Customer Spotlight | Bathroom Takeaway

With the rise of Siri and Alexa, it comes as no surprise that shoppers are using voice assistants instead of traditional search engines. EMEA Marketing Manager, Amy Marks caught up with Bathroom Takeaway’s UX and CRO Manager, Mark Harding, to see how voice and search are being used to deliver an exceptional shopping experience online. 

Hi Mark, thanks for joining us. Please tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Bathroom Takeaway?

I’m the Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) User Experience (UX) Manager at Bathroom Takeaway and have many moons of experience working with digital agencies and client-side. My role is to analyse the whole user journey on the Bathroom Takeaway website, with the aim to optimise day-to-day use, help ease UX and drive better conversions. I’d say that I’m extremely enthusiastic about UX/UI and how that impacts on CRO/CX.

What was going on in your world, that caused you to look for a solution like Klevu?

We had a terrible website with terrible search functionality. We approached an agency who helped us rebuild the front end of our website and off the back of that, they mentioned a few different on-site search companies. One was Klevu, so we decided to test it. I know quite a few people with conversion agencies in town. We did an experiment, and as favour had people looking at it, using eye-tracking and biometric technologies. Like a polygraph to measure stress levels, happiness, all through facial expressions. We found on our old site, that our search was absolutely diabolical- to the point where no one could actually find what they were looking for and it was redundant really. Klevu came across as quite innovative in capability and in terms of what they were bringing to the market compared to other search partnerships. We did our own bit of research and decided upon you guys.

What is the No.1 thing you most want to accomplish with Klevu?

Getting the right results from searches? Is that one? I want my search tool to find the right products! Minimal impact effort for the user. And more conversions through the search of course.

How do you use Klevu?

We use Klevu as an on-site search tool on all of our websites. We use it predominantly for the search and the results because obviously, it is better than what we had, which was the standard Magento search functionality. 

We use Klevu to promote promotions and cross-selling, in terms of banner advertising for our Marketing campaigns. Klevu also serves our trade and sales teams to find trends and plan for the future. For example, in our industry, there are particular brands which people like and we have been able to identify brands which people are searching for on our website which we have never sold before. As a result of that, we have been trialling and selling new brand names, 

Hopefully, we are utilising Klevu in the way that we should be-  searching for the product, helping the usability which is really essential; using it for marketing and data research for our trading teams to look at and analyze what people are searching for because we find trends as well. For example, during Winter people search for, believe it or not, “heating”, forget our bathroom ranges, it is more the case of our radiators and heated towel rails that people are interested in. I don’t just mean the odd, 10 or so differences in searches, I am talking hundreds, in some cases, depending on the month and the seasons. Klevu’s machine learning helps us adapt our product offering within search based on popular searches and bestsellers, which really helps with us reduce the manual time doing it ourselves. 

You recently launched Voice Search on Bathroom Takeaway, how does that work?

Within our search bar across all devices, we designed and implemented a microphone icon embedding it next to the magnifying glass. So, all the user needs to do is simply click or tap the icon and they can start searching by voice when using a Google Chrome browser.

In terms of functionality and integration, it uses the same Klevu config and therefore there wasn’t anything extra we needed to do in respect to setting it up within Magento (Simples!). All we needed to do was to design and implement CSS within our search, adding an icon for a microphone and call the relevant Klevu script.

Why did you want Voice Search on the website?

We wanted to enable voice search as part of our digital growth strategy and the fact that we’re wanting to lead and innovate our sector too. Being one of the first in the UK bathroom sector to utilise voice search shows innovation and it’s awesome! 

In an evolving digital era where you can order from JustEat or an Uber using just voice technology, it only seems right that you can search for bathroom products or any product in the same way.

How does it benefit the customer and the retailer?

I suppose for our shoppers it gives them the option to use voice search. The main benefit that we have seen is that our customers tend to use voice search when they need something specific and immediate.  

Surprisingly for me, the majority of our users are likely to use a desktop to voice search, followed by mobile. We’ve seen that voice search helps them make quicker searches for an item too.

From a retailer perspective, it allows us to gather keyword data as to what terminology is literally rolling off our user’s tongue. 

What sorts of results have you seen since implementation?

The results thus far have been positive. We didn’t anticipate a vast amount of traffic to use the voice search which has been the case.

However, that being said you can see that there’s a small increase month-on-month of people using the voice search. Of those who have used the voice search, we see the level of detail is much granular within their searches as a result leading to fewer searches. We’ve also seen that the time for those searching is reduced (ever so slightly) probably because the user realises the search is that powerful and intelligent.

It’s all about getting people used to using the search in this way and letting them know that they can. The icon is useful for this and so is the placeholder text. We want to encourage people to search this way. I look forward to seeing more positive results in the next few months!

Your top 3 reasons for choosing Klevu?

1. Innovative
2. Within budget
3. Fantastic user experience. There are many out of the box which are clunky and some 3rd party apps out there which do a good job, but none so far are as good as compared to Klevu. 

Thanks, Mark!

– Amy

Summary

Bathroom Takeaway is an online bathroom retailer, based in Trafford Park, Manchester, with two showrooms based on Regent Road, Salford and Minworth Industrial Park, Sutton Coldfield. Bathroom Takeaway is passionate about offering real bathrooms at unbelievable prices, coupled with exceptional customer service. Check them out here.

If you have any questions or are interested in chatting more about voice search, reach out to me on LinkedIn, or send an email to amy.marks@klevu.com  

To learn more about the features that Klevu are currently deploying or if you are interested in learning more, submit a schedule a demo with our product team here.