The Problem: Unauthorized Ads Skim schuh’s Web Traffic and Conversions
18.97% Hijacking Rate
A growing footwear retailer with over 130 stores in the UK, Ireland and Germany, schuh’s e-commerce executive team invest great efforts into optimizing their customers’ online experience and maximizing conversions. But this experience was not making it to a significant portion of their visitors due to Customer Journey Hijacking, where unauthorized pop-ups, banners and competing product ads invaded schuh.co.uk. Injected into consumer browsers, these unwanted promotions were diverting schuh’s web traffic to other sites, skimming their online revenue.
When first alerted about this invisible threat, schuh Deputy Head of E-Commerce Stuart McMillan was surprised that an issue so disruptive to online retailers could be flying under the organization’s radar.
“I’m a relatively savvy technology consumer, so the revelation that potentially thousands of our consumers experience this issue when browsing our site — it’s something I had no idea was out there.”
At an initial meeting, schuh’s e-commerce team viewed screenshots and videos of how these invasive ads looked to hijacked visitors and diverted them away from their online store. Many of these ads featured offers and promotions from schuh’s direct competitors.
“The visual element of these ads definitely drove home the problem and really helped our team to understand the issue our customers were facing. There’s just no way this can be good for their experience on schuh’s website.”
The Solution: Kicking Out Invasive Ads with Namogoo Customer Journey Hijacking Prevention
Seeing the problem up close, schuh’s e-commerce team agreed to run a 30-day Proof-of-Value (POV) with Namogoo to uncover the scale and effect of Customer Journey Hijacking on their bottom line KPIs.
“The main question to me was: How many of our visitors were actually seeing these ads? And what was the effect on our metrics? It made sense they would have a detrimental effect but we needed to test and confirm the actual scale and impact of these ads on our business.”
The A/B testing revealed that 18.9 percent of all online visitor sessions to schuh’s website were exposed to unauthorized ads. Stuart and his team were able to verify all of the POV data using their Google Analytics.
“The fact that we took the measurements in our analytics system gave us increased confidence and took the guesswork out of how to interpret the results.”
The Business Impact: Enhanced Conversions and Online Business Metrics
With Namogoo’s Customer Hijacking Prevention solution blocking unauthorized ad injections, schuh’s average conversion rate for hijacked visitors jumped by 14.73 percent, lifting overall conversions by 2.78 percent. These improvements also extended to schuh’s checkout where the abandonment rate fell by 29 percent.
“It’s great to see the lift in conversions we’ve received with Namogoo. 90 percent of the solutions we’ve tested to improve results on our site have not given us this kind of return.”
Conclusion
With invasive content no longer hijacking their customer journey, Stuart and the schuh e-commerce team are now able to ensure their designed online experience is delivered free of unwanted distractions.
“We’re overjoyed by the improvements Namogoo has given us. It seemed almost too good to be true. When we saw these results proving themselves consistently over time, it really vindicated the problem of injected ads and the value of removing them from our site.”
