After months of uncertainty, rollercoaster sales and seismic shifts in consumer buying behaviour, it’s time to focus on the annual retail sales fest – peak trading.
With the pandemic having driven many shoppers to online, this may very well be a “step shift” in retail sales. A new group of shoppers are more comfortable purchasing online—driven to do so out of necessity. These new online shoppers are likely to continue to do so—now out of preference.
Join the Lucidworks retail team and learn 5 things retail brands are doing now to maximise peak trading performance in the shadow of the pandemic.
[2024]Digital Global Overview Report 2024 Meltwater.pdf
Preparing for Peak: Are You Ready?
1. 1
Preparing for Peak Trading
H O W T O P R E PA R E F O R T H E M O S T C R I T I C A L
T I M E O F T H E Y E A R
Tuesday, August 11, 2020
Peter Curran – Peter.Curran@lucidworks.com
Garrett Schwegler Garrett.Schwegler@lucidworks.com
14. 14
• Push the Budget Further
• Leverage Signals and ML
• Reduce Cost per Click
• Drive Higher Intent Traffic
• Improve ROAS
Optimise Search
Engine Marketing
Tail Keyword
• High Rise Yoga Tights
• Yoga leggings with
pockets
• 7/8 stretch leggings
15. 15
Scorecarding
• Manually score top search results, identify
themes, solve for themes, score again
NDCG
• Measure engagement, optimise algorithms,
measure again
Quepid
• Automated evaluations across unlimited
number of queries
Fusion ML Jobs
• Automatically analyse and improve and in
real time
Tune the
Search Engine
19. 19
Learn More
R E A D T H E B L O G S
When In-Person Shopping Isn’t an Option
H T T P S : / / L U C I D W O R K S . C O M / P O S T/A C T I O N A B L E - E C O M M E R C E - M E T R I C S /
Building a Strategy for Retail: Navigating the Next 12 Months
H T T P S : / / L U C I D W O R K S . C O M / P O S T/ C O V I D - R E TA I L - S T R AT E G Y/
Strategic Ecommerce Initiatives Apparel Companies Should Implement for the Holiday Rush
H T T P S : / / L U C I D W O R K S . C O M / P O S T/ S T R AT E G I C - E C O M M E R C E - I N I T I AT I V E S - H O L I D AY - R U S H /
C O N TA C T U S : H T T P S : / / L U C I D W O R K S . C O M / C O N TA C T/
Check out these resources to learn more!
Intro – MAX
Thank you for joining us today, my name is Max Childs and I look after Marketing for Lucidworks here in Europe.
In today’s webcast, our speakers will be diving into what to expect from this year’s Peak Trading period and different strategies retailers can employ to improve the customer experience and maximise revenues
Before we get started let’s go over some housekeeping.
Please make sure your volume is turned up to hear the audio from today’s presentation.
If you have any questions during the presentation, we’d love to answer them in the Q&A session at the end. So please feel free to enter any questions you’ve got in the Q&A box on the console.
Please also take a look at the Resources box for links to learn more about actionable strategies for retail. Lastly, today’s presentation will be recorded and the slides and recording will be shared with you after the webinar.
[NEXT SLIDE]
Today’s presenters are Garrett Schwegler, Program Manager, Digital Commerce and Peter Curran, General Manager Digital Commerce - Thank you both for joining us today.
So without further ado I’d like to hand over to Garrett to get us started
[NEXT SLIDE]
Intro –
How retailers are preparing their businesses and website for the peak trading season - especially the critical peak trading season
How to edge out the competition with proven practices to optimise SEM and tune your onsite search
Why delivering your in-store experience online will be more critical than ever and 3 new things you can do to enhance the experience
Lastly, today’s presentation will be recorded and the slides and recording will be sent to you after the webinar.
Address this picture, due to the pandemic… this is not what we are expecting, no chaos, no crowding, no mad dash to the stores.
[NEXT SLIDE]
This will be peak trading this year. We’ll dive into what itll take to be successful in this new environment.
[NEXT SLIDE]
Here is the agenda for today:
[Next Slide]
Lets now talk to what to expect for peak 2020. So far, 2020 has been filled with uncertainty and disruption. However, when it comes to peak 2020…. I don’t feel like the question mark is appropriate… as much as it feels that there is lots of uncertainty… we feel that when it comes to peak and commerce in 2020… one thing is for certain.
This is more like it. Surely, we’ve experienced much uncertainty and disruption. Some retail verticals have been shaken. But this will drive competition and while bricks and mortars have closed and may close again. Media outlets are already saying black Friday panic shopping in stores will likely be dead this year. So… great for commerce, we can expect 2020 peak commerce to really take off.
