We sat down with Sheri Kruzel, Senior Product Manager at Ace & Tate, to find out why she and her team are so excited to get their hands on Contentsquare – the industry-leading experience analytics platform.

About Sheri and her team:

Sheri is responsible for the front-end team, including 4 developers and a UX lead. They’re responsible for website updates and POS, optimizing the conversion funnel, and online sales.

“There have been a lot of ups and downs this year with Covid, but online sales have peaked. This is something we want to continue to keep growing, even when stores are opening up again.”

We asked Sheri, what are your key priorities this year?

“With stores reopening, we want to continue to keep this momentum for online going. To do this, we need to understand user behaviors so we can optimize the journeys that work the best.

With eyewear, it’s a very high-touch product. You want to feel the product, try it on your face, know that the size fits well. There are lots of services you can start to implement like virtual try-on, home-try-on, style advice – but you really need to understand how these work, what the conversion rates are, and new ways to optimize those flows. That’s where Contentsquare comes in.

We know as a company that we need to take an omnichannel approach, as customers getting a prescription is one of the most important parts of the experience. Therefore a key journey we optimize is the eye test booking flow to drive new customers in-store to see an optician. Once they have their prescription we make sure it’s available within their account so making that next purchase online is much easier. Understanding how our customers navigate between channels, and the reasons why, is crucial.”

What challenges are you facing?

“We’ve been relying on Google Analytics, which is a great tool, but comes with its own challenges. Alongside the many hats I wear in my role, I’m also responsible for GA and setting up data layer events, which means knowing beforehand what I want to dig into, setting up those reports, being able to filter them down, and hoping that we’re gathering the right insights.”

Sheri paints us a picture.

“For example, we rebuilt our checkout last year. We have multiple checkouts – regular, home try-on, prescription, and non-prescription. But in GA, that data all gets captured in the regular checkout funnel. 

Segmenting all of those meant I had about 20 segments built in GA to get mobile vs desktop, country, purchase or try-on. This took me about 4 hours a week to pull the data, but it was something I really needed to be on top of, as if anything went wrong in the checkout it could be really detrimental to sales.”

“One of the biggest things we noticed when comparing Contentsquare to competitors, was that they all had the downfall of having to tag everything. With Contentsquare, it’s simple. It’s straight out of the box with one tag, minimal set up, and you’re up and running.”

Who’s going to be using the Contentsquare platform?

“I’m so excited to have data responsibility shared across more people in the team. Product and marketing will definitely be using the customer journey analysis to understand how our landing pages are working, how customers are going through our funnels, and how to optimize our campaigns. 

In GA there is a big learning curve to be able to really dig in and find what you need. With Contentsquare, there’s no getting hung up on where to start. It’s so much simpler and my team feels like they can really achieve something with the data. 

Not only that, the data in Contentsquare is so visual. Yes, other tools have dashboards, but they don’t offer a whole lot more than GA does. But with Contentsquare’s Zoning and Journey Analysis, anyone can grasp what they are showing. No digging, no guessing, just meaningful data.”

Saying goodbye to homepage (and other) debates…

“I’m sure every company everywhere has a similar discussion around their homepage: Should we have a carousel? What content should be there? Should we have more marketing images or conversion-driving content? Should we push people online or to the store?

Before Contentsquare’s Zone-based Heatmaps, we couldn’t definitively say what was working or not. GA can tell us who clicked on what. But what does that tell us? Maybe they were attracted to that image, but it doesn’t indicate the performance of that element. With Contentsquare we can now understand if that click led to conversion, revenue, and the goals that matter to our business. It’s a huge opportunity.”

A little word from us at Contentsquare:

“Ace & Tate has shown impressive growth as a company. I’ve seen the company start in Amsterdam in 2013, and being a customer myself (two pairs at the moment, looking for a third…), I immediately fell in love with the proposition and branding. The experiences I had in-store were always positive and so it’s crucial, now more than ever, that they are able to replicate this experience online. By being one of the early adopters in the Netherlands and taking the step to invest in digital experience analytics, it’s a huge sign to the market.”

