Benetton: how a personalized product card increased order conversions by 10%

The United Colors of Benetton brand exists since 1965. Over the course of time it opened six thousand stores in over 120 countries. In Russia, Benetton also operates an online store.

Mindbox is assisting the United Colors of Benetton marketers with building direct marketing and personalizing their site. Currently, Benetton has three site personalization mechanics running. They cover item card personalization, the item advantage block, and a personalized loyalty program signup form.

Mechanic support and setup procedures are being taken care of by our partners at Popmechanic. All the client needs to do is install a tracker on site. This requires no more than 15 minutes.

The personalization effectiveness is measured in the Mindbox control group. First achievements relate to: people that are viewing clothing items via personalized item cards, convert to an order at a 10% greater rate than those who land on the basic page.

We will cover installed mechanics within this article.

Item card personalization «X people bought this item»

This mechanic shows how many people bought an item today that sparks interest in a buyer. Data related to quantity is taken from Google Analytics. This is the average indicator for a single item. On-site, the card looks like this:

We presumed that a buyer will finalize a delivery order faster if he sees how many people bought the exact same sweater over the course of the day. In order to check our hypothesis, we ran some tests on a control group. They divided the site’s audience in half: 50% of people were shown the block that displayed the purchased quantity of an item, the other half was not shown in this block.

After a month of testing, we figured out that the people who land on the personalized card, convert to a successful order more frequently, at a rate of 10%. Confidence probability of our measurement: 98%.

Mechanic effectiveness report looks like — This is what a mechanic effectiveness report looks like. The grey dotted line represents client orders that did not see the personalized block. The green line – orders of those who saw it. At the end of the experiment, the green line remains within the green field, which means that the new block is bringing in money. If it were to lay within the grey field, we could say that the personalization experiment was a failure.

Item advantages

Any personalized Mindbox block is installed on-site via ready code, an API. This is the most simple and fastest way to change something on-site without a team of developers. We added an «Item advantages» mechanic to the site in 5 minutes. If need be, we can change the design, content, or targeting conditions, also in 5 minutes.

Benetton’s on site «Item advantages» mechanic operates on buyer fear and discloses delivery terms. For example, the «Clothing that was never tried on» block appeared after Benetton marketers found out that some people are afraid to purchase goods from their site because they think they have been tried on by others prior to their purchase.

The effectiveness of the «Item advantages» block was also control group tested. Visitors that saw this block, converted at a 6.5% greater rate than those who did not see it. Confidence probability of our measurement: 92%.

This graph depicts the «Item advantages» mechanic. The grey dotted line represents people that did not see the new block. Green – those who saw it. It’s important that the green like passes through the green field at the end of the experiment. This means that the new block is bringing in money.

Personalized loyalty program invitation mechanic

This mechanic utilizes a form with a call for people who are not yet registered on-site to join the loyalty program. If a person is already in the program, the mechanic automatically picks up on this and removes this form from the site.

The uniqueness of this mechanic is that it works on the segment base, which is created by Benetton marketers inside of Mindbox. This means that marketers can create unique site versions for each individual client, using their purchase history or on site actions as a base point. For example, the mechanic can show a block with undergarments and socks only to those buyers that have recently purchased pajamas. Or raincoats and umbrellas to those who recently purchased trench coats.

Andrey Byrenichev,
United Colors of Benetton marketer

Together with Mindbox, we solved the task of combining loyalty program data and launching segmented text messages and email communications. We also started collaborating on testing site personalization possibilities and individual offers for clients, which allowed us to achieve fruitful conversion results driven by a targeted action.

The main work in relation to site personalization remains to be completed, but, first results are already on hand:

Increased order conversions by 10% thanks to the «X people bought this item» block.
Increased conversions by 6.5% on sites where we list item advantages.

15 minutes were spent on setting up and installing mechanics. Mechanic support is being done by our partners at Popmechanic. All the client needs to do is track effectiveness reports.

Further plans:

Install personalized recommendations. This mechanic operates on machine learning principles and on site client behavior.
Develop a comprehensive personalization strategy and implement conversion mechanics.