"The biggest barrier to thinking about personalization is a legacy mindset. However, the work we’ve been doing with Qubit makes it real for both our customers and our board. The key has been to keep things simple and build a business case for each and every experience we want to deploy. Qubit has, and will remain, a core component of our entire digital strategy as the business grows and scales."
Topman pioneering customer experience in retail
Simplicity is key to delivering effective personalization strategies
Founded in 1978
400+ Stores globally
Countries
Introduction
Topman, a British men’s retailer operated by the Arcadia Group, has been pursuing a personalization strategy for many years.
Leveraging the Qubit platform, the company have been able to build, deploy and create personalized customer journeys that increase loyalty and welcome new visitors to the website. Simplicity is a priority for Topman.
By bringing data from many different parts of the business together in the Qubit platform, the ecommerce team have been able to deliver a personalization program at scale that drives revenues.
Personalizing pricing for students
Challenge
One of Topman’s most important demographics are students, who get a 10% discount. The ecommerce team wanted to make this offer more obvious to students shopping online.
Solution
The team made the student offer clear with a ‘Student Prices’ toggle in the website header block. When selected, the student price would immediately appear underneath the product without the page reloading.
The experience appears on both the product listing page and the product detail page.
Result
The experience contributes to driving sales with students which at peak hit 50% of sales in the UK.
Geo-based social proof
Challenge
By analyzing their data, Topman recognized that certain products were performing better in certain geographies. To capitalize on this, the company wanted to surface the most relevant products based on a visitor’s location.
Solution
By using IP address data, Topman could identify visitors’ locations. Based on this, the product listing page then prioritizes products from categories popular with people from that location.
For example, in the US, Topman targeted their top 5 cities - New York, LA, Atlanta, Houston and Chicago. A carousel was created showing the top added to bag products in the last 24hrs.
Social proof on product listing and product detail pages
Challenge
Social proof has proven to be one of the most persuasive personalization techniques. Topman wanted to surface social proof messaging across the website to drive sales and increase conversion.
Solution
On the product listing page they showed the message ‘Hurry, Selling Fast!’ and another message on the product detail page, encouraging visitors not to ‘miss out’ on the selected product.
Result
3.27% RPV uplift
"With Qubit we’ve been able to bring multiple datasets together and understand the current trends of our customer base. Armed with that knowledge we’ve been able to deliver persuasive personalization at scale to drive sales across the business. So much so that personalization, and the technology used to deliver these initiatives, is spoken about at a board level such is the importance of being customer centric to both Topman and the rest of the Arcadia Group."
Gareth Rees-John
Digital Director
Looking ahead
Topman have already created a culture of putting the customer first in everything they do, leveraging the trending data at their fingertips to understand and then influence each customer segment throughout the visitor journey.
The company, and ecommerce team, will continue to be guided by the data, always looking for ways to improve the customer experience and understand how both new and existing customers engage with their brand.
