London, 17 December 2015: Shop Direct, the multi-brand online retailer, has re-signed its agreement with Taggstar following a massive uplift of 2.7 per cent in sales conversions, after adding the social proof messaging to flagship websites, Very.co.uk and Littlewoods.com.
The Taggstar real-time retail trend messaging was added to the two sites during a trial period. Over 500,000 users per day using the sites across desktops, tablets and mobiles, saw messages about product popularity, customer ratings and hot sales trends.
Results:
- Multiple A/B Taggstar message tests saw sales conversions rise between 1 – 3 per cent
- A huge, average 2.7 per cent sales conversion uplift on Very.co.uk & Littlewoods.com (online and mobile) where shoppers were shown the real-time messaging
- With aggregate annual sales in the region of £700m for both sites, the uplift equates to £14m over 18 months
The success has now seen Shop Direct incorporate real-time messaging into other site areas, with Taggstar delivering over 400 messages per second on Black Friday 2014 alone, Shop Direct’s biggest-ever trading day. Taggstar messages are now shown to Shop Direct browsers an average of 80 per cent of the time, when there is valuable detail to share with the viewer to influence the buying decision.
Taggstar is one of the top performing online applications adopted by Shop Direct to improve online sales conversions. The retailer was the first in the UK to build an in-house user experience lab and is using it to test new technologies with customers, as well as identify ways to personalise and enhance the online shopping experience. It credits Taggstar as scalable and robust, having performed during the frenzy of concurrent customers shopping online on Black Friday 2014.
Shop Direct eCommerce director, Jonathan Wall said: “The customer is at the heart of our business, and real-time social proof messages help us to build a stronger relationships by building trust and confidence in online shopping. Our tests are conclusive that customers seeing the messages are more likely to checkout and spend more. The 2.7 per cent increase we’ve added to our sales conversions is incredible given the scale of our retail sites. Adding Taggstar has been the single-biggest driver of incremental revenues in our financial year 2014/15.”
Shop Direct continues to work with Taggstar to help advance its online sales by showing customers transparent product popularity messages as useful purchasing guidance. It was recently-awarded Retail Technology Initiative of the Year at the Oracle Retail Week Awards 2015 for its experimentation at scale programme, and Personalisation Initiative of the Year at the Retail Week Customer Experience Awards 2015.
Taggstar Managing Director, Marjorie Leonidas said: “Taggstar gives people a sense that others are shopping with them, giving them a virtual ‘thumbs up’ as they browse online. This creates confidence in the choices they are making as they click to buy. Our technology essentially turns the large amounts of data collected by online retailers into useful, actionable shopper information.”
About Shop Direct:
Shop Direct is a world-class digital retailer and are proud to be the UK’s fourth largest online retailer. It sells over 1,000 famous brands and delivers 48 million products to four million customers every year.
About Taggstar:
Taggstar delivers real-time product messaging on retail websites to turn browsers into buyers. Our messages highlights what other shoppers have bought, including popularity, trending, scarcity and promotional messages, encouraging them to buy. Displaying the right messages, at the right stage in the sales journey, to individual customers about individual products, means that buyers who see Taggstar messages are better engaged with more confidence to complete the sale. #Taggstar is backed by Ariadne Capital.
Press queries:
Kate Cleevely, Kate@taggstar.com / 07754 920043.
Heather Astbury, heather.astbury@shopdirect.com / 0844 292 2763 / 07880 096636
See what Taggstar messages look like on fashion & electrical items on Very.co.uk:
