36
CASESTUDY
ghd REVOLUTIONISES
CUSTOMER INSIGHT
The hairstyling brand ghd, famed for its straighteners, styling accessories
and � nishing products, has gone from a small British startup in 2001 to a
global superbrand with a multimillion-pound turnover.
U
ntil April 2008, ghd was using a combination “Once we had implemented Speed-Trap, we had
of a traditional analytics package with some instant user behaviour insight. We were suddenly
in-house adaptations and extra capabilities to able to ask ourselves questions we’d not previously
If you want a
track its understanding of how customers and prospects considered, which in turn has a direct knock on effect
tool that can
interact with the company online, but soon realised that with our revenue,” Pye explained.
provide you
this approach restricted it to only understanding what “Being able to view the bounce rate of different
poorly de� ned groups did on parts of the site, rather users, as opposed to just an overall bounce rate for
with the insight
than analysing detailed individual visitor journeys through the site, helped us to identify the most successful
required to
the site. landing pages for each of our acquisition channels,” said
optimise your
Rob Pye, ghd web analyst explained: “The problem Pye. “This, in turn, allowed us to optimise our online
with our previous, and indeed any, basic web analytics marketing campaigns and ensure we were delivering
website for
is that we spent time setting up the tags to deal with the most relevant, and highest converting, landing page
your users…,
a certain enquiry or theory of ours, and then would to our users. Speed-Trap has enabled us to become
Speed Trap is
have to wait for the user data to be accrued over days fully accountable for all our acquisition channels,
or weeks to � nd the answer. The main issue with our and allowed us to make effective, informed, granular
de� nitely the
previous ‘analytics package’ was that you were given changes to our online marketing campaigns; ultimately,
software for
set metrics, which sat independently of each other, and this may not have been possible without Speed-Trap.”
your business.
therefore only allowed you to view all your users in one, With this capability to � nd detailed answers to new
inaccurate ‘aggregated’ view. questions, with existing data, ghd was recently able
Since moving to online customer insight software to go back and audit its transactional process, based
from Speed-Trap, the ability to dig deeper into the upon the data recorded by Speed-Trap, from when the
behaviour of users arriving on the site, through different new ghd site was launched at the end of May 2008.
channels, has given ghd new insight in to the success Pye added: “We had suf� cient con� dence in the data
of various landing pages, allowing it to design content, from Speed-Trap’s collection and analysis that we were
which aids the user journey and improves conversion able to react to the insight far faster than previously.
rates. Changes to the site would ordinarily have required new
metrics to be devised to measure the effectiveness
of the changes – to all intents and purposes second-
guessing ourselves. With the Speed-Trap data, this was
unnecessary, as the data in front of us was so thorough,
it provided a complete picture of the use of our site.”
ghd has also taken advantage of Speed-Trap’s ability
to gather user behaviour data from Flash applications.
Speed-Trap’s new Flash data capture feature will
acquire all the data ghd need without slowing down
the delivery of video. “With the ability to monitor Flash,
we will be able to understand these pages’ appeal and
pattern of use, in exactly the same way we can the
other pages, thereby gaining the complete picture of
the site and also immediately appreciating our visitors’
reception of new Flash offerings on the site,” he added.
“If you want a tool that can provide you with the
insight required to optimise your website for your users
based on their actual behaviour, not your assumptions
of what they do and want, then Speed Trap is de� nitely
the software for your business,” concluded Pye.
RETAIL TECHNOLOGY AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2009
036 Case Study.indd 36 15/9/09 1:35:06 pm
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40