CASESTUDY 35
JD WILLIAMS CREATES
over 140 years of experience in the distance shopping market. Over the past few years, JD Williams has seen its online business grow signifi cantly, with Internet sales now representing 46% of annual turnover – some £330 million per annum. John Hinchcliffe, JD Williams marketing director,
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said: “The business has to get a deeper understanding of the online customer. The internet should provide a fantastic opportunity to understand how customers are interacting with the business and how they are using JD Williams’ websites. Traditionally that information has not been available at a customer level for analytics purposes.” The company invested in Teradata software in 1990 and since then has created a corporate datawarehouse that holds 95% of all data and delivers a single version of the truth that is used by over 800 staff. But it needed a way of capturing this online customer level insight and integrating it seamlessly with the Teradata datawarehouse.
In 2009 the company adopted Celebrus Technologies software to capture clickstream information and incorporated that data within the Teradata TCRM system creating a customer data hub to support ongoing marketing campaigns. Since an initial pilot, JD Williams has rolled out Celebrus across all its online brands, and now has over a year’s information. The company is gaining insight into customer
behaviour across diverse timelines, from near real- time to several hours. “The Celebrus information can be loaded into Teradata within a couple of minutes, allowing JD Williams to react to the customer while they are still online,” Neil McGowan, JD Williams chief information offi cer, explained. “JD Williams is analysing monthly, weekly and daily activity on the website and drilling down through the Celebrus data to answer more detailed questions about the customer activity to further hone marketing activity,” he added. In addition the company is rolling out real time
response for its FigLeaves brand, allowing it to tailor the offer and experience in real time based on customer behaviour. “The creation of the Celebrus customer data hub is allowing FigLeaves to combine real time activity with customer history to change the promotions and offers that appear to each customer, further improving the overall experience,” said McGowan.
JULY/AUGUST 2011 RETAIL TECHNOLOGY
Brown Group, and its principal subsidiary, JD Williams, is a £719-million internet and catalogue home shopping company, with
MULTICHANNEL CUSTOMER INSIGHT Mail order retailer increases understanding of new behaviour in online channel with data integration and analysis to improve the relevance of each customer interaction
The data is also supporting strategic insight into JD
Williams’ multichannel retail proposition. Recent analysis of customer smartphone usage revealed that over 90% of smartphones being used are iPhones. “JD Williams was not expecting the customer base to be high volume smartphone users, yet on some brands 5% of internet access is via smartphones,” McGowanexplained. “There is also an increase in repeat customers, which has led the business to analyse how customers are using these devices and discover they are not only looking at products but also paying bills and making
purchases.This insight into smartphone usage is helping the business to prioritize investment in the online channel,” he added. The company has also identifi ed new customer
categories, including both‘prospects’ – those who have visited a site more than once, perhaps in response to TV advertising, but have not yet registered or made a purchase, and ‘browse not bought’, who have been reactivated by a catalogue, for example, but have not yet chosen to buy.“Using the Celebrus information, we can pull those customer visits together, assess what products the customer is viewing and personalize the information both for future visits and, for browse not buy, ongoing marketing activity,” McGowan confi rmed. Hinchcliffe said that, coming from a catalogue retail
heritage, understanding the customer to support tailored marketing has always been key. “Adding online customer insight has been a strategic development by the business and is essential to provide an enhanced experience for customers, improve the relevance of the online offer and simplify the purchasing process,” he concluded.
Adding online customer insight has been a strategic development by the business and is essential to provide an enhanced experience for customers, improve the relevance of the online offer and simplify the purchasing process
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