Appliance Retailer Closes the Empathy Gap and Increases Order Rate 16%

Overview

A large appliance retailer wanted to improve their digital experience and better align it with customer expectations.

Challenge

The company reached out to Blast because they were concerned their digital experience was not meeting customer expectations and as a result, having a negative impact on transactions (order rate). From our analysis, we found that the largest point of friction occurred because visitors were not asked to enter their zip code until they reached a product detail page. The significance of this user experience was that oftentimes the real price and location of the product changed from what was initially advertised on the product listing page. This risked causing confusion around pricing, location, and inflated shipping costs.

For example, if a user was looking for the least expensive refrigerator within a 20-mile radius of their zip code, initial search results would show the lowest price refrigerator, regardless of location. This was not clear to customers, and shipping costs increased substantially outside of a 75-mile delivery radius.

Solution

While the company embraced a data-driven strategy by consistently analyzing quantitative data to better understand the digital experience, a core aspect of this strategy was missing: the Voice of Customer. As part of our collaboration, Blast introduced feedback polls and customer satisfaction surveys to give the customers a say about what was and wasn’t working for them. Doing so uncovered valuable insights for the retailer.

The most significant learning centered around the company’s strategy for showing products on the product listing page, which focused on showing the “lowest” priced products, regardless of location. However, the Voice of Customer feedback clearly showed that this approach was not meeting expectations. In fact, poll results overwhelmingly showed that visitors ranked location as a higher priority over price of the product.

Based on these customer insights, Blast provided a number of recommendations to evolve the retailer’s digital experience, including recommendations to detect the user’s location earlier on in the customer journey, prioritize local inventory, and incorporate visual cues to highlight the “local” messaging on the product listing page.

Results

After the retailer implemented our recommendations, we conducted several follow-up feedback polls to determine if the digital experience performed better in meeting visitor expectations. The customer feedback revealed that not only were expectations being met, there was a 55% decrease in friction on the product listing page and a 73% increase in pricing clarity.

From the outset of our collaboration, the retailer understood that it was important to close the empathy gap because of the real impact it can have on bottom-line key performance indicators (KPIs). In this case, a follow-up analysis revealed that, by leveraging Voice of Customer feedback to drive improvements to the digital experience, the retailer benefited with a 16% increase in order rate.