How Moneyspyder increased DC4UK.com's sales 2

Acquisition Strategy

DC4U had focused on email as the primary customer acquisition route with a large initial effort in building a database of email addresses. There were, of course issues with the organisation of the database during this initial push:

• Source tracking


• Identifying cost per acquisition
  


• Generating data on email performance


• Segmentation


• Platform robustness

Moneyspyder's analytics guru, Dr. Mike Baxter cast his expert eye over the data James had gathered and through in-depth analysis and a collective effort was able to provide the crucial answers to the questions regarding email performance, organisation of the data and the cost per acquisition.

...and that's useful 'how' exactly?

These answers on their own yielded crucial insight into the email campaign performance but coupling these answers with strategic insight has enabled DC4U to know what emails perform, to understand why the emails perform, to target customers, product ranges and promotions specifically and to know based on hard evidence that the money spent on a campaign will yield the expected return on investment.

Ultimately, the sales figures speak for themselves - 128% increase in sales revenue in 4 months.

Next, we'll look at the Moneyspyder ecommerce platform in more depth, why it works well for DC4U and how the inherent flexibility has been capitalised to add to the efforts discussed so far.

Moneyspyder, Evolution and PCI DSS compliance

Moneyspyder has always considered safety and security as our highest priorities - a veritable security sieve of a site may convert fantastically well initially but it is still a security sieve and as customers get to know and understand this, their lack of trust will surely erode conversion to dust.

So, being thought leaders in e-commerce, shortly after our inception as a company we embarked on a mission to attain PCI DSS compliance - as described on WikiPedia:

PCI is considered one of the more comprehensive data security standards in a cluster of regulations that have emerged over the past decade; Basel II, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), Health Insurance Portability Act (HIPAA), Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, California State Bulletin 1386. PCI is regarded as being relatively more prescriptive than these other laws.

Having identified a partner who specialised in, amongst other areas of IT security, PCI DSS compliance we worked closely with Evolution to understand what PCI compliance would mean to us, our clients and their customers and how to achieve the required standards to qualify.

Joining forces with Evolution and Engine Yard, Moneyspyder was ratified as PCI DSS compliant in July 2007. We are delighted with the strength and reliability of the collective solution we offer to our clients and can highly recommend working with Evolution in the arena of security and PCI DSS compliance.

Matthew Tyler, PCI Practice Manager with Evolution Group:

"As a QSA it is Evolution’s role to assist our customers in attaining and maintaining Compliance to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

The PCI DSS is the most rigorous and most detailed compliance standard currently in any industry and the attainment of compliance to this standard takes both a commitment from the stakeholders in the business as well as, in most cases, a vast amount of work.

As PCI Practice Manager, I am extremely pleased that we have ratified MoneySpyder as a fully PCI DSS compliant organisation and were extremely impressed with the technical knowledge within their organisation and their willingness to adopt change. They have attained PCI DSS corporate compliance in the shortest possible time and this is solely due to their commitment to their customers and their skill sets."

How Moneyspyder increased DC4UK.com's sales 1

This is the first post describing how Moneyspyder increased sales by 128% for DC4UK. This was a multi-pronged effort covering all aspects of the current business - there is more to come though - success is never final!

Introduction

First some background: Moneyspyder worked with DC4U initially on a consultative basis with James spending 1 day every two weeks getting to know the DC4U team and aligning their business strategy ready for growth. James had identified the business as having huge potential so in May 2007 Moneyspyder launched the new DC4UK.com site on the Moneyspyder platform so that the business had an appropriate platform on which to base this growth.

The big decision

Crucially, DC4UK.com and Moneyspyder jointly made the decision to port the site onto the new platform with as little change to the customer facing website as possible. This meant that we could use the strength and flexibility of the Moneyspyder technology to introduce change in a controlled manner. Controlling change, and importantly measuring the effects of change have meant that all changes have meaning and value to the business.

Change and measurement

For example, a change to the presentation of product colours and sizes showing stock status was demonstrated to reduce frustration in not finding products have made size and colour choices.

Further to this, not all changes were immediately visible: Using YSlow to understand how pages were being downloaded enabled significant speed improvements to be made with no impact to site reliability.

Finally, an exercise in data cleansing and validation ensured that the effects of the changes described above were accurately measurable without being soiled by 'noise' from poor customer experience or data impregnated with HTML.

Thus, DC4UK and Moneyspyder had in place, a culture of control, reliability, partnership and change and measurement on which to build the future success of the company.

Sales increase - 128% in 4 months

Following September’s monthly review meeting, Moneyspyder have increased online sales at DC4UK.com by 128% since working with the disposable fashion retailer. The change has resulted from a three fold focus on e-mail messaging (value), site usability (category and image display management) along with check out design (removal of customer accounts and simplifying the existing 7 steps to 3).

This backed by the continued delivery of the evolving Moneyspyder platform is looking good to exceed stretch targets by the end of the year.

Hello and welcome to our blog. We are passionate about data, taking the 'think' out of ecommerce, cool technology and good manners. We take 'not being evil' to the next level and stay there!

We will be posting news about our clients, their successes and how we enable them to maximise their business potential.

We will talk about acting on data - not gut feel or whims. We will be telling you how we use the latest technology such as Ruby on Rails, the latest analytics techniques and sound business expertise in combination with hard evidence and an excellent partner network to create an unbeatable formula for success in ecommerce.

We're excited about it - we hope you will be too!