The Case for Shopify
The key driver in determining the choice of platform, in addition to a cosmetic facelift, was the need to maximise customer acquisition, conversion and retention, at an acceptable level of cost.
Shopify, since its IPO in May 2015, has successfully harnessed a number of third party applications which dovetailed seamlessly into Black.co.uk’s objectives and which were both cost-effective and technically simple to integrate for small businesses.
The three applications recommended by Rich Insight to help achieve the brand objectives focused on acquisition, conversion and retention.
The Choice for Acquisition- Shopping-Feed.com
The Shopping-Feed service facilitates the management and categorisation of product feeds across various channels; marketplaces, shopping search engines, product listing ads, affiliate networks and retargeting services. Campaign performance can be tracked from one portal maximising efficiency.
Some of Black’s strongest performing acquisition channels are shopping comparison sites. ShopStyle, Lyst and Polyvore are important sales generators ( Black’s Polyvore UK campaign converted at 4.5% in Q4 2015 with an average basket value 15% above the brand’s average spend).
Integrating the Shopping Feed has provided greater control over the product categorisation without the need for technical expertise or expensive development costs. It also enables Black to launch on new platforms quickly and easily.
The Choice for Conversion-Nosto
Helsinki based ecommerce platform Nosto provides merchants with a product recommendation engine based on individual customer behavioural data with the aim of tailoring the user experience and encouraging conversion and up-selling.
In addition to product recommendations, it also offers merchants on-site overlays and cart abandonment retargeting via email, Facebook and most recently Instagram.
Black’s Marketing Director, Toby Logue said ‘having this service available to us from launch has been fantastic. The recommendation rule and triggered emails are simple to implement and we can analyse customer actions in real-time. As the data Nosto receives increases, so too does the relevance of the recommendations to our customers which makes for a better shopping experience for them and increased sales for the company’
The Choice for Retention- Loyalty Lion
Since its inception in 2006 Black operated a very effective and generous loyalty scheme, ‘In The Black’. This was a bespoke scheme equating to a 5% discount redeemable against future purchases. “The challenge for the new website was to find a reward scheme which was just as easy to use and had greater flexibility,” Logue says.
Rich Insight recommended Loyalty Lion, the winner of an award for ‘the most innovative adaptive marketing technology’ at Rich Insight’s Retail Recharged event in October 2015. Working together, Rich Insight and Loyalty Lion were able to migrate customers’ reward accounts from the old ‘In The Black’ scheme to the new version; and to display the reward value on each product page, a feature unique to Black.co.uk.
Shopify, and its user-friendly applications, enable small businesses with limited financial, technical and human resources to be self-sufficient in harnessing the power of new marketing technology without the reliance on developers and the resultant costs. Indeed Shopify has been used by many as their platform of choice when launching a dropshipping business.
Black.co.uk, the online luxury gifts and accessories brand, appointed Rich Insight in February 2016 to re-platform its website from a bespoke Cold Fusion solution. Following an in-depth audit of the brand and its resources, Rich Insight recommended the Shopify ecommerce platform as the most appropriate option. The new website went live in July 2016.
“With Black.co.uk it was a case of sourcing a platform that was designed for retailers vs. developers, with the capability to infinitely scale with the business as it grows in the coming months and years. Having worked with many of the leading eCommerce platforms, from Magento to Hybris and Oracle Commerce, Shopify and its growing collection of quality applications provided the obvious choice. It fitted our clear requirements for Black and also from a cost perspective it allows them to focus its investment in driving quality traffic vs. the usual growing costs of hosting and licence fees”
James Davey – Co-founder & Multi-channel Director, Rich Insight.