What have we seen so far?
Regardless of your retail vertical, this dramatic change and disruption creates pressure, increased competition, and opportunities. Supporting a new class of consumers, experiencing persistent Black Friday Traffic, or fighting for every transaction the pressure is on. Whether your vertical has exploded by 2x in sales or taken a 50% hit and is now on the rebound, it is critical to be agile and aggressive in these new times.
[NOTE: Clothing & accessories hardest hit initially, but latest data shows it making a recovery [will update with fresher IMRG data as soon as I can get it!]
Step shifts are the result of events that drive consumers to transition their primary method of shopping from one channel to another. Every year we see this during the peak trading season as shoppers transition from shopping brick and mortars to online shopping. Whether it’s the online specials, convenience, experience, or whatever the reason, shoppers are transitioning to online. This creates a new baseline for the next holiday season, meaning that you now have a much larger group of consumers shopping….. and then load on new traffic on top of that….
This chart is a perfect example of UK peak trading Season Ecommerce sales over the last 5 years, in billions of Euros. You can see each year has this step in sales building on the previous and as a result of converting many shoppers to primarily shop online.
Think about why consumers transition to commerce for peak… Convenience, deals, experience… Think about the shift from covid---- Stores are closed, people are less willing to be in public, you can jump from one store to another at the click of a button… Then consider the previous chart, highlighting the covid impact on sales this year --- it should be of no surprise that there will be a step shift of consumers who transitioned from brick and mortar to commerce….. Which will be compounded onto the 2019 peak step shift.
Needless to say we could have the perfect storm for explosive growth in 2020 peak.
https://www.emarketer.com/chart/233201/uk-holiday-season-retail-ecommerce-sales-2015-2019-billions-of-change-of-total-holiday-season-retail-sales
[Next Slide]
Before we jump in, I just wanted to share this quickly. This is the ecommerce funnel which I’m sure we’ve all seen one iteration of it… which I’m a huge fan of. Amidst all the chaos, don’t forget to organise your strategies around these core capabilities. We’ll generally discuss holiday preparedness in terms of this format.
Where should companies focus their energies for peak prep?
conversational --- is venmo in uk –buy now pay later, after pay, deferred payments (eg Klarna)
Next we’re going to jump into how to level up against your competition for the holidays. This year is no exception and with the expected surge in demand you have to be prepared.
Alright, lets jump into it!
[Next Slide]
This first strategy is something that I’m really excited about. This is a strategy that many of you may be familiar with and maybe you’re doing it today. BUT, its probably a whole lot of manual work. Optimising SEM. When it comes to competing for traffic this strategy will optimise your keyword ad buys from a cost, quality, and operational perspective.
Let me give a quick lay of the land.
One of the components is this Head / Tail query expansion concept… Similar to the moneyball approach. The story about the Oakland A’s and how you shouldn’t invest in the all stars with high home runs stats, but rather the secondary guys who might be better all around, who cost less and as a whole are better than individual key players.
So bringing that back to commerce…
For the chart on the left…
Lets say we are [crate and barrel]…maybe use ‘Next’ as the Uk example - https://www.next.co.uk/search?w=yoga&isort=score&af=#2_1255
We sell fashion What we see in the chart is the concept that head keyword buys, like leggings, is going to be VERY competitive, and therefore expensive. You may be getting the clicks, lots of traffic, however at a pretty penny, and you likely are not getting the conversions youd expect because the actual type of desk the shopper is looking for is not one you carry.… leading to a poor return on Ad spend.
So, instead, lets target the tail keywords. In commerce search we know the tail is expansive and there is higher intent … ALSO there is less frequency, meaning its less competitive. High rise yoga tights, yoga leggings with pocikets, 7/8 stretch leggings, technical performance leggings, The list goes on of tail queries. These kinds of tail queries are going to cost a lot less and drive better quality traffic to your site. I did a fair amount of searching last night for products on your site and there is definitely an opportunity for you to rank by investing in SEM.
That’s the first component. Focus on the tail. In aggregate, its more powerful.
[CLICK] – Component 2 is incorporating fusion:
We can take your search and signals data and plug it into a query expansion model that will take head searches on your site and identify similar queries further down in the tail AND include user signals / interactions with those searches to suggest high engagement tail queries. So, leveraging what your customers are telling us about your pages and products.
The third component is to then plug into your Adwords to output a list of optimized adword bids. From here you can either approve the bids or let the system automatically approve the bids for you. If you are using an agency this will work for them as well.
So this tool will drive lower costs for SEM, higher quality traffic, and can remove the operational burden of optimizing your strategies. If you consider the potential for an extreme amount of online business this year, your budget will get eaten up quickly and not turn out what you were hoping. Now is the time to optimize SEM with Fusion and jumpstart your ROAS.