• Tjeerd van der Putten, Director Netherlands, Contentsquare

About Contentsquare

We’re on a mission to give every digital team the ability to measure how their actions affect the user experience on their website, mobile sites, and apps. Not just the analysts. Not just some of the time. Not just some of the data.

Our platform tracks billions of digital interactions and turns these behaviors into intelligent recommendations everyone can use to improve digital experiences, grow revenue and fuel innovation. 

About Ace & Tate

Founded in 2013, Ace & Tate is an eyewear brand from Amsterdam, offering thoughtfully-designed frames at transparent prices, from €100 including prescription lenses, and €300 for varifocal. Ace & Tate celebrates bold views by collaborating with and supporting creative, forward-thinking individuals. Through responsible and conscious actions, the brand is on a mission to become an engine for positive change in the industry.

If you ask any of my Contentsquare colleagues how many clients we have going into the new year, most of them will reply, without a second’s hesitation: 600.

And they’re right: we did wrap up 2019 (our most ambitious yet in terms of new business) with a portfolio of 600 leading global brands. 

But because we love numbers so much at Contentsquare — and because it’s almost Valentine’s day — let me share with you a much more exciting number: 12,000.

That’s the number of people behind those 600 logos who use our solution as part of the work they do every day. In other words, 12,000 individual relationships to nurture and sustain, or, if we’re being really ambitious (and we are), 12,000 reasons to keep the spark alive every day. Of course, these are business relationships, but they are still first and foremost human relationships. Some examples:

• We believe in investing in the right match. We only pursue prospects because we know we can provide value to their teams. 
• In 20% of cases, it is our clients who recommend us to others in their network. Who in this world hasn’t met some of their best friends through other friends? 
• “How likely are you to recommend us to your peers, on a scale of 0 to 10?” Ever heard those words before? It’s the famous Net Promoter Score survey question we’re always asking our users to answer, and we’re pleased to say ours hits best in class benchmarks. In other words; what you do matters. Doing what you say you will and becoming someone who can be counted on is what creates strong relationships.

I could keep going, but that is not the point. Let us focus instead on what really is at stake, here: how to create, improve, and renew meaningful engagement for these 12,000 users of our solution. If the answer seems obvious, that’s because it is. Yes, it’s true, for B2B as for B2C, the cornerstone of sustained customer engagement is (drumroll) a good experience — and ideally differentiated, experience.

One of the foundational pillars of a good experience is LISTENING to your customers. (which is an essential element of another one of our core values: Team Spirit). At Contentsquare we make listening to our customers a priority — we are constantly collecting feedback on our product and roadmap through individual or group sessions, we ask our clients what features they want us to prioritize, and we ask them to weigh in on our product positioning strategy. In fact, our clients are involved in every aspect of our growth; from the development of new functionalities to the strategic vision of the company. We believe alignment with our customers is crucial to our innovation agenda and future as a company.

The second pillar is CONNECTING our customers with their peer-based community. The most visible representation of this is our very active client community. Many of our clients will tell you they really enjoy and look forward to these recurring meet-ups and clubs, which are a chance for them to share use cases and best practices, or quiz their peers about the solutions that work for them and the challenges inherent to their industry. 

The last pillar, ENGAGING, is also how we measure the success of our customer experience. Our most engaged clients are true brand ambassadors and sponsors, and you’ll often find them speaking alongside our CX-perts at conferences. They’re very giving of their time, they recommend us to their peers… with enthusiasm.

The last thing I’ll say about customer engagement is that it starts with every team being engaged with customers and their mission to create better experiences for their customers. Whatever our department, country, office, or role, customer experience touches each and every one of us and we all need to be — if not obsessed — deeply committed to delivering excellence in this regard. 

Of course, no one is perfect and it’s important to remember: a good relationship is one that evolves, as each party changes and understands each other better. So yes, we will continue to challenge ourselves to keep listening, keep growing and keep improving to always be the best partner our clients need us to be, and in doing so, to keep the spark alive. 🙂

With love,

Sonia

RSVP at experience@contentsquare.com