Digital-first Sweaty Betty sprints past competitors

The past 18 months have seen glob­al retail dis­rupt­ed with an inten­si­ty felt by few oth­er sec­tors, ampli­fy­ing the essen­tial nature of online engage­ment and accel­er­at­ing the urgency to embrace a dig­i­tal-first, data-dri­ven approach focused square­ly on the cus­tomer. Brands that con­tin­ued to invest wise­ly in dig­i­tal dur­ing the pan­dem­ic have been reward­ed by rapid growth in dif­fi­cult con­di­tions, includ­ing pre­mi­um activewear and lifestyle brand Sweaty Bet­ty.

Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly been sup­port­ed by dig­i­tal com­merce agency Tryzens in cre­at­ing a new online store in 2018, Sweaty Bet­ty has worked with the agency to expand its ecom­merce capa­bil­i­ties. When the pan­dem­ic struck and coun­tries went into lock­down, dra­mat­i­cal­ly reshap­ing the retail land­scape, the com­pa­ny act­ed quick­ly to ensure it was able to deliv­er the best pos­si­ble expe­ri­ence across chan­nels in an online-only envi­ron­ment.

Recog­nis­ing that expe­ri­ence should lead, sup­port­ed by tech­nol­o­gy, Sweaty Bet­ty embarked on an entire site refresh. User expe­ri­ence research and observ­ing cus­tomers’ reac­tions to dif­fer­ent designs pro­vid­ed valu­able qual­i­ta­tive infor­ma­tion on top of the sig­nif­i­cant wealth of quan­ti­ta­tive data Sweaty Bet­ty already held on, for exam­ple, shop­ping behav­iour and aban­doned bas­ket rates. One insight the research revealed was that most cus­tomers pre­fer per­son­alised rec­om­mend­ed items vis­i­ble for pur­chase in their bas­ket at the start of a shop.

Guid­ed by the insights, Tryzens helped Sweaty Bet­ty opti­mise a new bas­ket design that shows rec­om­mend­ed prod­ucts when a bas­ket is emp­ty, tai­lored by how the user shops and pop­u­lar styles. The site now has a seam­less one-page check­out with pay­ment and deliv­ery options, includ­ing click and col­lect from Wait­rose stores.

In line with its glob­al growth ambi­tions, Sweaty Bet­ty also launched a ded­i­cat­ed Ger­man site and a cross-bor­der solu­tion that enables it to deliv­er to more than 200 coun­tries and pro­vide a localised expe­ri­ence, includ­ing cur­ren­cy, pric­ing, deliv­ery and tax, for 120 mar­kets. This has fuelled growth in inter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions by more than 100%.

“We always build our expe­ri­ences with our cus­tomer in mind, though with so many avenues to explore, it becomes invalu­able to have the right advice at the right time from your dig­i­tal part­ner,” says Annabel Thor­burn, senior vice-present of ecom­merce at Sweaty Bet­ty. “Our part­ner­ship has a high lev­el of trust, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and align­ment, which means we work towards the same goals and achieve them with agili­ty.”

Thanks to its dig­i­tal-first men­tal­i­ty and aware­ness of con­sumer trends, clients of Tryzens grow at two-times the indus­try aver­age. As busi­ness­es look to con­nect with cus­tomers on a deep­er lev­el, dri­ving loy­al­ty and reten­tion, one key ecom­merce trend that Tryzens antic­i­pates accel­er­at­ing in impor­tance is per­son­al­i­sa­tion of the user expe­ri­ence.

In a recent study by Tryzens, just 6% of British con­sumers said they didn’t know per­son­al­i­sa­tion exist­ed, indi­cat­ing peo­ple are well accus­tomed to tar­get­ed expe­ri­ences. How­ev­er, sen­ti­ments towards it are mixed. While 37% describe it as “fan­tas­tic”, at least in prin­ci­ple, one in five call it “annoy­ing” and 12% say it is “creepy”.

The research also revealed a demo­graph­ic split. While con­sumers aged between 25 and 34 call per­son­al­i­sa­tion “fan­tas­tic and help­ful”, only 13% of over-65s agree. Mean­while, six in 10 younger con­sumers say they want their shop­ping expe­ri­ence to be spe­cif­ic to them, com­pared with just 34% in the old­er group. Over half of all respon­dents say per­son­al­i­sa­tion enables them to see the best offers and con­tent. As mil­len­ni­als become the most dom­i­nant con­sumer group, it’s clear there will be grow­ing demand for per­son­al­i­sa­tion.

“Per­son­al­i­sa­tion pro­vides an expe­ri­ence that is com­pelling, pos­i­tive and engag­ing,” says Dan Foun­tain, man­ag­ing direc­tor for the UK and Ire­land at Tryzens. “Expe­ri­ences need to become more nat­ur­al, intu­itive and adapt­ed to each cus­tomer, from brows­ing to pur­chase method and even deliv­ery pref­er­ences. The key for any busi­ness is to real­ly under­stand cus­tomer sen­ti­ment and pref­er­ence at an indi­vid­ual lev­el, and to take that learn­ing and craft it into every touch­point with your brand for a seam­less expe­ri­ence that res­onates for them.”

To down­load Tryzens’ per­son­al­i­sa­tion cus­tomer sur­vey with exclu­sive insights from over 2000 respon­dents, vis­it https://tryzens.com/personalisation-july-2021/

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