Execution

October 2017 to March 2018

The Campaign

We identified the key elements of an e-commerce transaction and consolidated what best practice looked like across each. We then set out to develop a solution to measure how our clients’ brands were performing across these five pillars– Search, Pricing, Assortment, Ratings & Reviews and Content. We created a set of rules for each of these key areas – search visibility, pricing benchmarks, assortment (or in-stock status), the quantity of ratings & minimum acceptable scores, and key content measures (length & inclusions for product titles, descriptions & images) – we then used these rules as a set of binary measures to score and benchmark each product, tracking performance over time. We then created an automated solution to regularly measure each of these metrics -the goal was to provide clients with new insights on how their products were being represented on digital shelves and optimise products for discoverability,conversion & ultimately sales.

Creative Execution

Focusing on top selling products, we developed an online crawler to scrape & extract the data for each SKU from its product page on each retailer. This automated process visited the product URL on every retailer, to capture, consolidate & track performance against the rules created under each element. Prior to establishing the solution, the only way to check these measures was by manually visiting each page. Even then, without the framework in mind, the task had the potential to be inconsistent and subjective. Results were then aggregated and visualized into an easy to read dashboard, providing granular insight for each individual SKU, with data then rolled up into category and retailer level scores, allowing quick & easy identification of content gaps. Rather than spend huge amounts of time collecting and compiling data, the automated process and dashboards allowed the agency to spend time fixing issues, optimizing on-site discoverability and building relationships with key retailers. Insights from digital shelf analytics were now powering results, informing conversations, driving transparency and online sales. The insights we provided empowered the sales & shopper marketing teams to raise informed points and ask questions which positioned them as category leaders with their customers (i.e. retailers).

We have deployed the technology across multiple categories and five retailers so far, as required - currently Coles, Woolworths, Priceline, Chemist Warehouse and Amazon. Our approach has provided unique insight, empowered brands in customer conversations & JBPs, and has been adopted as a global standard. We are currently in the process of scaling the tool to allow easy deployment at scale across markets. SPARC scores have increased significantly across all retailers, up 107% on average across a range of consumer packaged goods clients / categories. By retailer, this equated to between +26 points to +43 points on their scores, and has led to an increase in online sales of between 10-21% YoY across the key Australian retailers. Although we can’t share specific sales data per client, we know across our portfolio that we can drive up to +30% improvement in conversion rates when all five SPARC elements have been optimised.

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