Xistore
Case results
13
new offline stores opened across Belarus
×17
higher branded demand
×2
higher sales over a six-month period
Клиент
Xiaomi company store Xistore, Belarus, xistore.by
В цифрах
2016 company founded, 16 company stores (as of September 2018), 257K Unique monthly site visits (Yandex.Metrica, September 2018)
Представитель
Andrey Volkolovskiy Marketing director
Goals
- Analyze the target audience of the new online store of the new brand
- Increase conversion rates
- Use data to adjust the brand’s marketing strategy
Tools used:
Yandex.Metrica reports
- Page loading time
- Session Replay
- Device type
- Traffic sources
- Long-term interests
- Heat map of clicks
- Popular pages
- eCommerce
- Time since first visit
Period: 26 months
May 2016 — Xiaomi brand unknown in Belarus and demand nonexistent
When the online store first opened, the Xiaomi was absent from large stores, but the market potential was already clear. The goals from the beginning were:
- Generate demand for certified goods.
- Expand the store’s product range.
- Break away from growing competition with large distributors.
- Strengthen their market position and their chain.
To increase online sales and attract offline audiences, a unified marketing strategy was needed.
Step 1: Refine their brand new site before launching ads
August 2016: remove any lags in the order process
The company began operations in May of 2016, and at the end of the summer started advertising, with a focus on attracting new customers. In August, they installed a Yandex.Metrica tag and gathered data over a two-week period for a preliminary analysis.
September 2016: pages load in almost half the time after optimizing images, JavaScript/CSS and HTML code
All improvements had a noticeable combined effect — page load times dropped from 2.25 seconds to 1.25 seconds.
Data gathered from August 2016
Step 2: Optimizing the site’s mobile version
Autumn 2016: Yandex.Metrica shows stable growth in mobile traffic and high average checks for purchases from mobile devices
Mobile traffic began to grow both on its own and as a result of ad campaigns. In the beginning, mobile traffic made up just ¼ of the site’s traffic.
But there were far more purchases from mobile devices.
Anastasiya Gorbach
Head of contextual advertising Webcom Performance
The Session Replay recordings showed us right from the beginning the reason for the small number of conversions from mobile devices. These recordings revealed that forms on our mobile devices were displaying and working incorrectly. We fixed these problems immediately. We also discovered that mobile visitors could not follow additional links from product categories to subcategories or switch between product tabs. And once they were redirected to a non-existing page, they couldn’t return to the product catalog because of an incorrect 404 error. We eliminated these problems right away.
May 2017: device reports help adapt the site for popular models and double conversions
The report identified the problems (high bounce rates, little time spent on the site, low CR) on various popular smartphone makes and models. The site was additionally tested for each model.
The site version used on the majority of devices were prioritized. After these sites were adapted, CR on mobile devices rose by 2.5X, and target visits grew from 24% to 50%.
Similar analyses helped eliminate problems with processing 404 errors, and pointed out that the site needed HTML sitemaps and testing to determine the best variant (which Xistore.by did).
Step 3: Analyze users and adapt promotions according to their interests
Regular analysis helped find a large segment of untapped queries for additional growth
Xistore.by mainly used sales-related queries to advertise and optimize their site. When they analyzed their traffic sources, they discovered that the large number of non-sales queries like “reviews,” “instructions,” and “overview” was not only growing, but also brought regular conversions.
In response, Xistore.by decided to:
- Add a form to each product page where customers could add reviews
- Create a section for articles and set a plan to fill it with content
- Implement monitoring of the company’s reputation
They also created a channel with video reviews and aimed to release regular press releases on relevant sites.
November 2016: new traffic source types appear, and the bounce rate for users looking for product overviews dropped
New traffic source sites were found.
The bounce rate for users who came to the site via informational (non-sales) queries dropped significantly — now these users were able to find what they were looking for.
Analyzed user interests and used subsequent data for targeting in YAN and social networks
Xistore.by used this data for targeting in YAN and social networks, which play an important role in their marketing mix.
Long-term interests were key in choosing the audience for advertising.
The affinity index (an indicator of relative interest) can be used to target content and ads.
Steady growth in target traffic from social networks allowed Xistore.by to then focus on improving traffic quality
The next goal was to analyze the behavior of the users that made up this site traffic.
