10 retailers
nailing online
UX – and what
you can learn
from them
In a crowded online marketplace, retailers including White Stuff, FatFace and Zalando are winning customers with great digital experiences.
Projected to reach 62.1 million ecommerce users by 2025, according to market intelligence firm Statista, the UK is one of the globe’s most mature and competitive digital retail markets.
That means a wealth of opportunity for new and established brands to win consumer spend online.
However, in the online realm the competition is just a click away. Therefore, a slick, intuitive online user experience (UX) is critical to avoid basket abandonment.
So, how can retailers ensure that doesn’t happen? And which retailers are leading the pack in this regard?
These questions are tackled in this deep-dive article, which is the fourth in our six-part series Consumer 2025 – from acquisition to advocacy, produced in partnership with Bloomreach. Powered by AI, Bloomreach personalises the ecommerce experience, unifying real-time customer and product data across channels so businesses understand what customers really want. The series is designed to analyse how the retail sector will rise to meet the evolving and growing expectations of consumers.
In this analysis, we look at how ten leading retailers have created superior UX online and what other retailers could learn from them.
Consumer 2025 – from acquisition to advocacy
White Stuff
- Total sales rose 2.4% to £155m in the year to April 27, 2024 (FY2023)
- Store sales up 0.5% to £81.3m and online sales rose 3.9% to £61m
- New platform launched, resulting in better conversion
- Features AI-driven product search and discovery, personalisation and predictive customer modelling
Last year, White Stuff completed a full re-platform of whitestuff.com with the aim of improving the customer journey and purchase experience. The retailer immediately saw an increase in revenue with higher conversion rates, driven by faster website speed, improved product discovery and reduced checkout abandonment.
“This really highlighted the importance of website speed, particularly on mobile devices, and gave us a solid foundation to start testing and redesigning elements of functionality, introduce new payment methods, and introduce more brand and storytelling elements into the user journey,” says Ross Loughlin, head of ecommerce at White Stuff.
The retailer has also worked hard to strike a balance between brand consistency and customer personalisation. “For example, the UX on a product display page will be different for a loyal customer navigating from a product listing page to a product display page compared to a new customer discovering your brand for the first time via a social ad,” says Loughlin.
“The prominence of content such as sign-up offers, messaging and alternative product recommendations should be tailored specifically for the benefit of that user, while not compromising the crucial product and service information.”
In addition, White Stuff has improved the customer experience thanks to AI-driven product search and discovery, personalisation and predictive customer modelling.
“Product and content relevancy and personalisation is highly important to our customers; and through the blend of clickstream and cross-channel data we can offer great shopping experiences, while predictive modelling means that we are talking to our customers at the right time and in the right way depending on their lifecycle stage,” Loughlin adds.
SheSpot
- Conversion rate increased 150% over past 12 months
- Revamped its product page strategy, placing social proof, customer reviews and enhanced product descriptions at the core
- Landing pages bespoke to digital marketing sources of visitors
Sexual wellness retailer SheSpot has increased its conversion rate by more than 150% over the past year by optimising its UX.
Co-founder Holly Jackson attributed this to a focus “on enhancing on-site navigation, personalising the shopping experience and optimising the mobile interface”.
The retailer has also recently revamped its product page strategy, placing social proof, customer reviews, and enhanced product descriptions at the core of its product pages.
Optimising navigation and search involved extensive testing and customer research. “Engaging directly with customers about their shopping habits provided invaluable insights into their behaviour and how they navigate our site,” says Jackson. “Additionally, we used tools like Hotjar to analyse visitor activity and provide data-driven insights that we could action.”
Approximately 75% of SheSpot’s web traffic is direct, but it has recently expanded its digital marketing, driving more traffic from social media and Google Ads.
“To better serve these new visitors and to drive conversion, we’ve created bespoke landing pages for these sources, creating clear CTAs and highlighting key product categories,” Jackson adds.
SheSpot’s traffic is evenly split between mobile and desktop users, but Jackson acknowledges that both have different needs. “For mobile, we emphasise ease of checkout, collapsible navigation bars and adaptive layouts that adjust seamlessly to various screen sizes. Our desktop users see a greater level of content, such as blogs and detailed product descriptions as well as more extensive navigation menus.”
