case study: sheplers boost conversion with badging and

Case Study
Boost Conversion With Badging and Curation
CA SE ST U DY: S H EP L E RS
B OOST C ON V E RSION WIT H B A D G I N G A N D C UR AT I O N
CAL LING ATT E N T I O N T O
PR OD UCT S L I F T S
CON VERSIO N
Sheplers has been in retailing for over 100
years and is synonymous with western wear
and cowboy boots. The company is now
combining its rich heritage of marketing and
merchandising experience with Monetate's
Software as a Service technology to craft
online retailing practices built around testing,
targeting, and personalization of website
content and features.
Sheplers is using two complimentary
technologies that are on the cutting edge of
digital marketing: badging and curation. In this
context curation means identifying items that are deemed worthy of greater attention and badging means visually
highlighting those items. Why are curation and badging important to online retailing? Consider the fact that Sheplers
stocks 10 categories of Work Boots. In the "Pull-on" sub-category alone there are 60 different styles. When a shopper
gets to a web page with 60 choices, it helps to know which items are new, which are best sellers, top-rated, and so on.
Fortunately, Monetate technology makes that easy, whether you're selling boots or jeans or western shirts.
Product Badging
They may be small, but
theyʼre one of the biggest hits
in Monetateʼs feature list and
they have a great track record
for conversion rate lift:
Product badges! Based on
your criteria, we float these
messages — like “Hot Pick” or
“Top Rated!” — over your
existing product shots.
Of course, if you had to create new product shots every time the curation changed then badging would be prohibitively
expensive. That's why Monetate developed technology that can automatically display small images, the badges, on top
of your original product images.
The Monetate marketing platform will do this on your website according to whatever business rules you lay down. For
example, if a product SKU is in a list called "new" or "on-sale" then Monetate will float the appropriate badge over the
image of any product whose SKU is on the list. You can tell Monetate to do this whenever such a product is displayed, or
only on certain pages, such as a search results page.
1.63%
Increase in add to cart rate
Badges are a digital reincarnation of the age-old merchandising strategy of calling attention to specific products within a
range of goods, such as items that you are particularly keen to sell. And badges are effective: adding bestseller badges
on category pages at Sheplers produced a conversion rate lift of more than 3 percent. The deployment of "Savings"
badges on category pages increased average order value by 2 percent. Using a "New" badge on product detail pages
produced a 1.63 percent increase in the "add to cart" rate. Individually, these might not seem like big percentage
increases, but taken together the annualized revenue increase from these badging campaigns is a seven figure success
story.
It should be noted that the bestseller badge is a little smarter than the others. While the "New" badging is triggered by a
list of SKUs that Sheplers uploads through its Monetate dashboard, Monetate curates the best selling products
automatically because Monetate knows what is being sold and when.
A simple business rule triggers display of the bestseller badge when an item crosses the predefined threshold for
bestseller (for example, the 10 most frequently purchased items in the last 30 days). In other words, Sheplers can just
set this merchandising campaign and forget it. As
customer buying habits change, so does the bestseller
badging, without consuming any additional resources.
Sheplers knows that badging pays so it is using
Monetate to get even smarter, combining geotargeting with its accumulated understanding of brand
synergies to present different bestsellers to visitors
from different states, based on what is selling best in
the visitor’s state.
As the leading independent provider of testing, targeting, and personalization for websites, Monetate helps
major consumer brands deliver personalized content and offers to different traffic segments. And we do this
while eliminating IT from the marketing process.
Everything that Monetate does is enabled by a single tag that you cut-and-paste onto your site, no IT resources
required. With that one simple action Marketing can bypass IT and access Monetate’s unique marketing
optimization features from A/B testing to product badging and geo-targeting of promotions and messaging.
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