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Improving checkout experience with Boden
Leading to 6 times fewer abandonments and 59% faster checkout
Boden is an international fashion retailer that offers high quality clothing and a charming style across its catalogues and the web. Boden has always kept its customers at the heart of its decisions and user testing offers the insight it needs to provide the optimum user journey across its sales platforms and international markets.
What Boden Wanted
- A smooth customer journey from the promotional marketing right through to checkout, however customers choose to make that journey
- To cater for the international differences between markets – particularly Germany, France and the US
- An improved checkout experience
- Recommendations for improvements to the new mobile sites
- To support new design decisions with customer evidence rather than personal opinion
The Work
There are many different routes a Boden customer can take to the final checkout. Email newsletters persuade people to click on to the site, the traditional catalogue lands on the doorstep to flick through with a cup of tea, the website offers the convenience of online shopping and mobile allows for quick shopping on the go. The variety offered by Boden puts it in the enviable position of having a loyal community of customers, but also the difficult position of managing all of these channels for customers in the UK, US, Germany, Austria (and now recently France).
Bunnyfoot performed user testing across all the channels mirroring the way real customers shop with Boden. The emails, catalogues and websites were live versions but we also introduced early prototypes of the mobile websites and interactive prototypes of a checkout overhaul that we designed in close conjunction with Boden using bi-lingual consultants, we tested the customer journey with Boden’s target market in the US, UK, Germany and France.
What Bunnyfoot Delivered
- Improved conversion rates and revenue with over 100 actionable and prioritised recommendations for the email newsletter, catalogues, websites and mobile websites
- 14% increase in click-through rates
- A total redesign of the checkout based on usability best practice. Compared to the current live checkout, the new Bunnyfoot prototype was shown to be 59% quicker, have 6 times fewer abandonments, and is preferred by 80% of customers – it is currently being user tested in international markets prior to implementation
- Resolution of early issues in the design process of the mobile websites
- Insight into the terminology, buying behaviour and cultural needs of German, French and US customers
A heatmap of Boden’s US homepage
The Results
A deeper insight into the differences in culture, language and shopping habits in each country means Boden now translates more than just language for their international sites. Clothing sizes have been localised for the German and Austrian markets to increase the number of orders and reduce the number of returns. The insight went on to create a solid development guide for the French website which launched recently.
Our prioritised list of recommendations gave Boden a basis for multivariate testing (MVT) on the websites and inspiration for new developments. Boden’s customers now have a smoother journey across channels, more intuitive offerings as they browse the website, easier error resolution on forms and improvements to fun features that help customers make outfit decisions. Boden has seen an improvement in conversion rates and revenue as well as a 14% increase in click-through rates on search.
The new checkout has been submitted to further face to face testing and then was benchmarked against the current checkout using remote unmoderated testing. It was found to be 59% quicker to complete, caused six times fewer abandonments, and was preferred by the vast majority of customers (over 80% preferred the new design – this includes current customers accustomed to the current design).
Bunnyfoot continues to test and refine the designs for the mobile and tablet sites and the new checkout experience (currently testing in international markets prior to cross the board implementation).
Boden is also rolling out the changes to their international websites based on our recommendations, verified and optimised using multivariate testing.
Involving customers in the design of our website ensured we met their exact requirements. Performing in-depth international testing helped us deliver experiences tailored to some of the key markets we operate in.
Paul Knutton
Online Project Manager, Boden
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