The company
The Brands for Less (BFL) Group is one of the fastest-growing off-price retailers of fashion and homeware in the Gulf (GCC) region. Based in the United Arab Emirates, it serves over seven markets across the Middle East and Europe.
BFL’s most recent expansion strategy milestone was launching multiple stores across The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), a brand new territory for the group.
The challenge
Entering a new market with minimal brand recognition is no easy feat—particularly when that market is as rapidly evolving as Saudi’s. For BFL, it has been an ongoing learning process.
“We can't just copy-paste what we do in other markets,” says Mohammed Zeeshan, User Experience Manager at BFL Group. “Instead, we're trying to adapt to the way users in Saudi navigate on the website and app, which is completely different compared to other regions we operate in.”
BFL needed to understand the behavior and ever-changing needs of its Saudi customers in order to optimize its app and website user experience and support the most crucial part of its expansion plan: increasing its conversion rate.
And to do all that, the company needed an analytics upgrade.
While looking for ways to improve conversion rate and reduce costs, we noticed our data was disconnected. We quickly realized that Contentsquare would provide us with the insights we needed.
The solution
Before using Contentsquare, BFL’s UX team relied on data taken from disparate analytics tools (including Google Analytics and Heatmaps) for insights into user behavior.
This scattered, disjointed data gave them only a partial picture of their user journeys, making it difficult to confidently action insights.
“Without a complete overview of our user behavior, it was very hard to make UX changes,” says Mohammed. “But with Contentsquare, we get the full picture of how our consumers are using our site and app, and we don't have to toggle between different analytical tools.”
Crucially for BFL, the data provided by Contentsquare’s Digital Experience Analytics (DXA) platform is not just comprehensive, but real-time. “As an off-price retailer, our products don't live long on our site, so we need real-time data to make changes quickly,” says Mohammed.
We use Contentsquare daily to monitor asset performance and make changes to our site. It would be challenging if we were completely dependent on Google Analytics or any other analytical tool.
Optimizing Product Description Pages (PDPs) for mobile user journeys
While analyzing using Journey Analysis, BFL’s UX team noticed a high bounce rate for mobile users on their PDPs. Users were searching on Google for specific products (such as Adidas shoes), landing on BFL’s PDPs—and bouncing immediately.
The team realized that this was due to BFL’s products not living on the site for long.
“We use our PDPs on Google Ads but because of our business model, we tend to sell out of sizes quickly,” explains Mohammed. “So, by the time users land on the product page, it’s likely that the product is out of stock.”
Further analysis revealed that users were more likely to convert if they visited another product page directly after landing on the PDP.
“Our analysis showed that if we get users to click other products, we’ll get more page views and better conversions,” said Mohammed.
To encourage users to continue their journey on the site, the team introduced a ‘Shop Similar Styles’ section, using its product recommendation engine widget, which shows users similar items they might be interested in buying.
Adding this section has helped BFL reduce PDP bounce rates by -2.18% and exit rates by -9.41%. Conversion rates have also increased by +6.51% for mobile users landing on the PDP.
Furthermore, using Impact Quantification the UX team estimated that the new section increased its annual revenue by a projected +377K AED (+102K USD).
Contentsquare has helped us get a deeper picture of what’s happening on our website and app, and how our customers interact with us. We now have a better understanding of how we can guide them.
The results
By leveraging Contentsquare, BFL is able to get a full picture of its user behavior across markets, easily measure the impact of its optimizations, and enrich other features (such as its product recommendation engine) that run on its app and website.
Contentsquare is a great platform for us because, while we're good at bringing in traffic, converting that traffic has been a pain point. Contentsquare plays a crucial part in our digital strategy, providing us with invaluable insight that helps us optimize for conversions.
What's next
The BFL UX team are Contentsquare power users—the platform is an integral part of their daily work and they provide actionable insights to other teams, like merchandising and marketing.
In fact, Mohammed and Anjali are both Contentsquare Quarterly Champions, which means they’re among the top 250 most active users across the globe.
“We’re trying to be more agile with how we work with data and how we can use Contentsquare for experimentation and A/B testing for example,” says Mohammed.
BFL also plans to onboard the Contentsquare platform across all its digital teams so that everyone has access to the same real-time behavioral insights.
