Business Challenge
Kirkland’s Website Faced Revenue Leakage Due to Unauthorized Ads
The VP of digital technology, Jim Richmond, and his eCommerce team at Kirkland’s were aware of the ad injections problem on their website, but the magnitude of the adware problem was unknown.
The contextual nature and design of the ads blended seamlessly with the online store’s experience – especially on the product detail pages.
Visitors could not distinguish these unauthorized ads and clicked on them, redirecting to other competitor websites. Hijacking customer paths resulted in revenue loss and negative brand perception.
BrandLock connected with Kirkland’s and pointed out that this was a customer-side problem. These malicious ads would show up on shoppers’ browsers and the source of browser adware was out of the company’s control.
BrandLock solution
Brandlock Removes Browser Injected Ads and Boosts Conversions
- BrandLock conducted an A/B test to understand the magnitude of the problem. The team realized that 11.25% of Kirkland’s customers were exposed to unwanted ads.
- This also helped the eCommerce team understand the amount of revenue these ads were stealing from their online business.
- BrandLock deployed Shield – a customer journey hijacking solution, to block all existing and emerging threats from the website.
- Kirkland’s eCommerce team could measure the impact of Shield by tracking the conversion rate and other KPIs on their Adobe Analytics dashboard system.
- The website experienced a positive lift in conversion rate and a +5.3% revenue per visitor lift in the first month.
"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 Improves Online Customer Experience
Eliminating unwanted ads resulted in fewer customer frustrations and unlocked additional revenue. This has allowed the eCommerce team to manage their acquisition costs while driving more sales from existing traffic.
- +10.92% conversion rate lift
- +5.79% revenue per session lift
- 360% more page views per visit
Shield’s machine learning capabilities enable BrandLock to identify new ad injections for Kirkland’s and continue to optimize eCommerce conversions at a higher rate.