Fat Face
- Total sales grew 15.3% to £270.9m in the year to end-May 2023 (FY2022), moving ahead of pre-pandemic levels
- Online sales rose around 17.3% to £107.0m, accounting for 39.5% of total sales in FY2022. Website visits increased from 37.4 million in FY2021 to 42.8 million in FY2022
- The homepage, category and product pages display relevant elements to help customers purchase, varying from delivery information, to formatting of pricing or social proof messaging
- The product detail page is now FatFace’s highest-ranked landing page
Fat Face runs an extensive conversion rate optimisation programme to constantly iterate its UX and ensure user experience meets best practice guidelines and works for its audience.
Liam Price, who was digital and customer director at the time of writing but has since left the business, believes it’s important to acknowledge that different customer audiences will drive different end-user experiences. He says: “We deploy at least five tests per month to stress test different hypotheses, quickly iterating and deploying winning experiences.”
Fat Face has optimised its navigation and search functionality, particularly based on how customers respond in different seasons. “For example, a customer's mindset in September at the start of a new season when the majority of customers are in the research phase vs the peak gifting period of Christmas is very different,” says Price.
“We optimise to best reflect the most-wanted categories alongside showing the most relevant service messaging to support mindset.”
With consumers arriving at websites from multiple sources and numerous devices, Price is aware that the homepage is no longer the first brand interaction, adding that the product detail page is now FatFace’s highest-ranked landing page.
“We’ve optimised the CX to ensure that whether you land on the homepage, category or product page you can see the important elements to make a purchase decision, whether that’s delivery information, formatting of pricing or social proof messaging,” he says.
To ensure a slick checkout function and avoid basket abandonment, Price says the retailer has reduced any distractions. “All too often, websites try to push add-on purchases, but our testing tells us this has a net negative impact on conversion success.”
Currys
- Group sales fell 10.9% to £8.5bn in FY2023, but just 4% on continuing operations, with the business back in the black at a pre-tax level with pre-tax profit of £28m following the divestment of Greek business Kotsovolos
- Positive start to 2024, with group sales up 2% like-for-like in Q1 and UK sales up 5%
- Sales should reach nearly £9.5bn by FY2028 with UK sales of more than £5.6bn. Total online sales are forecast to account for around 40% of group revenues by this time
- Currys has also enhanced the visibility of its product bundles and services on product listings and product detail pages to make it easy for customers to add services such as ‘buy now, pay later’ options and extended warranties
Electricals retailer Currys has had a positive start to its financial year 2024, following a more challenging 2023, with group sales in the first quarter for the 17 weeks ending August 2024 edging up 2% on a like-for-like basis. UK sales performed even better, growing 5% on a like-for-like basis.
A third of Curry’s customers shop online only, while half of customers use both online and in-store channels. Chris Holyland, digital and omnichannel director, says the retailer knows that customers who use both channels are the most likely to shop again. It means the digital customer touchpoints are crucial.
“We use customer insights to improve our digital journeys by identifying points of friction and pain, and continually optimising and enhancing the experience,” says Holyland.
To ensure it offers an end-to-end solution, Currys has also enhanced the visibility of its product bundles and services on product listings and product detail pages to make it easy for customers to add services such as ‘buy now, pay later’ options and extended warranties. “We’ve placed real emphasis on surfacing these add-ons seamlessly, so we are not interrupting customers’ progress towards their original goal,” says Holyland.
Currys also recognises that some customers will still want to land on the site and complete their purchase as quickly as possible. According to Holyland: “That’s why we’ve added an additional ‘add to basket’ button on our product listings page to ensure we don’t lose that efficiency, while also catering to more complex and considered bundled solutions.”
Currys uses AI to help it to analyse data and insights, but Holyland believes the most exciting area is using GenAI to help customers help themselves. He says: “The opportunities to give customers access to much clearer, self-serve information to help drive greater return compliance and to provide them with troubleshooting support from the comfort of their own home, while also reducing time and costs for Currys in repairs and returns, are significant.”
Zalando
- German-based Zalando is one of Europe’s largest fashion retailers with annual sales of €10.14bn (around £8.83bn) in 2023
- In 2024 it updated its strategy to focus on “building the leading pan-European fashion and lifestyle ecommerce ecosystem” through the two “growth vectors” of business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B)
- Zalando’s algorithmic fashion companion makes suggestions for outfits that match the products customers have recently purchased or previously been interested in
- Chat-GPT-powered Zalando Assistant launched in autumn 2023 enabling customers to navigate products using their own words
Zalando recognises that today's ecommerce customers are looking for an experience similar to that of their favourite stores – they want to be advised on their size, inspired and given style suggestions.
