How Tangiblee became the right fit for the UK's ShopDirect

Summary

ShopDirect is the UK’s second largest pure-play online retailer with annual sales of almost £1.8 billion. ShopDirect's digital department store brands are Very.co.uk, Littlewoods.com and VeryExclusive.co.uk.

As of 2018, ShopDirect brands receive an average of 1 million website visits every day, with more than 59% of online sales completed on mobile devices.

ShopDirect exists to make good things easily accessible to more people. With a department store range of famous brands, market-leading e-commerce and technology capabilities and unique financial services products offering flexible ways to pay, ShopDirect is well placed to deliver on that promise.

ShopDirect sells more than 1,100 famous brands, including big name labels and its own exclusive brands. The UK-based company has 4 million customers and delivers 48 million products every year.  In addition, ShopDirect's brands pioneered "Click and collect service" - long before Covid-19 demanded it - and delivers to 5,800 stores across the country, increasing ease and convenience for customers.

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Enter Tangiblee

The innovative platform – which has been developed by ShopDirect’s partner Tangiblee, which has operations in the US (Chicago, Illinois, New York, San Diego, California) and in Israel (Tel- Aviv) – helps customers get an accurate perspective of the size of items such as handbags and luggage before they order them.

In ShopDirect’s most recent test (carried out between 1 October 2015 and 2 November 2015), the technology was visible to half of mobile device customers visiting all product pages across purses, handbags and luggage. The platform was not visible to the other half of mobile device customers.

The test found that the technology contributed to a 10.3% and 7.2% increase in net revenue per visitor and customer sales conversion respectively across product pages where the tool featured, compared with those pages where it was not present.

Meanwhile, 17.1% of the customers who saw the size comparison tool used it and interacted with it for an average of 28.6 seconds.

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The trial will begin in ShopDirect’s in-house user experience lab, where the company will learn how customers interact with the platform before testing it across Very.co.uk, VeryExclusive.co.uk and Littlewoods.com.

Having now successfully rolled-out the technology to all visitors to its sites, ShopDirect is working with Tangiblee to trial the latest version of the platform for watches and jewellery.

Jonathan Wall, the former e-Commerce Director at ShopDirect, said:

“We’re committed to working with innovative partners that can make our customer’s online shopping journey the best it can be.”

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Tangiblee's Value

Wall was clear to note that Tangiblee is indeed helping ShopDirect's bottom-line:

“Tangiblee’s technology is helping us do that; giving our customer confidence in the actual size of items before she buys. Our tests indicate the feature can support sales growth.

Eliad Inbar, Co-Founder of Tangiblee, commented: “We are excited to partner with a leading e-commerce retailer such as ShopDirect, thanks to their advanced A/B testing methodology. We were able to rapidly rollout, prove the value of our solution and improve ShopDirect’s bottom line.

“Going forward we are confident that rolling out additional categories will further increase the value we deliver to ShopDirect and its customers.”