The Problem: Invasive Ads Hijack Ann Summers’s Online Customers
20.3% Hijacking Rate
With over 140 high street stores in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Channel Islands, Ann Summers has grown into a leading multi-channel retailer of lingerie and adult products.
The digital team at Ann Summers invests great time and effort into testing and implementing new technologies that personalise and enrich the experience for their online customers. That’s why they were shocked when Namogoo alerted them that many of their customers were not receiving their carefully-crafted customer journey. Instead their site visitors were being disrupted by Customer Journey Hijacking, a growing yet hidden problem whereby unauthorised ads are injected into consumer browsers and divert them to other promotions. These unwanted distractions harmed the experience for Ann Summers’s site visitors and drove their conversion rates downwards.
When Namogoo alerted Ann Summers’s Senior Design and Optimisation Manager Andy Cole to this problem, they agreed to test Namogoo’s Customer Hijacking Prevention solution to assess the scale and impact of these ad injections on their top eCommerce metrics.
The Solution: Eliminating Unwanted Disruptions with Namogoo Customer Hijacking Prevention
While testing Namogoo’s solution, Andy and his team discovered that 20.3% of all visitor sessions on www.annsummers.com were exposed to unauthorised ad injections luring them away to other promotions.
“We were in disbelief, at first, that there was such a large volume of hijacked sessions. As we started to delve deeper into the data and KPI insights, we could easily identify this segment of users and clearly see the difference in their behaviour.”
Many of Ann Summer’s impacted visitors were being driven directly to competitor offerings at key stages of their journey.
“Our lingerie product pages were the target of malicious banner ads featuring competitor products and encouraging users to shop their ranges instead of our own.”
The Business Impact: Ann Summers Sees Immediate Uplift in Conversion
What happened to Ann Summers’ KPIs when their visitors actually experienced their site free of distractions? The test results also revealed just how differently impacted visitors behaved when ad injections were prevented by Namogoo—and the Ann Summers digital team saw their conversion rate rise by 2.14%.
“The results achieved with Namogoo were incredibly quick to prove, and during our initial trials we achieved statistical significance within two weeks of using the tool. ROI was achieved very quickly—within the first month of running, it had already paid for itself.”
Ann Summers’s digital team learned that online visitors impacted by Customer Journey Hijacking are more engaged and eCommerce-savvy. They more frequently connect to free Wifi, and download extensions and web services that come bundled with ad injections while searching for the best deals online. Analyzing Namogoo’s data for this segment revealed that these customers were:
- 14% more likely to be a returning customer
- 4.86% more likely to sign up to email newsletter list
- 12% more likely to enter the site via branded paid search like ‘Ann Summers’
- 12.28% more likely to be using iOS/iPhone/Safari than the general visitor base
“The hijacked population on our site exhibited vastly different behaviour compared to regular visitors, their frequency and spend levels were significantly higher—indicating a loyal and engaged ‘VIP’ customer segment.”
Uncovered VIP Segment Takes Ann Summers’s Personalisation Results to New Heights
Recognising the opportunity to target this ‘VIP segment’, Ann Summers ran a campaign using their personalisation platform to find out how this high-converting segment responded to in-app and website product reviews compared to the rest of their visitors. The campaign results yielded major improvements gained by leveraging product reviews with this highly engaged audience:
- 2.13% increase in conversion rate
- 4.33% increase in Add to Bag
- 4.73% increase in click-through rate on Reviews section
Andy and the Ann Summers team were thrilled to uncover this highly engaged audience.
“The team at Ann Summers and senior stakeholders were all blown away by the results achieved, especially since the integration effort required from our side was so minimal to get up and running.”
Conclusion
A year after implementing Namogoo’s solution, Ann Summers continuously monitors ROI gained with Namogoo’s solution with its own analytics data.
“We continuously monitor the hijacked segment’s KPIs within our analytics tool and against general site users, and we consistently are seeing the difference, and the ROI we are gaining with Namogoo.”