To achieve this, Zalando has long deployed different technologies such as AI and machine learning. For example, its algorithmic fashion companion makes suggestions to customers for outfits that match the products they have recently purchased or those they have previously been interested in.
Zalando also uses machine learning and computer vision to give personalised size advice. Using this tool, it can decrease size-related returns by 10% compared with items in the same category that don’t yet offer size advice.
In the autumn last year, Zalando launched its Chat-GPT-powered Zalando Assistant to enable customers to have a conversation with the retailer and navigate products using their own words. Since then, over half a million customers in the four countries where it’s currently available (the UK, Ireland, Germany and Switzerland) had a conversation with the assistant, with queries three times longer than those asked in the traditional search bar. This difference indicates a change in customer behaviour as well as signifying a shift from seeking a specific product to exploring and discovering fashion.
Zalando is currently experimenting with AI-generated images to produce campaigns and content for microtrends, which surface quickly and disappear after two to three weeks. Using GenAI enables it to produce content up to 80% faster, which makes it possible to capture these trends.
Soletrader
- Soletrader’s revenue last financial year was £27m which was ~10% up on the previous year, with ~45% online
- Soletrader launched an updated website in May, with faster loading times and decluttered pages focused on providing customers with the information they need. Overall conversion has risen 20% as a result
- AI uses returns data to advise customers on the right shoe fit
Soletrader launched its updated website in May this year with a view to enhancing UX, and its year-on-year site revenue has increased by ~5% since the launch. “Our overall conversion rate has gone up by around 20% since then too,” says Jamie Bordon, head of ecommerce.
The retailer has increased the speed of the website and decluttered the UI to make the user journey faster and simpler. “It’s well known that every second you shave off site speed, you increase revenue,” says Bordon. “We did that by building a headless site [where the front end is separate from the back-end CMS, allowing more flexibility and scalability] and focused on making sure that it was almost instant, rapid page load.”
To simplify the UI, Soletrader reduced the amount of information in front of the customer, providing the user with the correct information at the right time. According to Bordon: “We really try to take the user on a simple journey, where it's clear and obvious where they are, where to go next, and they're presented with the right information at the right time.”
For example, 70-80% of Soletrader's customers use mobile to browse and shop. On the mobile product page there is now a large ‘add to bag’ button, and as users scroll down the page they're given additional product and delivery information. “It's not overbearing or cluttered,” says Bordon. “We tried to really strip it back.”
Soletrader is also utilising AI to offer an intuitive experience. “If customers click on a product that's out of stock in their size, we try to mimic the experience they would get in store. Using AI returns data we drill into that specific product, that brand, that style of shoe, and work out patterns, because different brands and types of shoes have different fits. AI works out the patterns and can advise that it is likely to come up big or small, for example, and can suggest another size or similar product.”
London Tile Company
- London Tile Company’s turnover for the last financial year was £6m (4% down on the previous financial year) with 35% of this coming from online sales
- Migrated from an in-house system to BigCommerce to better focus on CX, leading to a 261% revenue increase within four months
- Users are now able to add products to basket from category pages, without needing to click into a product page
In 2022, London Tile Company migrated a bespoke platform to the BigCommerce Platform and focused on UX, resulting in a 261% increase in revenue within four months.
Jonathan Lett, ecommerce manager at London Tile Company, says the main driver to optimising user experience is removing friction points. From a back-end point of view this includes ensuring page-load speed issues are dealt with in advance. He says: “From a user perspective, we added functionality for people to order free samples or add products to cart from the category page, without having to ever land on a product page.”
London Tile Company has also added reviews on page for social proofing, and coverage calculators for tiles and ancillary products.
To optimise the search functionality, keeping it simple has proved the best approach. “The type of products we do, and the amount applicable for search terms, means that if your title attributes are not weighted correctly the consumer can end up seeing a black tile trim when they’re looking for a black floor tile,” says Lett.
As a result, the retailer uses native search bar functionality and a data-driven approach. This involves looking at the searches monthly, seeing the terms people are searching for, and optimising products and content for these. Lett says that while this manual approach may seem laborious, it helps him stay abreast of shifting trends, identify holes in London Tile Company’s product portfolio and capture common spelling mistakes in brand names.
