How a global consumer goods company used analytics tools to improve efficiency and gain greater visibility
of its e-commerce performance across its vast portfolio, achieving a 30% improvement in execution in just 3 months.
The challenge: Limited visibility over a complex landscape
This global consumer goods company has a portfolio of over 50 brands sold on both pure play and omnichannel retailers across nearly 200 countries. the third largest online shopping market by share of GDP in Europe which, like other European markets, experienced explosive growth in e-commerce during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company’s e-commerce team knew that success in Greece could pave the way for growth in other markets, and so targeted Greece as a test case for process improvement. The key challenge was that managing the perfect online shelf with 1000s of SKUs across multiple retailers was overwhelming. They lacked visibility of their performance and had no idea where to focus their efforts.
Why Greece? Greece e-commerce Stats in a nutshell that made it the perfect market for an e-commerce pilot study:
- Online sales in Greece has a yearly growth rate of over 50%
- Food and personal care account for 19% of online sales
- More than 60% of Greek shoppers say they prefer online shopping to in store shopping
- Greek consumers research more than they buy online in comparison with the European average, making product description pages crucial, whether the sale ultimately happens online or in a physical store
- Factors that increase the likelihood of Greek shoppers to make a purchase include free delivery (74%), coupons & discounts (55%), smooth checkout process (48%), reviews from other customers (47%), and loyalty points (42%).
- 40% of Greek consumers search for products through social media platforms
- Only 37% of Greek consumers are brand loyal (Source: trade.gov)
The biggest player in Greek e-commerce is kotsovolos.gr, followed by zara.com and public.gr. Winning on these retailers was key.
Our solution: The e-commerce perfect store framework
It was clear that the biggest issue for this brand was too much information and insufficient tools for decoding it. They had all the data but no way of summarizing it in a meaningful way that made sense and highlighted the biggest problems. This is where we came in. We applied our “perfect store” framework to set up automated tools to track their priority SKUs across key retailers. We measured the most important success drivers across content, search, availability, and shopper ratings and reviews. We delivered the results via intuitive dashboards that included an aggregated “digital shelf score” derived from the most impactful KPIs that correlate with sales, plus more granular scores for success factors across content, search, availability, and shopper ratings and reviews. Intuitive dashboards revealed exactly where they needed to focus at any given time. These reports are flexible and dynamic, capable of measuring everything with weights, targets and thresholds. This level of customization paired with automated reporting gave the company top level visibility of overall performance, with clear cues for digital shelf areas that were underperforming.
The result: Clarity of the gaps and where to focus
Using our tools, they discovered that the biggest gaps were in content, particularly keyword performance. Our tools enabled their e-commerce team to address critical content gaps that were having a detrimental impact on search and conversion. This includes specific SKUs on specific retailers that were underperforming on critical content areas for search and conversion: keyword density in product titles and descriptions; mobile-optimized images; rich product content; and iMedia. Fixing the gaps drove a 30% improvement in digital shelf performance in just 3 months.
“Having improved our e-commerce function in Greece using digital shelf tools, we’re now looking to share this as a best practice approach with teams in other markets”
- Global e-commerce Lead,
Global Consumer Goods Brand
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