Incu

THE CHALLENGES

Incu wanted to reflect its personalised and genuine in-store customer service on its online platform. However, after using native platform functionality for some time, it became apparent that standard search capabilities left shoppers wanting more.

Alicia Davis, Digital Project Specialist at Incu, explains, “If you have a large catalogue of products or many different brands, especially for multi-brand retailers like us, you need your site search to work flawlessly. Shoppers can be quite brand-term driven. So the last thing you want is to miss opportunities because your site is returning zero results for specific and branded queries.”

The most common customer experience feedback about the online store was that finding the right products was challenging. Shop assistants also use the website to enhance the in-store product discovery journey, showing customers additional items available online or in the warehouse. Unfortunately, in-stock items were out of sight using the existing online search functionality.

Additionally, manual merchandising processes were consuming a lot of Alicia’s time;

“Before using Searchspring, I remember a wide sales event we had covering many categories – around 20 pages across two sales collections. I spent an entire 8-hour day going through a merchandising process of ‘drag product, save, drag again, save’, grouping brands and piecing together an appealing display for our sales collections. We also spent around 2 hours each week just merchandising new arrivals pages. It now takes about 5 minutes on a Friday to tweak and check collections using the rules and logic in Searchspring.”

“By implementing a search, merch, and personalisation solution, we’ve been able to switch from a short-term to long-term strategic approach. If you’re just sitting in the backend, shuffling things around and working reactively – which is the case for a lot of lean teams – it’s difficult to plan more than a week in advance. You’re also potentially not making the best decisions because you’re always looking at a granular level and doing things based on opinions. With intelligent technology and automation that manages things effectively with global, highly-customisable rules, we can focus on the big-ticket items and future roadmap projects to further optimise the site.”

– Alicia Davis, Digital Project Specialist, Incu

THE RESULTS

From implementing Searchspring in 2021 to 2023, Incu saw a 15% increase in revenue attributed to shoppers using search with 6.1x more revenue per visit generated vs without search. Conversion rates from search-derived orders have also been lifted 3.1x higher than those without search.

The results aren’t the only thing creating a lasting impression. Alicia comments on the ease and professionalism of the setup process, “Searchspring managed the bulk of work with our implementation quite seamlessly – something which is a huge benefit during peak periods like Black Friday / Cyber Monday, Christmas, and Boxing Day sales. The team was extremely organised and collaborated really well with us when they needed our reviews and testing. The whole process was fast but efficient. We also started noticing conversion uplifts within a week of going live.”

Searchspring’s data intelligence is now driving actionable insights, significant time-savings, and outstanding outcomes for the Incu team and their shoppers.

“The reporting capabilities of Searchspring are brilliant. Of course, there are insights you can get from Google Analytics, but they can be hard to read and adjust with custom segmented reporting.” Says Alicia. “With Searchspring, we have a consolidated dashboard of the most important data, such as shoppers using search, conversions, revenue, and other metrics comparing search-driven journeys to those without search. The information at hand has helped us minimise and re-route things like spelling mistakes and zero results to get the right products in front of shoppers.”

Clever product-boosting rules and automation have also cut merchandising time and effort from over half a week to mere hours. As a result, the team now has the breathing space to prioritise strategic initiatives and create even more remarkable shopping experiences.

Incu is now integrating Searchspring with Klaviyo, its email marketing platform, to show personalised product recommendations at even more stages of the buyer journey. Alicia and the team look forward to this integration’s tailored email cross-sell and product discovery capabilities, which are set to keep pre-and-post purchase experiences as fresh and exciting as Incu’s online store.