Soccerfanshop: Powering relevant search and recommendations for their customers to see a 14% increase in conversion rates!

In this customer story, learn how Soccerfanshop utilized Clerk’s Search and Recommendations tools within their webstore to increase conversion rates by more than 14%.

Introduction to Soccerfanshop: From a small Dutch town to a global e-commerce powerhouse

Soccerfanshop began as a small store in the Dutch town of Breda almost 30 years ago.

Fast-forward to today, and the company has exponentially expanded both their in-store and online presence, now employing over 50 employees.

They specialize in streetwear, clothing, and accessories for men, women, and children, constantly staying up to date with the latest fashion trends for their customers. Doing so means they also need to stay at the forefront of e-commerce technology. 

We are honored to be a part of their tech stack, assisting Soccerfanshop with their incredible success.

Before Clerk: Finding an intuitive way to improve the overall user experience

Before working with Clerk, Soccerfanshop was trying to figure out how to show their customers the right related products to increase cross-selling opportunities. However, manually choosing which products should be displayed is too time-consuming of a task, especially with new products being constantly stocked.

Soccerfanshop’s overall goal was to improve the overall user experience within their webshop. They wanted to give their customers a more intuitive way to search for products that fit their needs while, at the same time, driving sales through increased cross and upselling. 

And, a key challenge they faced was that their upsells could have been more relevant to their customers and were often low-margin products.

The Solution: Why choose Clerk as an e-commerce tool?

When researching e-commerce personalization platforms, Soccerfanshop looked at four key elements:

• Automation
• Improved conversion rates
• Higher order value
• Improved search experience

And this is what Clerk could provide. 

The number one reason, however, for getting started with Clerk was the search bar function, which, as they say, offers “advanced functionality that can surpass the standard search bar of your webshop.” 

With Clerk, they have been able to display precisely what the customer wants and have removed any manual work associated: Clerk is fully automated. So, if a customer was after a t-shirt but didn’t land on the right product, they can now simply look at other recommended t-shirts to discover exactly what they’re searching for.

Not only that, but their customers can now also search for and be recommended products that may not be so obvious at first thought. 

What does this mean? Well, it means that if a customer is after shoes, they can be recommended a bag that other customers are purchasing alongside it, or maybe even a popular pair of trousers to match.

The Results:

• 14% increase in revenue
• 19% increase in basket size
• 15% higher average order value

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Search: A huge profit booster helping customers find the products they need through personalization

Soccerfanshop has also seen considerable value in Clerk’s Search tool. Since adopting it on their webstore, it has become a huge profit booster for the company, with customers consistently using the feature to find their desired products.

The search function allows their customers to quickly and accurately look for a specific item while easily understanding synonyms and using natural language processing so that customers can find what they are looking for, even if they don’t know exactly what the product is called.

One crucial benefit is typo tolerance, meaning the search bar can easily detect and correct spelling mistakes made by customers and redirect them to the correct products. With so many products and brand names, this feature comes in handy to give customers that little extra help.

To get the most out of typo tolerance, Soccerfanshop identified the top 100 most commonly spelled variations for these products and inputted them into Clerk’s system, ensuring that their customers can now always find what they’re searching for. They state this “only took an afternoon’s work, but the benefits have been long-lasting.”

And the stats speak for themselves. Since implementing the search bar, conversion rates have increased by more than 14%.

Recommendations: AI-powered automation to help remove the manual work 

Aside from the aforementioned Search functionalities, Soccerfanshop also uses Clerk’s recommendations tool. 

Clerk’s AI-powered recommendations help to personalize the customer journey by displaying tailored recommendations alongside each product, which is vital to creating customer loyalty and retention and ultimately leads to higher conversion rates and profit margins.  

Why is this? Because any store’s profit margins are usually slim if a customer only buys one product: it just doesn’t cover the costs of marketing, shipping, and all other associated costs. However, with recommendation sliders placed throughout Soccerfanshop’s webstore, it’s now as simple as one click for a customer to add a second, third, or more products to their cart.

Conclusion:

A big thank you to Soccerfanshop for the collaboration and partnership. Fabian Matthee, Project Manager at Soccerfanshop, sums it up pretty well, stating: “The biggest profit booster is the higher conversion rate. Ultimately, that's what it's all about.”