The Problem: Invasive Ad Injections Divert Kurt Geiger’s Online Customers to the Competition
Hijacking Rate: Kurt Geiger 25% | Shoeaholics 20.67%
Europe’s largest luxury footwear retailer, Kurt Geiger has over 80 brick-and-mortar stores and 200 concessions, while operating the footwear departments for Harrods and Selfridges.
Kurt Geiger’s digital team invests significantly into bringing the unique retail experiences they’ve become known for to their online customers, but those designs were being disrupted by Customer Journey Hijacking — a widespread problem where unauthorized product ads are injected into consumer devices and browsers. Traffic hijackers insert these ad injections into many of the most commonly downloaded free software services, extensions, and apps, making them undetectable to enterprises. This enables them to profit off of valuable eCommerce traffic by luring site visitors away with competitor ads and relevant offers.
When Kurt Geiger Digital Director Gareth Rees-John first connected with Namogoo on how this problem was impacting their customer journey and revenue, he was somewhat familiar with ad injections, but not sure how prevalent they were amongst their online customers.
I understood the context of browser add-ons and extensions, but wasn’t aware how widespread they were, particularly through affiliate programs of injecting ads into a shopping website.
Wanting to investigate the problem further, Kurt Geiger ran a Proof-of-Value test with Namogoo’s Customer Hijacking Prevention solution to verify the impact of these disruptions on their sales funnel KPIs.
The Solution: Regaining Control of the Customer Journey with Namogoo
During the pilot, the Kurt Geiger digital team discovered that 25% of visitors to their Kurt Geiger brand site were exposed to unauthorized ads, the majority of which promoted similar products from their direct competitors. This was also the case for 20.67% of visitors to one of their top sub-brands, Shoeaholics.
“This problem was affecting a lot more of our traffic then we ever expected. I was actually surprised at the other prominent UK brands that were being advertised, and the complexity of the image recognition by these ad injections to show very similar products at other well-known retailers at significantly cheaper prices.”
The digital team was also able verify the behavior of these hijacked visitors, and where in the customer journey they would click away from their site.
“These ads were clearly tempting our customers away. We spend a lot of time designing and implementing our online shopping experience. One in five visitors customers were not getting that experience, which felt pretty out of my hands. You want to own your brand experience and we’re glad to find a solution that lets us do that end to end with our customers.”
With Namogoo’s machine learning solution blocking ad injections in real time, Kurt Geiger was also able to verify the impact on their conversion rate and Revenue per Visitor (RPV), which climbed significantly.
The Business Impact: Putting Kurt Geiger’s Best Foot Forward Raises Conversion & RPV
After eliminating Customer Journey Hijacking with Namogoo, Kurt Geiger has increased its overall conversion rate by 5.66% on KurtGeiger.com, while RPV has jumped by 5.84%. The digital team is also seeing similar improvements on Shoeaholics.com, raising conversion by 5.12% and RPV by 4.99%.
“We did a very thorough A/B test where blocking ad injections for hijacked journeys was allowed for only 50% of visitors. And the uplift in conversion and RPV for that group smashed through everyone’s expectations. We can now feel confident that our customers are seeing what we are, and the results speak for themselves.”
The data also revealed that hijacked visitors converted much more frequently than visitors unaffected by ad injections. These consumers are more engaged online and therefore are also more likely to download browser extensions and freeware that already include ad injections. Taking customer journey disruptions away for this engaged segment sees them converting at an even higher rate.
“I was surprised at just the difference between the hijacked population and the rest of our visitors. It makes logical sense that consumers have these types of extensions and click on these ads also have high purchase intent. Now that we can identify this segment, we can use their behavior to our advantage.”
Kurt Geiger has tested numerous solutions promising meaningful improvements to their most important eCommerce KPIs. Being able to monitor all of Namogoo’s data with their own analytics lent more trust to the results in Gareth’s eyes.
“There are a lot of software partners that will report to give you amazing results, but very few that deliver that in a way we can verify independently. Namogoo was very open and made measuring all results really straightforward. We look for partnerships that are really good for our brand and our customers. That’s the relationship we have with Namogoo.”
Helping Boost Revenue & Customer Loyalty During COVID-19 & Beyond
The impact of COVID-19 has accelerated eCommerce adoption and given the online shopping journey unprecedented importance for retail brands competing for customer loyalty. Ensuring their customers are receiving the intended customer journey free of invasive disruptions gives the Kurt Geiger team peace of mind that their efforts will pay off both short- and long-term.
“Consumers’ patience with poor online experiences has worn thin, and to the point that they will jump to another brand. Namogoo keeps our ownership of that journey by stopping ad injections from taking that experience somewhere else. Not only does it lift revenue, it also preserves faith and confidence for our customers about our brand.”
Conclusion
Over a year into their partnership with Namogoo, the Kurt Geiger team continuously monitors the value of preventing Customer Journey Hijacking by maintaining a 5% control group, while blocking ad injections for the rest of their traffic.
“A lot of solutions have a big initial impact and then peter out over time. And even after a year, I still see really strong conversion and RPV uplifts. That speaks to the value Namogoo’s solution continues to add for us.”
