Case Study
Vintage Cellars Improves Checkout Experience With Banner Test
Vintage Cellars is under the Coles Liquor division of Coles Group, one of Australia’s largest and most iconic retailers. The brand has over 80 stores across Australia as well as one of the country’s largest loyalty programs. In addition to their brick-and-mortar business, Vintage Cellars’ online store offers various delivery options and a buy online, pickup in-store option. Vintage Cellars’ online business is a key part of its success, and their team has used SiteSpect for testing and optimization since 2019 for both client-side and server-side testing.
Account History
Vintage Cellars’ optimization team includes developers, members of their Online Business team, and members of their IT team, but the group dedicated to optimization is lean. One of the major reasons Coles Liquor chose SiteSpect was the level of expert professional services and partnership provided to clients. The Vintage Cellars team works closely with their SiteSpect dedicated Customer Success team, which is made up of both Optimization Consultants and Solutions Developers, who are integrated into Vintage Cellars’ optimization team and workflow.
Due to COVID-19, Vintage Cellars saw a huge spike in website traffic and increased demand from customers to purchase liquor online. To adapt quickly, better optimize this peak traffic, and make it easier for customers to shop the range, they needed to scale the volume and velocity of their experimentation program. However, this also caused their e-commerce and development resources to be dedicated to other time-sensitive priorities.
Defining Peak Performance with SiteSpect Professional Services
In partnership with Vintage Cellars, the SiteSpect professional services team developed a custom Peak Performance Program, which included identifying high-potential areas of the digital experience; analysis of past experiments and existing data; prioritization, and road mapping to create a quarterly optimization strategy; design and development of campaigns; and analysis and reporting.
Says Coles Liquor’s Conversion Optimisation Manager, “This program has allowed Vintage Cellars and Coles Liquor to reach their defined business goals and accelerate online revenue growth with SiteSpect as an integrated part of their team. “SiteSpect has been an invaluable tool in determining where to focus our efforts, by allowing us to test a multitude of concepts at a high pace, with a clear view of what works and what doesn’t. This has made it simpler for us to manage our pipeline of work and keep our teams focused and working with efficiency on enhancements that we know will make a difference.”
Clearly Communicating Delivery Options
As part of their Peak Performance Program optimization roadmap, Vintage Cellars identified that two benefits of their online store were under-utilized — free standard shipping on orders over $150 and “Click & Collect,” a service where customers can place an order online and pick it up at their local store in 60 minutes. Because they offer opportunities for cost and time savings, the team hypothesized that promoting their free shipping threshold and delivery and pickup options more prominently would increase conversions.
The Vintage Cellars team implemented a banner below the top navigation displaying their free shipping threshold, delivery options, and the Click & Collect option. This location on their site meant the banner was displayed above the fold on both desktop and mobile devices.
In the past when Vintage Cellars tried to test above-the-fold elements with other optimization solutions, they experienced flicker (where a webpage loads and then quickly changes the content to display something new). The website is also built on a React SPA (Single Page Application framework), which is often problematic with tag-based client-side tools for various reasons. SiteSpect solves these issues with its patented reverse-proxy architecture. Rather than replacing an experience after it reaches the user’s browser, SiteSpect modifies the experience on its way to the browser as well as offers a unique SPA framework for client-side variations without having to manage any 3rd party client-side SDK or code. This means they were able to test this banner with better speed, accuracy, and flexibility, and maintain an excellent experience and clear data while ensuring no flicker, delays in page load time, SEO issues or collateral impact to the user experience.
To implement this campaign, the Vintage Cellars team used a combination of client-side factors and the Find and Replace feature within the SiteSpect platform. With Find and Replace, the user indicates which area of the page they want to replace and what they want to replace it with. In this case, the team applied the variation to their header. This is a perfect example of how the SiteSpect platform has the unique flexibility to mix and match multiple test types in a single variation group and campaign.
Results
The test ran for several months to 100% of traffic on mobile and desktop. The banner set clear expectations around delivery options and created a more efficient checkout experience for Vintage Cellars’ customers. The campaign was a success for the Vintage Cellars team, resulting in a 7.6% lift in conversions.
