call-to-action for the user to progress to the product display page.

Original

Test Hypothesis

To encourage more users to click through to the individual product pages Cluse set up an A/B/n test including different CTA color variations. The “View Details” CTA button was inserted below the product image, linking to the respective product display pages (PDP). With a clear CTA the objective of the test was to increase users reaching the PDP from the product landing page, which in turn would increase the add-to-cart clicks and transactions.

Results

Targeting all users across desktop and mobile, the A/B/n test ran for 3 weeks across Cluse’ French domain. The winning variation (pictured below) significantly increased the click-through rate from the product landing page to the product display page as well as driving an increase in transactions.

  • +2.39% increase in click-through rate to the product display page
  • +1.12% uplift in transactions

Winning Variation

Takeaway Tips

  • Make it easy & clear for your users to reach the product display page. Optimizing the gateway to your product pages can help you convert users into customers.
  • Small changes to your CTA’s can help you achieve quick wins.
  • Analyze the data you have from an AA test or insights from other means, to better understand the user behavior on your site, and help you come up with test ideas that could help improve the users’ experience on the site.

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