CostumeBox

THE CHALLENGES

CostumeBox first began looking for a search and merchandising solution because of a lack of automation within their native platform. “We used to do all of our merchandising manually, which was a full time job in itself because we had so many pages. We could easily spend 3-4 hours merchandising each category, it was something we had to constantly maintain and find time for. There were parts of the site that we ended up neglecting because we just didn’t have time to optimize every category,” says Vanessa.

This proved particularly arduous given the seasonal nature of the business. CostumeBox’s site is updated regularly based on upcoming holidays, the latest movie releases, and breakout trends, meaning promotional banners and product arrangement all change continually. “Coming up to something like St Patrick’s Day, we would have to manually move all of the relevant products to the top of category pages because there was no way to force it automatically. Once that day had passed, we had to move them all back again,” says Vanessa. 

Halloween and Book Week are the two busiest holidays for their online store, and both happened to coincide in October of 2020 because of pandemic-related rescheduling. “We found ourselves dealing with two of our peak seasons at once, just as COVID-19 restrictions were easing in Australia. Suddenly, we had this surge in orders after months when people couldn’t socialize or throw parties. It was especially challenging because we were also experiencing delays in stock arriving from overseas, but in the end the spike in sales helped us to get through what was a difficult year,” says Vanessa. 

With a variety of themes and characters on offer, customers can sometimes struggle to find the right words when they turn to the site’s search bar. “It’s common for shoppers to make spelling mistakes, which is where autocorrect comes in. Or, they might not quite know a character’s exact name. Search synonyms and redirects have been a lifesaver for us to ensure our customers can still find the products they’re looking for. We have redirects set up for Super Mario, for example, where shoppers might search for ‘Mario’, ‘Mario bros’, ‘Mario brothers’ – all of those searches bring shoppers to our Super Mario Brothers page.” 

Many of these search terms become apparent through Searchspring’s reporting. “We review the reports every Monday to see what customers are searching for and whether we’re missing anything in the market. If there is a new character that shoppers are really interested in, the reports help us to assess demand and decide whether to order new inventory. We also get insights into how our customers navigate through our pages – are they filtering by color versus occasion, for example. That’s really useful for us, particularly during peak seasons,” says Vanessa. 

CostumeBox also has plans to implement Searchspring’s inline banners to highlight sales and promotions, as well as to showcase a new business venture. “We’re launching a new initiative on CostumeBox called PartyList, which will help our customers find all the services they need for their parties such as equipment hire, entertainment, and catering. With inline banners, we’ll be able to link to those services without disrupting the shopping experience. We’re really excited about that.”