The Brand

Milton & King is an Australian success story that took a modern approach to the time-honoured craft of wallpaper creation. Starting the business online in 2008, Richard and Bryce aimed to reinvent lifestyle retail.

The company has a keen focus on anticipating and driving the industry’s direction. For example, traditional wallpaper printing techniques, such as block printing and screen printing, involve substantial wastage. However, the digital processes implemented by Milton & King result in high-quality wallpapers, printed to order, with no significant wastage.

Milton & King also takes a modern approach to product discovery. It does not require shoppers to head into a brick-and-mortar store and flick through hundreds of sample swatches. Instead, the company prioritises delivering exceptional online customer journeys, with current and future extension plans involving showrooms.

The online experience has been a critical component of the Milton & King success story, strengthening the brand’s identity across its domains in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe.

The Challenges

Head of Ecommerce Chris Clark says that before Searchspring, he used a less sophisticated search solution that offered minimal benefit over flicking through swatches. He comments, “You get what you pay for. That solution really didn’t go into any depth other than a title or a description. It didn’t search tags, SKUs, colours, styles, or patterns.”

Customers were providing feedback about the search experience being a significant pain point. Shoppers couldn’t easily find suitable wallpapers. An even more noticeable red flag emerged when staff raised the same issues. If people familiar with those products couldn’t find what they needed, new shoppers would undoubtedly be at a loss.

Milton & King was also struggling with site speed. The previous search application relied on data hosted on local servers, which couldn’t keep up with an expanding catalogue.

Chris and the team noticed the writing was on the wall and turned to the award-winning search, merchandising, and personalisation platform, Searchspring.

The Solutions

Searchspring has enabled shoppers to move quickly and seamlessly from imagination to checkout. The platform’s intelligent search features and advanced filters help customers quickly find their perfect designs within an extensive catalogue. Chris explains, “Our customers can now find what they’re looking for amongst over 2000 products – simply, easily, and effectively with the use of tags, brands, styles, and other information.” Dynamic faceted search then allows shoppers to filter product results based on style, pattern, room suitability, or even dominant pattern colours. 

The new platform has significantly impacted site speed. Chris comments, “Searchspring holds all that product data, so the search happens using their servers. That speeds up the page results, speeds up our product page, accelerates page load, and ultimately improves our customers’ online experience.”

Additionally, Milton & King uses Searchspring’s inline banners to draw attention to promotions, giveaways, and new collections. Video banners have driven noticeable sales increases for new collections and featured designers.

Behind the scenes, Searchspring’s merchandising capabilities ensure the right designs are placed in front of the right shoppers. Chris mentions, “Having greater control over our merchandising has been really impactful. We can push best-sellers to the top, push the overexposed items further down, and reorder products to make sure we’re always leading with the best designs.”

In addition to Milton & King’s direct to consumer (D2C) operations, the company also manages business-to-business (B2B) models. Searchspring seamlessly supports Milton & King’s trade partners and wholesalers with tailored pricing structures, while delivering the same fast, personalised experiences that consumers receive.

Chris also praises Searchspring’s implementation and support, commenting, “Onboarding and integration were really faultless. We worked with Dan from the local Australian Searchspring team, who was very responsive, and everything went quite smoothly.”

Chris says he has gained substantial value from the platform by working with Searchspring’s skilled technical resources and having a dedicated, local success manager available to suggest and support incremental improvements.

The Results

Since implementing Searchspring, wallpaper conversions have gone through the roof. Chris confirms that conversions have more than doubled – from 1.49% in October 2022 to 3.84% in November 2023. The efficiency and effectiveness of enhanced search have been game-changing. “Something we can’t live without now is the speed of product results. That’s really a combination of enhancing our user interface with search navigation and improving product results pages. With a faster onsite experience, we’ve at least doubled conversion rates in the last 9 months”, says Chris.

Milton & King is also capitalising on previously missed opportunities. Through “zero search results” insights, the company has identified product demand to tailor future collections. As Chris details, “We can detect what people are searching for and when they’re seeing zero results. For example, we saw that in the US, people were searching for terms like cowboys, baseball, snakes, and we didn’t have anything covering those designs. Our designers are now producing content purely based on the demand we’re seeing through those search insights.”

These insights have been particularly constructive in selling across multiple domains and geographic regions. “The UK and Australia tend to favour designs incorporating florals, birds and fauna, which is very different to the top-selling items in the US”, notes Chris.

The Searchspring platform is not only delivering outstanding online shopping experiences but also helping the Milton & King team understand culturally-driven design preferences, adjust product strategies to shoppers’ preferences, and continually maximise conversions.