Maplin – how NOT to trade a website!!!

8 Jan 2015 Dominic Comments Off on Maplin – how NOT to trade a website!!!

I was recently sorting through some old files and I came across a few projects I undertook to look at why conversion rate was so poor on one leading retailers website – and why sales were suffering as a result. That retailer was Maplin and at the time they were going through a particularly rough time as part of a senior management shakeup.

I spent some time really digging down into the nitty gritty of the site and tried to understand how they traded the site and what, if any, measure they were taking to address the various issues and bugs which were experienced on the site.

Needless to say what I found was a bit of a mess – as I understood it there was no range planning, no real focus on conversion improvement a a bit of a cavalier attitude to the customer experience. I will leave this for you to run through however it does not make for a pleasant experience!

As you can see, the customer really had to work hard to try and actually successfully complete a transaction such was the poor customer journey. Whilst I was given access to their analytics, you did not have to a brain surgeon to spot the problems.

Having presented this to senior management I was then asked what I would do to improve their social media presence – which was inconsequential at the time. I advised that my main focus would be on focusing on improving conversion through improving customer journey before even attempting to look at their social presence.

Whilst the site is a lot better now, I decided to place an order today and experience the journey myself …. only to find that they cannot find my registered address!!!!

In the consultancy business it is paramount we do all we can to highlight and prioritize the real issues and not the nice to haves. In this case, improving social media was a nice to have!

Categories: All Posts, Conversion, Trading Tips

Tags: Checkout, Conversion