Case Study

Sun & Ski Sports Optimizes Product Recommendations

Sun-Ski-Sports-Logo

 

Founded
1980

Industry
Outdoor Gear & Clothing

Headquarters
Woburn, MA

Retail Locations
30 Store Locations


About Sun & Ski Sports

One of the largest specialty outdoor retailers in America, Sun & Ski Sports is inspiring you to let adventure into your life confidently through exceptional customer service, first-hand expertise, and competitively priced brands ready to perform for any journey – to be where you live and play. Their trademark experience has placed the company at the top of specialty outdoor retailers in America.

Sun & Ski Sports has grown to include 30 stores in 12 states across the country, including sunandski.com, yet still manages to provide that small store feel with big store competitive pricing. They specialize in equipment, apparel, footwear, and accessories to enhance their customer’s active lifestyles and year-round activities including ski, snowboard, bike, run, swim, and more. They deliver a small store feel with big store competitive pricing with a vision to be where their customers live and play. Their unique model is based on localization, specializing in regional inventory depending on the climate and popular activities, as well as a thriving rental business.

The Digital Merchandising team at Sun & Ski Sports set out to optimize their product recommendations in two phases: First, they compared SiteSpect product recommendations against their existing product recommendations provider. Next, they compared two variations of SiteSpect product recommendations.

Optimizing Product Recommendation Placement

Once Sun & Ski Sports signed on with SiteSpect, they gained the ability to test and optimize their existing product recommendations platform. Because SiteSpect can integrate with virtually any other tool, they were able to track their existing product recommendations provider metrics side-by-side with their SiteSpect product recommendations metrics. Their first step was to identify the impact of where they placed recommendations, using both SiteSpect and their existing product recommendations provider. This allowed the team to learn about the relative effectiveness of different recommendation placements and refine the recommendation strategy.
The brand compared the following placements and algorithms:

  • Home Page, Personalized
  • Category Pages, Personalized
  • Add to Cart Modal, Complementary
  • Cart Page, Complementary
  • Product Detail Page, People Also Like

This test ran during Black Friday and Cyber Week, which also saw an increase from normal traffic levels. This allowed Sun & Ski Sports to release the test to 20% of traffic, with that percentage split evenly between SiteSpect and their existing product recommendations provider.
Results showed that the Product Detail Page saw 59% of all recommendation clicks, followed by Category pages and the Add to Cart Modal.

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