The Problem: Competitor Ad Injections Hijack The Cotswold Company’s eCommerce Revenue
21% Hijacking Rate
One of the UK’s leading home furniture retailers, The Cotswold Company invests heavily into delivering a seamless and individualized online shopping experience for their customers — but for over 1 out of every 5 of those customers, these optimization efforts were being undermined by Customer Journey Hijacking. This widespread problem occurs when unauthorized ads are injected into consumer browsers and devices, disrupting site visitors with product offers, banners and popups that divert them to competitors promotions, harming retailers’ customer experience and revenue as a result. Traffic hijackers target popular free browser extensions, apps, and desktop software to embed these ad injections on the consumer side, allowing them to profit from skimming eCommerce customers away under the radar of enterprises. When they were first introduced to Namogoo, The Cotswold Company eCommerce Manager George Featherstone had never heard of these consumer-side ad injections which targeted online shoppers.
“At the time we were completely unaware of Customer Journey Hijacking. When we saw it on our website we didn’t think this would be a problem that our customers would experience. It was only after we ran the test that we could see the magnitude of this problem and impact on our conversion rate and revenue.”
The Solution: Keeping the Journey Flowing Free of Distractions
While testing Namogoo’s Customer Hijacking Prevention solution, The Cotswold Company team found out that 21% of visitors to their eCommerce website were being exposed to ads throughout the customer journey.
“When we were told that ad injections were appearing over 1 out of 5 of our visitors, I was very skeptical. But during our proof of value test we were able to verify all results with our own analytics and realized that it was impacting that much of our traffic.”
The Cotswold Company constantly devotes money and time into making the journey smooth for their online customers. Being able to see how competitor ad injections were showing up on the customer side made the decision to put a stop to these disruptions a no-brainer.
“Seeing how these ads distracted 21% of our visitors’ journeys with competitor ads or special discounts was very disturbing. Not only were we losing potential revenue from these visitors, but also the investments we made driving them to our site and perfecting their customer journey.”
The Business Impact: A Top-Performing Segment Drives Conversion & RPV Upwards
After ridding their customer journey of unauthorized ads, The Cotswold Company is consistently increasing their overall conversion rate by 4.26%. Their Revenue Per Visitor (RPV) has also improved by 4.03%.
“We were very happy with the results. Not only does it ensure a smooth journey for our customers without any distractions, but it also prevents all the revenue leakage that comes with these ad injections.”
The data emerging from Namogoo on how hijacked visitors behaved all across their funnel also shed light on how valuable this segment once distractions are taken out of their way. These customers are more engaged online consumers and therefore more likely to download free browser extensions, and other software that come bundled with ad injections.
“Once you learn this is happening, it’s quite logical that hijacked visitors convert more since the hijackers know who to target. These are our best and most active online shoppers. They’re the ones that download mobile apps and install extensions for coupons and price comparison, which is also what makes them more vulnerable.”
Conclusion
Beyond seeing consistent improvement to their eCommerce sales funnel, The Cotswold Company is pleased to have the ability to verify all journey insights and results for their high-performing hijacked customer segment using their own analytics platform.
“Integrating and deploying Namogoo’s solution was pretty fast and straightforward. What’s more important is that, once there, it does its job. No need for resource allocation and data is reflected directly to my analytics platform.”
