Personalized product recommendations at Viata Online Pharmacy: 10.7% conversion increase on Homepage and 9.2% on Product Page
Viata is an online pharmacy, awarded with the BeCommerce Award 2016 and Safeshops Customer Friendliness Award 2017, that offers over 30,000 products in its catalogue with a wide range of personal care products, food supplements and nonprescription medicines (OTC).
Through smart tools and targeted information Viata gives the visitor appropriate and discreet advice and the visitor is guided to the products from their fit. Every week Viata welcomes 1,500 new customers and handles orders throughout whole Europe.
The Challenge
Viata was looking for a solution geared towards personalizing the customer experience, in order to drive conversion rates. At the same time they were looking for an effective, easy to implement solution without the constant need of IT support.
The Dutch Viata website was the first to implement the Retail Rocket website personalization product recommendation engine. Implementation of the recommendation engine was very quick. Soon after a successful implementation of Retail Rocket solution on their Dutch site, the solution was also implemented on the Belgian site. France and Germany will follow soon.
The Solution
Retail Rocket analyzes the behavior of webshop visitors and adjusts the website in real time so that each customer gets their own version of the webshop, highlighting the products that they are most likely to buy, based on their preferences and purchase history. It offers 20+ personalization scenarios for each step of the customer journey.
Efficiency Analysis Process Description
During a period of two months, there was an efficiency analysis of Retail Rocket website personalization technologies performed on the homepage and product page. The analyses were performed using the A/B testing approach: all visitors of Viata.nl homepage and product page were randomly split into two segments in real time. Only one visitor segment was shown recommendation on these pages of Viata.nl.
The goal of the experiment was to identify the statistically significant difference in the conversion rate between the visitor segments.
This case study describes how Viata increased their homepage and product page conversion by respectively 10.7% and 9.2% by implementing Retail Rocket personalized product recommendations.
Examples on the site:
Homepage
The Homepage is the shop window of an online store. In many cases, it is the first place where a visitor decides to stay and enter or leave the website. Visitors will only stay and continue their journey through the website when they see something of their interest, so it is very important to show the right products.
The Retail Rocket platform performs real-time analysis of the behavior of all Viata visitors and adjusts the website so that each person gets their own version of the webshop based on their browsing & purchase history. Here is how the homepage looks like:
| Homepage with Personal Recommendations |
Results on Homepage:
In the case of Viata.nl the Personal Recommendations appear right after general information, in the best possible and most visible position. This is particularly effective where the visitor is using a mobile phone. With limited screen capacity, it’s essential to show the most relevant products as soon as possible.
The A/B test showed that using Retail Rocket platform on the homepage of Viata.nl with personal recommendations results in 10.7% conversion rate improvement with a statistical significance of 97.8%.
Product page
Product pages serve as one of the most important decision-making points and Viata uses it to promote other products from its catalog.
The Retail Rocket platform identifies the key features of the products that a visitor is browsing and provides personalized product recommendations in real-time, in the case of Viata it shows Related products. Example:
| Related Products on the product page |
Results on Product Page:
Related Products are complementary products that a visitor can add to cart with the current product. This is a great tool to boost average order value of the shop. The Retail Rocket platform creates automated recommendations based on product database analysis and website behavior (carts, orders).
The A/B test showed that using Retail Rocket recommendations platform on the product page of Viata.nl results in 9.2% conversion rate improvement with a statistical significance of 93.7%.
Additionally, conversion rate improvement grows the customer database that will eventually result in more recurrent sales in the future.
Comments from Viata
Gianni De Gaspari, Co-founder Viata
“Viata’s mission is to exceed the typical pharmacy visit. We do not just do the same as in a physical pharmacy, but even better than what you would normally expect of a pharmacy. We do include a personal approach and real-time personalization of Retail Rocket fits perfectly in our mission”.