London Tiles has seen an increase of 47.23% in yearly revenue from year one to year two since focusing on UX, with orders increasing 27.54% from 2022 to 2023. [CHK]
Fine Food Specialist
- London-based luxury food retailer, Fine Food Specialist, which specialises in sourcing niche ingredients, turned over £2m in its latest financial year with 100% of sales online
- It worked with Williams Commerce to enhance its UX and increase the site performance score, boosting loading time speeds and optimising for mobile
Founded in 2010 by Michelin-trained chef Drogo Montagu, Fine Food Specialist sells quality produce and hard-to-find ingredients from around the world. It recently worked with Williams Commerce on enhancing its UX and increasing the site performance score, boosting loading time speeds and optimising for mobile.
As Montagu says: “Williams Commerce spent time watching the behaviour of customers on our website to see where they were getting hampered, frustrated and ultimately leaving the website without completing their purchase.
“Actions such as enlarging and centring the search bar, getting rid of unnecessary copy in the funnel on the way to the payment, making things more obvious for the customer and generally making a better journey were all employed.
“These changes collectively make the website more seamless, giving a better customer journey, which in turn gives a lower bounce rate and more orders.”
The team also implemented ecommerce search solution Klevu, which delivers search results to users based on their intentions and behaviours in real time.
The work resulted in an improvement in the website’s performance, accessibility and SEO scores, which also positively impacted the site’s search-engine visibility.
Montagu says: “If we managed to get an extra three orders per day (which I think is realistic) at £100 for an average order, we are looking at £120-150k extra revenue per annum.”
Montagu believes that is a “good estimate” of what the work achieved.
Naturalmat
- In the past financial year, the retail side of Naturalmat grew 38% year on year to £3.6m. Ecommerce made up approximately 30% of this total and grew 54% year on year
- Naturalmat revamped its online presence and migrated from Magento to Shopify Plus, seeing a 56.4% increase in revenue within six months, with conversion rate improving by 37.5%
- Two separate websites were created for adult beds and matresses versus nursery mattresses, requiring two different brand styles and user journeys
Devon-based mattress and bed retailer Naturalmat sells direct to consumers via its own website or its six UK showrooms, but it was struggling with a slow and unreliable website which wasn’t optimised for mobile.
Working with Shopify Plus agency Swanky, the retailer revamped its online presence and migrated from Magento to Shopify Plus. Within six months, it saw a 56.4% increase in revenue to £1.2m, with conversion rate improving by 37.5%.
As well as migrating platforms, separate storefronts for Naturalmat’s two product ranges – one for adult beds and mattresses, the second for nursery mattresses and furniture – were created, requiring two different brand styles and user journeys.
Naturalmat also wanted the brand’s online store to mimic its bricks-and-mortar experience. To achieve this, customers were interviewed in store, and a prototype of the proposed on-site navigation was also set up, with customers observed as they searched and navigated towards certain products.
User behaviour research from the discovery phase showed that shoppers would often use the top menu to locate information, rather than scrolling down. A new menu section was designed, visually highlighting differences between each product as the user hovers over items. This reduced clicks and accelerated decision-making, as customers no longer needed to visit the individual mattress pages to understand the difference.
While the overall conversion rate improved by more than a third, the customer segment that saw the biggest change was the contingent that came to Naturalmat’s site via direct searches, which increased by 112%.
Dunelm
- Sales rose 4.1% to £1.7bn in FY2023 despite a softer homewares and furniture market, while pre-tax profits grew to £205.4m with a margin of 12%
- Digital sales improved to 37% of the mix
- Investment in a new web platform has delivered results, including an average of 978% improvement in page load speed on its homepage
Home furnishings and accessory retailer Dunelm underwent a major digital transformation initiative in 2022, which included increasing speed for shoppers across web and mobile storefronts, enhancing security and delivering site updates faster at scale.
Results included an average of 978% improvement in page-load speed on its homepage.
The work involved switching to a cloud-based architecture, which allowed Dunelm’s website to better support rapid business growth and provide a faster, smoother experience for customers.
The new platform, Fastly, enables Dunelm teams to deliver personalised customer experiences, as well as simplifying the management of content delivery in one unified place.
Since implementing the platform two years ago, Dunelm has increased its speed, with load testing showing a 500% improvement in page-load speed across the site, with specific pages showing an 800-900% improvement.
Dunelm has also seen a 23% increase in basket performance, a 200x increase in deployments and greater protection of customer data.
In our next instalment of Consumer 2025, we look at how eight retailers are supercharging their marketing with AI. Watch out for it later in year.
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