A recent article in RetailWeek here in UK, “10 Ways to Compete with Amazon” provided wonderful insights as to how retailers can best compete with the “digital Goliath” by leveraging their strengths.
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.
RichRelevance’s personalised recommendations technology pays dividends after helping drive incremental revenue
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