Boosting Site Revenue

Rigorous experimentation drives mobile revenue up 47%

Project: Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimisation Over Christmas Period
Services: Conversion Rate Optimisation, UX Design, UI Design
Industry: Health & Beauty

Pioneers and leaders in ethical wellness, Neal’s Yard Remedies create beautiful products for skin, body and home.

Brief:

We were tasked with implementing a strategic CRO testing programme to enhance the performance of the site – particularly over the Christmas 2019 period and into 2020.

Working on a commission model, our goal was to achieve a minimum of £50K revenue uplift (on top of their forecast revenue for the year), as this is when we’d start seeing a return. With limited time to produce this uplift before peak period, we had to work rapidly and carefully to ensure we implemented experiments that would have the highest possible impact.

“…we had to work rapidly and carefully to ensure we implemented experiments that would have the highest possible impact.”

The Solution

In order to create a significantly change-driving testing strategy in the limited time we had, we quickly familiarized ourselves with the site, getting to grips with the various user journeys, pain points and most opportunistic areas. These were:

The Checkout: Ensuring guest checkout was clearly signposted and improving mobile usability throughout.
Accessibility: There were some clear accessibility failures of vital, conversion-driving content (namely product reviews).
User Experience: We identified a number of opportunities to reduce the cognitive load on the user.

How we did it

A clear guest checkout UI

We identified that over 90% of users were either already checking out as a guest, or having difficulty remembering their password. As the guest checkout was not the default route presented to the user, we knew this was a clear opportunity and created a new, clearer user interface that made guest checkout the default option when landing on the page.

Improved purchase guidance

Throughout the checkout steps, there was a distinct lack of hierarchy between user instructions, fonts and form fields. This was a clear opportunity and with a simple review of these features, we ensured the checkout caused fewer headaches and instead – you guessed it – more transactions.

Reviews for all!

Our advocacy for inclusive design means that we’re always critical of a site’s ability to pass WCAG’s Accessibility Guidelines. With a reviews section on every product page that failed to meet an accessible contrast ratio, this was a concern – particularly when we learnt that over 60% of transacting customers view the reviews section before they checked out. With this resolved it was unsurprising that we saw a step-change in conversion rate.

Read about our Accessibility Audit

Journey optimisation

There were a number of inefficiencies with the ecommerce journey that caused a significant amount of users to exit from the site altogether. Various roadblocks and confusing pages meant that some weren’t willing to stick with their journey, whilst those that did ended up not seeing the content that they expected.

We upgraded the product hierarchy to ensure that most sought after products were delivered sooner. We then streamlined the journey taking out the unnecessary pages so that users could reach their destination sooner.

Site revenue increased by 28% in December YoY

With considerable effort put into re-designing the checkout, conversion rate was significantly improved for both mobile and desktop users, leading to a notable jump in revenue achieved over the Christmas and Spring period.

Focusing our attention then on accessibility and mobile usability, led to friction being greatly reduced and important product reviews becoming more easily readable – both of which drove a marked conversion rate improvement.

47% Increase in
mobile revenue

26% Increase in mobile
conversion rate

28% Increase in
December revenue