Retail Technology covers John Lewis’s partnership with RichRelevance to implement personalisation in their online e-commerce strategy.
The retailer is using RichRelevance’s personalisation engine to dynamically analyse shopping behavior alongside data on relationships between products and product categories to offer every johnlewis.com customer a personalised experience.
Econsultancy Digital Marketers United blogs on John Lewis’ holiday sales success using RichRelevance personalization technology.
John Lewis says the new personalised recommendation tool on its website was a key factor in driving a 27.9% increase in sales over Christmas.
The tool, created by RichRelevance, provides customers with recommendations on fashion items by analysing shopping behaviour alongside the relationships between products and product categories.
John Lewis head of online delivery and customer experience Sean O’Connor said the tool helped increase sales in the five weeks to December 31 2011 beyond the usual spike expected during the Christmas period, and in comparison to the previous year.
When any shopper comes to our website, we want to provide them with the same personalised customer service we would if they visited us in one of our shops.”
He said that the recommendation and email personalisation platform delivered tangible results by offering customers relevant products.
Product recommendation works particularly well in the fashion category as it recognises shopper behaviour, patterns and recommends items of interest not only by product type, but by brand as well.
The tool is not integrated into social media so recommendations do not take into account what the customer’s friends have bought or viewed – something John Lewis should possibly consider enabling as it has almost 317,000 Facebook fans.
Tech Crunch talks to RichRelevance CEO David Selinger about the rise of personalization in online retail.
“Personalization was really important in enabling Amazon to differentiate itself and grow in past ten years,” David Selinger, CEO and co-founder of RichRelevance. Selinger also was Amazon’s Manager, Consumer Behavior Research and helped build some of the site’s personalization features a number of years ago. “Personalization will be the differentiating factor in e-commerce and digital commerce going forward, especially for multichannel retailers and new entrants online.”
CNBC’s Consumer Nation news weighed in with RichRelevance on the growth in mcommerce.
…Once everyone opens those new tablets during the holidays they can join the new shopping revolution: mcommerce. In the last nine months, the share of U.S. online retail dollars attributable to mobile devices has doubled from 1.87 percent in April of 2011 to 3.74 percent in December 2011, according to RichRelevance, a company that assists retailers with ecommerce sites.
The firm also tracked an increase in the portion of page views coming from mobile devices, with more than 15 percent of all shopping seasons occurring on mobile devices. This past April, just under 9 percent of all shoppers were browsing digital aisles via a mobile device, RichRelevance said. By December, the share has more than doubled, reaching 18 percent of all consumers.
RichRelevance’s CEO David Selinger was featured in this recent executive careers article by the Wall Street Journal.
Like most executives, Sanjeev Nikore had managerial faults. But unlike most executives, he publicly divulged them to fellow staffers.
The result? A promotion.
RichRelevance, which offers personalized product recommendations and sells advertising around them on websites for such retailers as Walmart Stores and Target, plans to acquire Searchandise Commerce, which sells the equivalent of search ads and creates virtual end-cap displays on e-commerce sites. The deal is intended to create a more comprehensive offering for online-shopper marketing.
Neither the terms of the deal, expected to close this month, nor the companies’ sales were disclosed. But RichRelevance said the combined companies will serve 10 of the 25 biggest retailers on the web, also including Sears. The company also said its Shopping Media platform serves personalized recommendations and advertising with more than 1.4 billion page views monthly and has delivered more than $3 billion in attributable sales for retail clients since its launch a year ago.
The deal combines companies in two of the fastest-growing segments of media and marketing in recent years: digital and shopper marketing.
RichRelevance’s VP for UK and Europe, Darren Hitchcock, is quoted in the “What the Experts Say” section of Internet Retailing’s supplement entitled “Digital Technologies, Analogue World.”
“Merchandising has an aspect of being about what the customer wants, but searchandising is often driven by metrics when it should be based on what is best or new or most appropriate for that customer.
Read Internet Retailing “Digital Technologies, Analogue Word” article
RichRelevance Chief Marketing Officer, Diane Kegley, is quoted in the “What the Experts Say” section of Internet Retailing’s supplement entitled “Searchandising & Recommendation”
“The three ways shoppers navigate online retail today are browsing the hierarchical categories, using the search box or discovering new products through personalised product recommendations. At this point in the purchase journey, the shopper is deeply involved in the process and very open to helpful suggestions. Increasingly online retailers are maximising the powerful moment by using algorithms that will present product recommendations that fit with the wider merchandising strategy, are highly likely to convert, and will drive sales.” – Diane Kegley, Chief Marketing Officer, RichRelevance
Read Internet Retail “Searchandising & Recommendation Supplement” article