How Vitarock Uses Clerk to Optimize Bounce Rates and Conversions

The facts

• 68% of orders impacted by Clerk
• 32% growth in average basket size
• 19% increase in average order value (AOV)
• 49% of customers buy products via Clerk Search
• 28.3% of customers buy products via Clerk Recommendations
• 803% increase in conversion rate

Challenges

Vitarock has a vast catalog with over 10,000 products for customers to choose from and serves both the Canadian and US markets. As a result, the brand has a large inventory of products and runs two e-commerce stores, one for each market. Before switching to Clerk, the brand was struggling to provide visitors with easy navigation and relevant product discovery experiences.

More specifically, Vitarock's site search engine was not providing targeted enough results, which led to a subpar customer experience. In addition to improving site search, Vitarock wanted to provide customers with more personalized product recommendations as they explored the site. Altogether, these challenges ultimately led to Vitarock experiencing lower conversion rates and higher bounce rates.

But providing a more personalized shopping experience was not just something Vitarock wanted to accomplish on its site. The brand also wanted to improve its email marketing by sending more relevant content to each customer based on their previous behavior in an effort to offer a more omnichannel experience and to reduce unsubscribe rates.

Results

Site Search for real humans

Empowered by Clerk, Vitarock experienced a 12.9x higher probability of converting customers who used site search due to the improvement in the search experience. Now 49.1% of its customers buy products via search, and the AOV has increased by $9.12 over the last three months.

Below is an example of how Clerk’s intelligent search engine understands each customer's search queries like a sales person in a store would.

For example, here's how Clerk breaks down the term: Attitude sunscreen for baby SPF 30

This is accomplished with the help of Clerk’s AI which automatically recognizes the customer’s search intent and context by analyzing special characters, attributes, modifiers, and categories with faceted search. In doing so, the brand is able to narrow down its results to present this customer with the exact sunscreen products they are looking for.

"Since we implemented Clerk.io's search tool, we have seen a significant improvement in our conversion and bounce rates. We have a huge catalog of products, so Clerk's tool has been instrumental in leveraging the many different products we carry."

Elizabeth Ronan, General Manager of Vitarock

Utilizing a power step to boost sales

When implementing Clerk, Vitarock decided to optimize its add-to-basket page with Clerk’s power step. This add-to-basket step occurs when Vitarock customers have chosen a product to purchase but have not yet reached the final check-out page. In an attempt to boost sales and increase average order size, Vitarock utilizes Clerk’s power step to show more relevant product recommendations, such as the best cross-sell products, top-selling products, and on-sale products before the customer completes their purchase. With Clerk’s hyper-personalized recommendations, the brand sees approximately 2 more products being added to each order and has generated $6,606 more revenue over the past three months.

Here's how it works

After a customer adds an Orange Naturals essential oil into their basket, Vitarock uses Clerk’s power step to recommend this customer a few other products from the same brand that are often purchased together:

As very few online stores practice this strategy, Clerk’s power step gives Vitarock a unique, competitive edge. In general, Clerk's own stats show that the power step drives 41% more revenue than the search function on e-commerce sites!

Improving conversion with personalized recommendations

With over 10,000 products, Vitarock relies on Clerk to help its customers navigate the webshop and discover relevant products by displaying dynamic product recommendations. These prebuilt smart logics such as Hottest Products, Order History, Best Cross-Sell Products, and more, are based on behavioral data points collected by Clerk to provide visitors with the most value and relevance.

Introducing dynamic product recommendation banners across Vitarock's sites resulted in 28.3% of Vitarock's customers buying products via recommendations, 1.87 more products being added to each order, and $2,866 more revenue generated over the last month.

Here's an example of what product recommendations are shown when a customer views the product page for a Dry Shampoo:

As displayed, Clerk makes it easy for Vitarock to automatically show this customer not only alternative dry shampoo products but also other popular, trending products customers are purchasing.

"I cannot recommend Clerk.io's products and customer support enough. Thank you very much!"

Elizabeth Ronan, General Manager of Vitarock

To learn more about how Clerk can help your e-commerce business automatically improve CX and grow sales, schedule a time with one of our specialists today: