Case Studies: Chapter 8 – A Fashion Brand’s Loyalty Program
How a US retailer optimized their registration drive for the loyalty program
The retailer in our case study has been running a banner advertising their loyalty program on their site. It’s a common practice, after all. But following a site redesign, the company observed unexpected issues. At first, the problems seemed unrelated to the loyalty program. But then the company discovered a surprise.
The Challenge
After the site redesign, the retailer’s web analytics showed a lower than expected conversion rate from the cart to the checkout. The retailer could see this in funnel reports from their web analytics. Customers would spend a lot of time shopping and adding products to their bags. They would take a look at their cart page. And then, a relatively high number of them would abandon the site then and there.
Why was this happening? It seemed to make no sense. There was nothing in the web analytics data to provide an answer. So, the company tried various A/B tests, e.g., modifying the labels on their buttons to go to checkout. All of these to no avail.
Step 1: Look at in-page behavior on the problematic page
When the company added Experience Analytics to their intelligence ecosystem, they looked at the in-page behavior on the cart page. To surface the difference in behavior between those that do vs. don’t proceed to the checkout, they compared heatmaps side by side.
That’s when the answer jumped out. Namely, many of those who didn’t proceed to checkout clicked the banner to the loyalty program. To promote this loyalty program, the company had placed this banner just above the button for going to the checkout. It’s the same idea as in brick & mortar stores where we are often asked for our loyalty program number when we go to check out.
But journeys showed that too many were getting distracted from checkout and getting lost in the registration process for the loyalty program.
Step 2: Hypothesize a better design and A/B test it
Seeing this, the company implemented a simple test. They flipped the order of the checkout button and the loyalty program banner.
Image: Mouse-click heatmap showed that a portion of traffic clicks the loyalty banner (red highlight) instead of the checkout call-to-action (white highlight).
Results and value driven
Incredibly, this improved checkout conversion rate from the cart page by 62%, as confirmed by the retailer. Registrations to the loyalty program did take a bit, unfortunately. However, it won’t surprise anyone that the company prioritized completing sales and then asking customers to join the loyalty program afterward.
The moral of the story
All promotions and cross-sell offers compete for real-estate on pages and attention from customers. The key is to have data in the hands of all teams to make informed decisions.