Shoe Carnival | Case Study
Shoe Carnival Adds ~$1.5m Incremental Top-Line Revenue
Company & Objective
Shoe Carnival (www.shoecarnival.com) is a leading family footwear retailer, providing the convenience of shopping at over 400 store locations, a mobile app, and online at shoecarnival.com and shoestation.com.
Shoe Carnival was looking for a new way to highlight various promotional messages throughout its website in a non-intrusive way. Already power users of Thrive’s Smart Pages and Smart Button, Shoe Carnival was eager to try Thrive’s newest product, Smart Bar, to improve the shopping experience.
In my 25 years of eCommerce product experience, this Smart Bar A/B test was the single most profitable test I’ve ever experienced.
Ned Moore, Head of eCommerce Product
The Process
Thrive set up an A/B Experience Test in Shoe Carnival’s Google Analytics account to measure revenue per active user, conversion rate, and revenue for 50% of users who saw Thrive’s Smart Bar and 50% of users who did not see Smart Bar. While most retailers avoid A/B tests before the peak holiday shopping season, Shoe Carnival went live a week before Black Friday so they could quickly roll it out to 100% of traffic and amplify their Q4 financial results if the test went well.
The Solution
Already power users of Thrive’s Smart Pages and Button, Shoe Carnival was able to add full site and mobile app coverage with Smart Bar. The Shoe Carnival team was able to easily update any type of omnichannel promotion anywhere on the site and personalize the promotional offer down to the individual shopper, segment, campaign, and audience level. This capability allowed the Company to be selectively promotional, covering the whole site and mobile app experiences in an intelligent way that didn’t incur additional internal resources or interfere with the site experience. “Thrive’s Smart Bar had the exact capabilities we were lacking,” said Ned Moore, Head of eCommerce Product. He added, “My team finds it easy to use; it supports personalization and every type of omnichannel offer we need.”