Easons.com is Ireland's largest online bookstore that was launched in 2010. Over the years, Easons has focused on optimizing the customer journey on their website by expanding their product selection beyond books, improving their search functionality through techniques like autocomplete, and reducing checkout steps. They also aim to increase customer engagement through initiatives like expanding content and optimizing site speed and performance across different devices. Moving forward, Easons plans to further optimize the customer journey through search, content, omni-channel, and personalization strategies to improve the overall online shopping experience.

1. Optimising the
customer journey
Yvonne Phillips
Senior eCommerce Product
Manager, Easons

2. 2
Easons.com
• First ecommerce website launched in 2010, and since then has grown into
Ireland's largest online book and eBook store.
• Almost 2 million products across books, eBooks, stationery, magazines, toys
and games
• Easons.com won the Retail Excellence Ireland award for National Website of
the Year 2012
• Shortlisted for 2014 ECMOD Direct Commerce Awards UK for “Best Website”
2011
2012
2013

3. 3 Nov 2014

4. 4 The Journey so Far…..
Strong
foundation =
basics right
Product
Range
opportunities
OmniChannel
approach
USPs
Free delivery
We’re Irish
Range
loyalty
Search
Optimising
checkout
flow
Optimising
fulfilment &
customer
service

5. 5
Easons.com – Platform & Partners
• Aspdotnetstorefront (ecommerce platform)
• MS Dynamics AX (ERP system)
• Eason Loyalty Program
• Sagepay (Payment provider)
• SLI Systems (Search)
• Google Analytics
• Optimizely (A/B testing tool)
• App Dynamics (application monitoring tool)
• Kobo (eBook provider)
• BDS (Bibliographic Data)

6. 6
Growth in order volumes online
• Conversion rate has tripled in 3 years
• Sales have also tripled

7. Optimising the
customer
journey -
SEARCH

8. 8
Our Approach to date
• Become more scientific in our
approach using data to guide and
define what we do
• Expand our product range beyond
books in line with retail stores –
OmniChannel. Matching promotions in
store with those online.
• Improve search accuracy and
performance
• Use content and design to give
personality and increase engagement
GA and Optimizely
Stationery, toys,
magazines, trends
SLI
Blog, staff reviews,
video, social media

9. 9
Importance of search
Importance of search in the eason
customer journey
• 45% of visitors use on-site-search.
Increased 10% YOY (October 2014 v
2013)
• 73% of total site revenue generated
from searches
• Searchers convert 2x higher than
general browsers – they are looking for
something specific
“I think your new search is
intuitive, clear and is right up
there with the likes of Amazon
and is waaaaaaaay better
than Book Depository….”
“This is brilliant it is such an
ease to find my favourite
books…”
“I was looking for the Marie
Flemings book and it provided
me with all of the info I
needed quickly…”

10. 10
Position of the Search Box
• With over 45% of users searching, vital that our search box
stands out and is prominent on every page
• The more people searching the higher our conversion rate
• Results accuracy is high (we can track CTR on search
pages)

11. 11
Rich Auto Complete
• Allows our users to find what
they are looking for even
faster
• Converts 2x higher than the
search average at 6.24%
• Generating 25% of the total
site revenue

12. 12
What are your customers looking for?
• 100’s of searches for products we didn’t actually sell online –
stationery, toys and games, magazines
• We have worked for past few months to extend the range
matching what people actually want from easons.com
• Non book product excluding ebooks now accounts for 10% of
all sales

13. 13
Relevance & Ranking

14. 14
Take Control of Results

15. 15
Customising SR pages and Landing Pages
• Customise pages with content and images to increase relevancy and
to promote products/authors
• Increases SEO value also on our NAV pages
• Also can build custom landing pages using the same tool

16. Optimising the
customer
journey –
CHECKOUT

17. 17
Optimising the checkout
So what have we done to optimise this part of the customer
journey?
• 3 mandatory steps, one optional step (evoucher/loyalty)
• Indicator to customer to show how many steps there are
• Display your security cert in clear and prominent position
• Always display the basket summary on each page so user
feels comfortable all the way through the checkout
• Don’t ask for information you can do without. Offer
customer option to use same address for billing and
delivery so they only have to enter it once.
• Option to create an account and save their addresses for
quick checkouts in the future

18. Optimising the
customer
journey –
CUSTOMER
ENGAGEMENT

19. 19
Site Speed & Performance
Reduce page load times
• Caching of images and content
• Optimising CSS and reducing use of JS
• Optimising database calls
• Removed number of DNS calls on key pages (FB and Twitter feeds)
• Clean up of our redirect file
• Use App Dynamics to monitor performance and issues

20. 20
Increase customer engagement

21. 21
Focus for 2015 & Beyond
Further optimisation of the customer journey on easons.com
Search Strategy:
Multi device experience
A/B tests
Further development SEO
Multi Device Strategy:
Responsive Easons.com to
maximise user experience on
mobile devices
Content Strategy:
Grow customer reviews
Unique product descriptions
Expand editorial content
Recommendations &
Personalisation
Omni channel Strategy:
Click & Collect
QR codes in store to read
reviews/check stock online
A/B Testing &
Multivariate testing
roadmap

22. Thank
You