Fashion etailer Boden has increased sales and conversion rates after installing software to help it find the optimum way of presenting its content.

Sales have risen between 4% and 5% for each customer as a result of small changes to the UK site.

The software, from Autonomy, lets Boden make changes such as the colour of certain buttons or different types of product pictures.

It allows Boden to show different versions of the website to a certain proportion of the site traffic and analyse customers’ buying habits.

The software also lets the etailer decide what works best in different markets. At present it uses it in the UK and US, and will begin using it in Germany and Austria.

Boden ecommerce manager Mark Batty said: “A lot of people have got opinions on what works best in websites. This takes the guesswork away. We can now work out what works best.”

He said there were subtle differences in the UK and US needs. In the US, for example, websites generally had more visible customer service information on product pages, such as the promotion of free returns and a 24-hour call centre number.

Boden has also found that changing the product pictures in the UK on its Mini Boden kidswear range section led to a 4% to 5% uplift for each customer. Batty said customers responded better to pictures of flat products rather than model pictures.

He added that the software lets the ecommerce team make small alterations to the site without asking the IT department to spend time making major technical changes.

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