John Smedley: 300% Increase in Search-Led Revenue

John Smedley, a renowned British knitwear brand with a heritage spanning over two centuries, sought to enhance their shopping experience in alignment with their brand’s high-quality standards. With a diverse and often intricate product catalog, they required a solution that could cater to their customers’ needs with precision, speed, and efficiency.

The Challenges

John Smedley was experiencing several ecommerce challenges, particularly around enabling customers to find the right products efficiently. Jamie Austin, Head of Ecommerce Operations, remarked, “We knew our customers were struggling to find exactly what they were looking for on our site, which was impacting our conversion rates.”

Key challenges included:

• Limited Scalability – The existing tool was complex, costly, and required regular adjustments.
• Search Accuracy – Customers had trouble locating specific items, impacting conversions.
• Lack of Personalization – Existing tools didn’t allow for the level of customization John Smedley needed to showcase products effectively.

Determined to address these issues, John Smedley partnered with Klevu for a powerful, AI-driven approach to product discovery. They worked with agency, Williams Commerce, to deploy Klevu’s full suite – AI-driven Smart Search, Product Recommendations, and Category Merchandising.

The Solution: Klevu’s AI Product Discovery

The decision to choose Klevu came down to the platform’s unique combination of AI-driven capabilities and Natural Language Processing.

“The search functionality has improved significantly, allowing users to find what they’re looking for.” – Jamie Austin, Head of Ecommerce Operations at John Smedley. Jamie also emphasizes how the enriched product discovery experience benefits from Klevu’s additional search features: “The color enrichment and color normalization tools have also helped ensure that customers see products in the correct shade, regardless of how they search or filter the catalog.”

Klevu’s product recommendations engine has been instrumental in helping customers discover complementary products. The “You May Also Like” recommendations, strategically placed on product detail and basket pages, helped cross-sell related products, boosting engagement and driving up add-to-cart rates.

Klevu’s Smart Category Merchandising feature has played a critical role in optimizing John Smedley’s category pages. Through Klevu’s A/B testing capabilities, John Smedley was also able to experiment with product order on category pages, using insights from pricing preferences to align their merchandising with customer expectations and improve conversion rates.

Results that speak for themselves

Since implementing Klevu, John Smedley has seen a remarkable transformation in their ecommerce performance, achieving impressive results:

• 17% year-on-year increase in conversion rate
• 300% increase in search-led revenue

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