ShopForward is a popular CSS (comparison shopping service), used by advertisers for tactical paid-media campaigns on platforms like Google Shopping, Bing Shopping, and ShopForward’s own network of comparison shopping portals.
Over the past year, it has worked with global home and garden retailer Leroy Merlin and children’s fashion brand Vertbaudet on generating awareness, acquisition, and revenue through CSS efforts.
The challenge
If there’s one ever-present challenge for marketers, it’s turning campaigns into sales.
Without the right level of precision, marketers risk burning their budgets on untargeted, low-converting efforts. CSS partners like ShopForward are adept at driving traffic to e-commerce sites, but there are always opportunities to do more, especially when it comes to optimising conversions.
Fine-tuning any search-related activity is also a pertinent topic given the increasing cost of clicks on platforms like Google, which has cranked up the pressure on marketers to generate a return.
The solution
The practice of conversion rate optimisation leans heavily on a deep understanding of the audience in question. Awin recommended ShopForward bolster its targeting capabilities by becoming the first CSS partner to launch a Mastertag plugin.
This tag-based solution allows services like ShopForward to place a script on an advertiser’s site to collect anonymised and aggregated data, enabling them to assess how visitors behave after being referred by one of their campaigns.
By learning more about these audiences - for example, if they have visited the advertiser’s website before or landed on a specific product page - ShopForward could adjust its CSS campaigns accordingly.
Vertbaudet and Leroy Merlin implemented the plugin via a one-click implementation, requiring no tech development or changes to their commercial agreement with ShopForward.
The plugin ultimately lifted the ceiling for engagement and sales by detecting each shopper’s stage in the purchase journey and delivering a relevant search result.
At Vertbaudet
Working in a niche product category led to the acceptance of a relatively low conversion rate at Vertbaudet. The plugin helped ShopForward spot high-intent audiences more frequently by considering the behaviour and profile of high-converting segments. These were swiftly factored into its targeting strategy to steer the right traffic to Vertbaudet’s site.
At Leroy Merlin
It was a different challenge at Leroy Merlin, where the plugin helped to stabilise and recover declines in CVR (conversion rate) and CTR (click-through rate) following changes to the advertiser’s product feed. It took little under a month for ShopForward to influence a huge swing in engagement and conversions without any changes to Leroy Merlin’s cost per acquisition.
The results
Gaining access to advertiser data had a significant impact on ShopForward’s ability to target good-fit audiences and reduce wastage.
Vertbaudet reported a 130% increase in its CTR among the customers tracked by the plugin. That improvement ultimately translated to sales courtesy of a 692% boost in CVR, with ShopForward developing a better understanding of traffic flow to spot purchase-ready audiences.
Meanwhile at Leroy Merlin, the average CTR for audiences targeted via the plugin rose 123%, while their CVR increased by 414%.
Operating in a highly data-driven space, ShopForward has shown how extra layers of insight can level up CSS campaigns, helping its advertisers drive more revenue and bolster campaign ROI.
