How analysis backed optimization grew the digital sales turnover by 5 times!
About BBLUNT
BBLUNT is an iconic hair-care brand from India and offers a boutique range of hair care products for both men & women, with salons across all major cities. They have committed themselves to hair-care, styling, and transformation through unique offerings.
While the Global hair care industry is estimated to be over 100 Billion $ by 2025, India is one of the key markets. Over the past decade, BBLUNT has grown to be synonymous with the right style & care not just amongst the fashion industry, but for everyone who wants good care and style for their hair in everyday life. It has genuinely redefined the notion of hair just being a part of one’s style.
The Tryst With Digital Presence
The brand maintains a strong digital presence across various social media channels, primarily focusing on engagement with the audience. While BBLUNT had their website up and running, it was mainly a blog on hair care and styling, and the digital sales were majorly attributed to other e-commerce shopping portals.
The buying behavior studies said that whatever people see online, they tend to buy it online – and that’s precisely why it became essential to have an online presence backed by a robust e-commerce infrastructure.
Almost ten months ago, BBLUNT forayed into e-commerce with its own site. With a strong delivery network across the country, it became relatively easy for customers to have access to the product of their choice right from the comfort of their home – directly from the brand itself.
Challenge
Even though BBLUNT offline stores were doing better than ever, their digital traffic was not moving towards conversion. People who were landing on the website were coming to read the blogs, and not to make a purchase. This was because the positioning of the site was not as an e-commerce portal.
With the entire world entering being locked down towards the end of the first quarter in 2020, two more things happened:
- There was an exceptional surge in social media reach
- People now wanted everything at their doorstep
As an iconic and distinguished brand with a strong offline presence, the online growth of the portal seemed relatively pinched. So our Tech team proactively analyzed the platform to figure out the specific challenges in order to give a better solution to our client further. These were the observations made by the Tech team:
We analyzed that solution to all these challenges had one common root – mapping of consumer behavior. Our tech team proactively looked at how we positioned our offerings on the website while ensuring that our optimization churned out more conversions for the client
Schbang’s Optimization
At Schbang, we believe that our client’s win is our real win; hence our teams are extremely agile in terms of continuous analysis and improvisations whenever the need arises.
The solutions team carefully studied the website & analytics, and came up with new ideas and suggestions; which include:
#Optimization 1:
Improvised navigation & Search for the website to increase accessibility and navigation across product offerings
- The search has been converted to a smart search where we can now suggest users to search for certain queries & keywords that we want to promote on the website
- A popular products feed has been added in the search as well to promote up-selling of products
#Optimization 2:
Functional consistency: The entire content, positioning, and visuals were highly optimized and restructured to give viewers a great experience across all devices.
A clutter-free, homogenous experience always wins customer loyalty, and we made sure no stone was left unturned in the process.
#Optimization 3:
A new home-page design!
They say that the first impression lasts, and we felt the same. The home page of any website is the first point of contact, and 8 out of 10 customers decide whether they want to shop based on how the home page appeals to them.
Revamped the positioning with regards to visual communication and appeal
#Optimization 4:
Loyalty program and social proof
We used the customer demographics data from the website to analyze user intent to purchase based on location and other variables. This added a feed of purchased products stimulating conversion.
#Optimization 5:
Functional changes in the visual appeal to further enhance the user experience as well as engagement
- Newsletter popup: For us to gather customer party data & grow our subscriber database, we added a newsletter pop-up wherein users can directly subscribe to the newsletter
- Sticky bar: We added the recently viewed products to the right side of the user’s screen where they can not only view the product but also add it directly to the cart
- The impression of recently viewed/related products act as a catalyst in stimulating sales
Other Tweaks:
Capturing User Purchase instinct: This shows that certain people have bought the products & creates user urgency to buy the product / “xx” number of products sold in “xx” hours
Customers Viewing: Owing back to customer behavior, a simple line of “xx customers are viewing this product” has been added to generate a user urgency by saying that quite a few users are currently viewing the product & it should be bought immediately
Ask An Expert Option: A form has been added onto the product page where users can get in touch with us via a form
Recently Viewed Products: A feed for recently viewed products has been added at the bottom of the product page to remind the users of the products they have recently seen
The Better Part: Results
- The leap in AOV: Average order value increased by nearly 78%
- Doubled returning customer rate: It is important that customers come back to shop again – and that was successfully achieved with a boost of nearly 110%
- Conversion rate shot up by 112%: One of the key objectives was to drive the traffic towards conversion
- Load time reduced by 3/4 th: Optimizations and tweaks on the website led to faster rendering on all devices
- The Big Win: Spectacular revenue increment of 143% was recorded
Conclusion
A lot of times, the real challenge is not driving the traffic, but the conversions. Companies having a vast offline presence often have to strive for online growth. Unlike offline, it’s the intuitiveness and user experience of the portal that play a crucial role in churning conversions.
BBLUNT is an interesting case study from the lens of optimization, as the brand’s overall growth has been exponential over the past years in offline channels. Not only have we been successful in driving online sales, but we have also added to the offline turn-over.
At Schbang, we believe that our success lies in the client’s success and we like to take up the challenges as our own. Also, one key learning is that optimization is not about making big structural or technical changes, it’s rather about carefully observing what drives and stimulates the consumer; as someone rightly said “Good companies understand the product, great companies understand customers too”
This is one of the many #Schbanging projects that we have successfully executed recently. The team’s proactive approach and new ideas paved the way for client success!