[Next Slide]
It is incredibly important to tackle issues with your search engine. Aside from a full on replacement ahead of holiday you need to be thinking about how you can tune the platform you have.
Talk to the different kinds of search tuning strategies.
Now when it comes to Fusion, there is still search tuning to get the foundation of relevancy and personalization tuned to the company’s liking… however, from there, the ongoing maintenance is nearly eliminated. Getting away from manually reviewing search logs and making rules one at a time, Fusion has 4 different ML Jobs that will automatically analyse and improve searches in the these contexts – Head / Tail Analysis, Synonyms, Phrase Detection, and Misspellings. This takes the operational weight off the team and puts it onto the machine for continuous improvement.
In parallel to tuning the search engine you should be focusing on these additional components to product findability. We may not have in store shopping this holiday season. Additionally those shoppers who recently switched from brick and mortars to online are going to have very high expectations. Its critical that you capitalise on this new traffic.
Be predictive and suggestive with type ahead. This is your first impression with the shopper. Fusion can make highly personalised and relevant suggestions based on what other shoppers are searching and the index to ensure the shopper always lands on quality and relevant results or specific product pages.
When it comes to search results, with Fusion, at the most basic level, you can boost products based on engagement by other shoppers, whether its clicks, add to basket, and or purchases. You can ALSO boost based on words in the query AND learn from what the specific shopper is clicking on and searching to then influence future searches and browse pages. If the shopper shows a preference to mens products you can boost future gender ambiguous searches by that gender.
Depending on what the shopper is looking for, Fusion can index and trigger different articles of content, whether its buyers guides, how to’s, pros and cons blogs, etc to answer any additional questions the shopper may have throughout the journey.
Recommendations should learn from others as well as the current shopper. Fusion picks up on signals throughout the shopping experience to suggest personalised recommendations. Recommendations should provide both alternative and supplementary products to shoppers on product detail pages. According to Baymard only 42% of the top 50 Ecommerce sites do this. Not only is this a huge value add for the shopping experience but also for business increasing AOV and basket counts.
And what about engaging a shopper to help them find what they are looking for in a conversational manner? Without an employee on the other end? Yes, chatbots enhanced with Fusion can help with product discovery, which takes us to our next topic. Its not just about customer service, its about helping that shopper find what they’re looking for.
Speak to having actual people on to support, for which many inquiries can be handled by a machine.
When using actual people your costs and hours of support become a factor.
If you are using bots, take them to the next level.
Smart Answers leverages everything that makes Fusion great for digital commerce and digital workplace use cases in the Chatbot Experience. It understands intent and NLP, we can index all kinds of data, it understands different feedback mechanisms as signals and will boost and bury responses accordingly.
Smart Answers on Lucidworks Fusion is a question-answering system, powered by deep learning, that drives user engagement for chatbot and virtual assistant (VA) applications. As middleware for those conversational applications, Smart Answers uses rich machine learning, natural language processing, and scalable enterprise search capabilities to extend their intelligence. Smart Answers helps organisations resolve issues more quickly and provide personalized, conversational experiences.
When it comes to closing the deal with the shopper, you have to meet the shopper where they want to be met. And with uncertain times ahead, even regionally, you need to be prepared to fulfill orders in many different ways.
Also, think about past holidays… has your fulfillment times been extended because of bottle-necks at distribution centers? Can you relieve that pressure by brokering orders out to store locations? Should you have stores shipping orders? Offering click and collect? Kerbside pickup? Local delivery? What makes sense for your business? This is critical to get ahead of for obvious reasons…. We need to get the products into the customers hand to recognise the sale.
Get your options sorted out, tested, and be prepared for the rush.
[GARRETT to Forward to next slide as cue for MAX]
[MAX]
Thanks, Garrett. As we near the end of the webinar, thank you to everyone who has submitted questions already. If you haven’t yet, but would like to, there is still time to do so.
Before we get started with the Q&A, if you are interested to know more about the topic, please check out these links to additional resources to help you plan for Peak and learn more about post Covid retail strategies
If you’d like to get in touch with us, please send us a message at lucidworks.com/contact.
[MAX to moderate / ask questions]
Thank you to everyone who has submitted questions for the Q&A.
First up on the questions is…...
[MAX]
Great! Thank you Peter and Garrett for presenting today.
All of the content from today’s presentation will be emailed to you after the webinar. Please feel free to share the content with your colleagues.
If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can reach us at lucidworks.com/contact.
Thanks again for joining, and we hope you enjoy the rest of your day.