Case Study: Targeted Testing, Personalization Yield Increased Online Revenues for 
Urban Outfitters
PROBLEM: Urban Outfitters, a cross-channel retailer of men's and women's apparel and accessories, wanted to optimize its e-commerce website.
SOLUTION: Partnered with a provider of online testing, targeting and personalization solutions.
RESULTS: In the two-plus years Urban Outfitters has worked with a third-party website optimization provider, its total online sales have nearly doubled, its conversion rate has increased and it's experienced "exponential growth" in its international online sales.
Urban Outfitters is a hip brand that's very popular with young adults (it's No. 71 on our list of fastest-growing retailers), so it makes sense that it would invest in e-commerce to better engage and market to its younger clientele. In particular, the retailer wanted to increase its website's conversion rate. Its solution? Better personalization. More specifically, using targeted testing of different creative, messaging and promotions to optimize the user experience.
Urban Outfitters is working with Monetate, a marketing optimization technology firm, on this endeavor. Following a very quick implementation process (less than two months), Urban Outfitters went live with Monetate's technology in March 2010.
After an initial test proved to be "overly complicated" and therefore not very insightful, Urban Outfitters began to see the value in testing small, simple things on its website, like which free shipping offer provides the best return. For example, the retailer can show 80 percent of its Australian visitors a banner ad promoting $10 economy shipping and the other 20 percent of its Australian visitors an ad promoting $5 economy shipping to see what the difference is on conversion. Other tests Urban Outfitters has run include identifying what's the best color for a product badge and where a button should be displayed on a web page.
"We've learned that it may be simple and small things, but there's a lot of value to be derived in testing simple and small things," says Holly Devine, director of e-commerce for Urban Outfitters. "We can capture the economic value of these considerations, so it's not just a question of whether something was better."
Urban Outfitters can view the results of its tests in real time, enabling it to optimize its website content quickly and easily at any time during the user's experience — without having to involve its IT team. Monetate provides Urban Outfitters with variables such as bounce and conversion rate, average order value, and more to help it assess the results of its tests.
Focus on
Personalization
Urban Outfitters is betting that providing its online visitors a more personalized experience will increase its chances of converting them into customers. The retailer has tested customized product recommendations as well as segmenting its audience to deliver different experiences to different segments.
"We have enough information now about our customers to be able to, without becoming one-to-one personalization, know that they're a men's shopper or a women's shopper or a women's bohemian feminine shopper," says Devine.
In addition to personalization around merchandising, Urban Outfitters can personalize the shopping experience based on a visitor's location. By tracking the IP addresses of its site visitors, Urban Outfitters can map in the locations of its nearest retail stores to a visitor as well as its closest distribution center so he/she will know what shipping zone they're in if they choose to shop online and want to know how much they'll be paying for shipping.