Business Challenge
Browser injected ads luring shoppers away
While aware of browser-injected ads like popups, video content, and others, in general, Kirkland’s had no way of measuring their impact on its customers or sales.
The contextual nature of the ads and the design seamlessly blending into their product pages made it harder to even spot them. It was only when they were clicked on, that a shopper was taken to another site or a competing online retailer.
After meeting BrandLock, Kirkland’s saw just how many of these ads were being displayed across their site in real-time. They also learned that 11.25% of their traffic was seeing these ads.
Kirkland’s immediately realized that these ads were not targeted at hacking their site but luring their shoppers away from it.
BrandLock solution
Shield removes browser-based ads, eliminating shopper frustrations, and increasing revenue
Kirkland’s agreed to work with BrandLock on a pay-per-performance model, and we started the 12 months of continuous A/B testing with the team. The test was to identify the impact on revenue per session as a result of BrandLock disabling ads on the retail store vs the site visitors that were still exposed to these distractions.
By adding just one line of code to Kirkland’s tag management solution, the A/B test began almost immediately.
The goal was to achieve a 99% confidence level on the data set, using revenue per session as the key metric to measure the performance of BrandLock. The metric was chosen as it has a direct impact on the profit and loss of the business.
The Result
Kirkland’s began the test with a 50-50 traffic split; half being exposed to ads and the other in a protected group where the ads were being disabled by BrandLock’s Shield.
From the second month, BrandLock began protecting 90% of Kirkland’s traffic, leaving 10% to a ‘control group’ where the ads were allowed to run their course.
"While aware of browser-injected ads, I wasn’t exactly sold on their impact on our site. The testing with BrandLock proved otherwise – with overall conversion rates and revenue per session increasing by 11% and 6%, respectively."
Impact
Kirkland’s reduces cart abandonment and increases revenue with Shield
The results of the A/B test seamlessly began to flow into Kirkland’s analytics platform – Adobe, making it easier for the team to monitor the impact of BrandLock.
In the first month, Kirkland’s noticed a +5.3% increase in the overall revenue per session. By the next month, the revenue lift jumped to +11%.
After months of continuous A/B testing with BrandLock, Kirkland’s found that disabling shopper distractions like browser ads could improve the monthly revenue by +5-10%. They also noticed that the shoppers in the protected group were more engaged, with an increase in page views per visit.
With Shield, Kirkland’s achieved:
- 11% Overall site conversion rate lift
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6% Overall site revenue per session lift
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360% Increase in page views per visit
