Amplifying A Fortune 500 Retailer's In-Store Mobile Experience
The problems
Big box retailers such as Target have a unique challenge in that they must balance the needs of the customer with the enterprise's ability to replicate their in-store experience globally across thousands of stores. Customers must feel welcome in the store and have the ability to get their products as soon as possible and enterprise must be assured that they are making the most of its resources in a profitable manner when scaling solutions across thousands of locations globally. In order to accomplish these goals, a big box retailer's design should focus on the navigation of the store, the experience of the customers, and the ability to upsell and retain existing customers.
Customer Retention
Retaining existing customers is crucial to ensuring the long-term stability of the store. The retailer must focus on the customers that are likely to be repeat customers. These customers should be able to find products easily, experience a comfortable environment, and have a good reason to return to the retailer.
Navigation
The greatest point of weakness in a Big Box retailer's design is generally the navigation of the store. Customers must be able to easily navigate the store in order to find the products they are looking for. While this problem is not unique to big box retailers, enterprises such as Target that have massive stores tend to suffer greatly from this challenge. In-store layout and organization of aisles can help; however, that solution is limited when there are aisles as far as the eye can see.
In-Store Experience
The in-store experience determines the customer's overall feeling about the retailer. The experience of the customer can affect the customer's likelihood to return to the store and the customer's willingness to recommend the store to others. The retailer must focus on creating an experience that is enjoyable for the customer while they navigate the aisles all the way to checkout.
Upselling
Upselling other products allows the store to profit from customers who buy items that would otherwise be sold on much lower margins than the operating cost of the store. Profitability of merchandise within a big box retailer varies wildly. For example, groceries are not as profitable as selling household goods. The key to profitability here is to find a way to upsell more profitable goods and services to users who only came to purchase things like groceries.
The Solutions
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Introducing: Favorites and Predictive Products
One of the key areas where Target could upsell additional products based on in-store engagement was within their mobile app. Since the mobile application is already used by a plurality of their users, the key was figuring out how to engage with them in a way that provided them with the products they want. Wyrmix was hired on as a part of the "path to purchase" team where we built a feature called "Crush" designed to give users the ability to favorite items. Under the hood, it did much more. We were able to track their in-store behavior, favorited items, viewed products, and more to recommend more personalized products to the user. Then, when searching for products in the future the app would use AI to predict the products the user was most likely to purchase and display them as a part of an upsell call to action.
Problems Addressed
Customer Retention
Upselling
Notable Features
Store-Aware Search
The user can search for products and GPS information is used to identify your current store so you only see results for the store you're currently in.
Favoriting Products
The user can then favorite a product they love, this adds it to a favorites list tied to the user account related to that store.
Upsell AI Trained Model
Depending on how the user interacts with certain products such as favoriting, viewing, searching, what store they're in, and more an AI model is trained pertaining to that specific user to recommend them products they are most likely to purchase.
Constant Improvement Over Time
Cross training the model across users in conjunction with the specific user interactions leads to improved product recommendations overtime. The mobile experience takes a personal approach to upselling products.
Store-Aware Search
The user can search for products and GPS information is used to identify your current store so you only see results for the store you're currently in.
Favoriting Products
The user can then favorite a product they love, this adds it to a favorites list tied to the user account related to that store.
Upsell AI Trained Model
Depending on how the user interacts with certain products such as favoriting, viewing, searching, what store they're in, and more an AI model is trained pertaining to that specific user to recommend them products they are most likely to purchase.
Constant Improvement Over Time
Cross training the model across users in conjunction with the specific user interactions leads to improved product recommendations overtime. The mobile experience takes a personal approach to upselling products.
THE RESULTS
The Crush feature was a resounding success. Predictive products resulted in year over year increased growth and accelerated customer loyalty and re-engagement through mobile upselling for highly personalized products.