Step 4: Tools for increasing site conversions
Click maps and page reports revealed what users needed to convert, e.g. accessories
Xistore.by analyzed users’ interaction with the site’s search bar, what they search for, what information is missing on ads’ landing pages. The click map showed that the search bar is frequently used.
Users quite often did not find sufficient information on the landing pages they visited from the site’s search results. Many users simply left the site once they did not see the information they needed on the first page. The popular pages report showed popular queries “q=query”.
Andrey Volkolovskiy
Marketing director
People were looking for accessories: headphones, power banks, certain smartphone models. We made the following changes to our site:
- Made the Cameras and Smart devices subcategories more visible
- Added power banks to product range
- Moved popular models higher in the catalog based on sales data and search queries.
Starting in December 2017: data from query reports determines the topics for new videos on the company YouTube channel
Queries like “accelerate my smartphone” led them to publish articles on the same topic, which then got 1000 views.
Step 5: Tools for increasing ads’ conversion rates
From 2017 on: new KPIs based on eCommerce reports help boost ads’ ROI
KPIs based on e-commerce reports lead to significant increases in ROI. These graphs show revenue by impressions and the number of purchases.
Xistore.by tweaked the site for real users, but their marketing activities could be expanded. At this point, they promoted their site on all available channels, on Yandex and other systems. They also set up eCommerce in Yandex.Metrica — a group of reports that help understand while channels and products need more support, where ad budgets are being used incorrectly, and what they needed to do for their advertising activities to be profitable.
Device and demographic reports showed which bid adjustments to set: positive for smartphones and users 18-34 of age
Demand for Xiaomi grew by 13-15% each month, along with competition in Yandex.Direct. To stay in first place on mobile search on devices with the highest CR, Xistore.by set positive bid adjustments.
They likewise optimized their impressions for demographic groups by adjusting their bids according to conversion rates.
Time since first session report helped set up retargeting
Users need time to analyze products’ characteristics and look at reviews, so Xistore.by set the period for retargeting to 60 days. They tested all sorts of scenarios, from using smart banners in standard cases of unfinished purchases to more precise targeting settings to gather audiences, for example, by the mobile devices used to access the site.
Xistore.by saved up to 25% by choosing the right tools and allocating their budget to the highest converting sources
The most effective channel were CPC systems, and the most profitable tools were search ads and smart banners with retargeting.
Analyzing conversion rates by traffic source helped optimize the allocation of their ad budget between sources. The more profitable the channel / campaign / keyword / retargeting list, the more they received.
Correct allocation of funds led to an increase in the number of target visits to the site.
Results
Branded traffic increased 17X
Branded traffic, also referred to as navigational queries, in which users enter the name of the store in Latin [xistore] or Cyrillic [кси стор] letters, show that the user is already familiar with the store. This type of queries increased by almost 17X. Branded traffic for Xiaomi, in comparison, increased 4.4X in Belarus during the same period.
On May 18 2016 the first branded Xistore in the CIS countries opened. By June of 2018, there were already 13
In Belarus, stores opened in Minsk, Grodno, Mogilev, Brest and Vitebsk (with more store openings in the works).
YoY online orders were 2X higher in the first half of 2018
They hit their peak in 2018, which reflected the impact of offline advertising in the metro and on the radio. Branded demand also increased. The offline campaign ended in June and demand returned to previous levels.
The number of online purchases increased over the past 12 months, with numbers twice as high in the first half of 2018 compared to a year earlier.
Andrey Volkolovskiy
Marketing director
Yandex.Metrica allowed us to continuously analyze the results of our marketing strategy on a market that was forming before our very eyes. It gave us answers to important questions: which channels to invest our budget in, where to enhance our marketing activities and study our target audience.
As a result, in just two years we opened 12 new offline stores with roughly 200,000 monthly visitors.
Anastasiya Gorbach
Head of contextual advertising Webcom Performance
Yandex.Metrica helped reach the client’s goals:
- Increase conversions by improving the site and making it a convenient place for making purchases.
- Determine the characteristics of their target audience and their interests in order to improve targeting and fill their site with interesting, high-quality content.
- Boost conversions from mobile traffic and develop a mobile promotion strategy.
Case prepared in collaboration with the Webcom Group agency
