Case Crocs: one hundred million sales optimization. Part 1

    The Crocs brand is one of the most famous shoe manufacturers in the world; crocuses are worn all over the world. In 2011, our team began work on a project related to the development, launch and optimization of the sales process for Crocs. And already in 2012 Crocs decided to significantly expand the e-commerce line, which included the completion and launch of new online stores in new geographical locations.

    Most of Crocs' existing resources were developed on the Demandware e-commerce platform, so it was decided to continue working and develop the e-commerce line on this platform. Our tasks included launching new sites on Demandware for Brazil and Japan, and a separate CrocsAroundTheWorld resource dedicated to the company's tenth anniversary, redesigning, updating and optimizing certain elements of existing resources, as well as optimizing the checkout to increase conversion on Crocs sites, which will be discussed in article.


    Introduction
    As we wrote in our previous publicationEffective design solutions allow you to increase conversion and optimize sales in e-commerce projects. At the same time, changes in design are carried out on the basis of tests aimed at improving usability, allowing you to increase the conversion for each individual resource. It is worth remembering that in any e-commerce project effective solutions cannot be guessed - they should be based on an objective assessment obtained in the course of comprehensive quantitative and qualitative tests.

    When it comes to finding solutions to increase conversion, several types of tests are usually used, the most popular of them are A / B testing and multivariate testing. Usually, in e-commerce applications, the purpose of their implementation is to identify optimal solutions to increase conversion or optimize the cost of online promotion. Consider these two types of testing in more detail:

    A / B testing
    The meaning of A / B testing is to change one element of a page or banner and the subsequent analysis of two versions (before and after the change) in terms of conversion. Consider a simplified example:



    Both pictures were used by us in promoting our activity in the popular social network. One from the other differed only in a green frame around the perimeter. At first glance - a slight change, but the test showed that the option with the frame is two times more effective than without it. It is not possible to foresee such a difference in each individual case, but A / B testing puts everything in its place. This is a relatively simple and at the same time effective tool for optimization in case of e-commerce applications. But what if there are a lot of variables, if you need to test several elements and several configurations at the same time? In this case, multivariate testing is usually used.

    Multivariate testing
    Multivariate testing allows you to simultaneously test multiple site configurations. In fact, multivariate testing is a parallel implementation of several A / B tests. In operations with a large number of orders at the global level, optimization as a result of such testing becomes crucial. Here it should be noted that in e-commerce optimization is most critical for the ordering process (checkout), which directly affects the conversion and, as a result, the profitability of the project.

    Implementation of checkout optimization for Crocs
    While working on the checkout, our team was faced with the problem of the large amount of required resources associated with changes and optimizations in this section. The problem was that for different countries it was necessary to implement a completely different set of form fields and completely different logic for the behavior of the checkout steps, at the same time considering the possibility of testing to optimize the conversion. The task was also complicated by the fact that in standard cartridges of the Demandware platform, including SiteGenesis - the basic version, on the basis of which customization is usually performed for different clients - the logic of this section is implemented “tightly”. Each time, adding a site for a new country, it was necessary to expand the basic functionality. As a result, the checkout logic has become too complicated to understand, and expanding it further has become virtually impossible.

    In the case of Crocs, specially for the Demandware platform, we developed and proposed a new architecture that allowed us to achieve an increased level of abstraction and present each checkout step as a “container”, the behavior of which, including the sequence of checkout steps, was determined by the configuration file, and the filling could be easily adjusted by arranging the elements of the forms in random order. To implement the project, extensive optimization of the existing code should have been carried out. Crocs agreed to this, understanding that the new architecture will subsequently significantly save resources to support the existing and develop new checkout functionality, as well as effectively optimize and test to increase conversion.

    As we already mentioned in our previous publications, design and development should go hand in hand to effectively increase conversions on an e-commerce site. In parallel with the development team, UX designers developed many prototypes and made a lot of recommendations for a significant improvement in the usability of Crocs sites. Our team of Digital Factors designers used the development of Engage UX, a utility for prototyping online resources, built on the principles of CWE (collective work environment), which allows our customers to express wishes and comments on functional elements and design in the early stages of project development.

    The combination of these factors directly affects the conversion, and, as a result, the financial success of each individual project. In the next post, we will examine in detail the organization of a framework for automated regression testing, the key technologies and the implementation of the code itself, which allowed us to help Crocs achieve its sales goals.

    Authors:
    Konstantin Tishchenko
    Vitaliy Taradaiko
    Alexander Mamalyga

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