Wickes’ e-commerce business has increased conversion rates on its website by 10 per cent as a result of introducing a system to test its site content.

In the nine months since the retailer deployed the content intelligence system from Maxy-miser it has doubled its online sales and generated an estimated£750,000 in extra revenue.

Although the site had grown substantially in terms of visitor numbers, the retailer felt that tweaks to the site could help improve sales. Using the multivariant testing system, Wickes has been able to refine pages such as the checkout and homepage.

Wickes e-commerce general manager Keith Hamilton said that the system had taken the emotion out of website testing, and allowed the retailer to repeatedly refine pages until it is satisfied that they are optimised.

Not all the changes made have been intuitive. Hamilton said: “Previously we had tried to give the customer lots of information about everything on offer, but it turned out that less is more.

“In the DIY and repairs business, a lot of browsing goes on.
It’s difficult to know whether customers are returning to the site later, or have gone on to make a purchase in-store, but it gives us great confidence to know that, from an online perspective, we’ve maximised our site content and layout to deliver better results.”

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