Ocado delivers
fresh experiences

World’s largest online grocery retailer increases conversions and average order value
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Ocado case study header image
8x
Increase in conversion rate from recommendations served by Dynamic Yield
20%
Uplift in baskets of more than £75 due to personalized messaging on homepage, basket page, and checkout
54%
Boost in CTR achieved by personalizing homepage with messaging based on traffic source as well as personalized product recommendations

Introduction

Ocado, the world’s largest online grocery, operates three marquis brands in addition to their flagship supermarket. To boost conversion rate and average order values across Fetch, Fabled and Sizzle, Ocado used Dynamic Yield to personalize recommendations and send individualized messaging based on user behavior. Ultimately, the retailer drove 8X more conversions from recommendations while also boosting high-value orders by more than 20%!

Ocado logo

Dynamic Yield has made our marketing team a lean, mean machine, allowing us to seamlessly test and deploy unique variations and strategies. We can quickly analyze our data in real-time and craft experiences that significantly improve our core KPIs.

Leonie Tamkin, Digital Marketing Manager

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The Challenge

Across its portfolio of lifestyle brands, Ocado oversees a vast product set targeted towards a plethora of consumer profiles.

To delight and monetize all of these personas, Ocado required a solution to

  • Test recommendations strategies on product pages to drive more conversions
  • Encourage serendipity by exposing users to more relevant items
  • Increase average order value across its properties
  • Boost conversion rates from different traffic sources
That’s when they turned to Dynamic Yield to craft individualized experiences.

Execution

Tailored recommendation strategies for different stages of the buyer journey
To ensure that each visitor received the most relevant recommendations, Ocado used Dynamic Yield to adjust the recommendations strategy based on stage of the buyer journey. For example, visitors to product pages received personalized recommendations or similar items to optimize for conversions while recommendations in the basket focused on items commonly bought together.

PDP recommendations in particular demonstrated a massive uplift, delivering 8X more conversions than a control group in which no recommendations were shown. The Homepage recommendations in which Ocado tests “Free Gift” recommendations vs. “Newest is” has demonstrated a 54% uplift in CTR.
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Personalized site-wide “Skinny Banner” based on page and customer status
In order to immediately engage visitors and drive customer awareness to its strongest value propositions, Ocado launched a site-wide skinny banner highligtinging three key messages, chosen dynamically out of eight different variations based on the customer’s status and stage of the journey. For example, new customers were shown a first-time purchase promotion, while returning visitors received price matching and next-day delivery messaging. In addition, the skinny banner background adapted to the pagetype in order to re-engage customers.
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Served contextual messages and offers to boost basket size
Once again, Ocado leveraged personalization centered around a user’s stage in the buyer journey via behavioral messaging served by Dynamic Yield.

When a user first arrived on site, an overlay informed her that she would receive a £10 voucher if she spent £75 or more. As she navigated the site, various versions of that message would appear based on items in cart and onsite behavior. The highly targeted nudges paid off, resulting in 20% more baskets stocked with more than £75 of merchandise.
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Automated product badging with “Price Match” roundals
To support the guaranteed price-match promotion at Fabled, the Ocado team had to manually update all relevant product images with a price-match indicator. Opting to automate this manual effort, Ocado put Dynamic Yield’s badging engine to work, ensuring relevant products were automatically identified and badged with the appropriate “roundal.”
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Introduced Social Proof messaging to all product pages
Since the cosmetics industry is highly competitive and driven by inspirational trend setters, Ocado launched Social Proof messaging to allow customers to see the most popular items on the website.

After launching Dynamic Yield’s real-time social proof capabilities, which highlights the number of views and purchases every high-demand product elicits, Ocado saw a 9.8% uplift in revenue per user.
Triggered Basket-Abandonment Emails to reclaim lost purchases
Ocado leveraged Dynamic Yield’s triggers engine to automatically email customers who added items to their cart but abandoned the website before completing a purchase. Each triggered email contained information about the products left behind, as well recommendations for products that would go well together with the abandoned items. Furthermore, Ocado employed Dynamic Yield’s testing engine to establish the best performing email subject line – the winner of which turned out to be “Missing Something?” as opposed to “You left something behind.”
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The Key Takeaway

To maximize potential to improve top-line growth, a successful personalization strategy must focus on delivering experiences in the context of where a shopper stands on the path to purchase. By basing personalization around a user’s stage in the buyer journey and real-time intent signals, Ocado was able to boost both conversion rates and average order values of customers already on the path to purchase. The result? Happier shoppers leaving with heftier baskets.

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