After a number of years of explosive growth, Tegeldepot was ready to professionalize the e-commerce dossier. They came to us for the first time in 2016 and about 4 years after the first review, we still speak of a successful collaboration. After a redesign and migration to a new platform, it was time to update the case.
The Dutch bathroom and sanitary industry is an example of a traditional market where (price) transparency is hard to find. Entrepreneurs Eelco Kalsbeek and Chahid Charrak seized the opportunity to change this. About 10 years ago, they started a small tile trade in Zeewolde. Tegeldepot has now grown into one of the largest sanitary specialists in the Netherlands and Belgium with a turnover of more than 21 million (according to Twinkle-100 2019), a large webshop and two physical stores. The key to success? A combination of transparent pricing, a distinctive product range and a full funnel data-driven marketing strategy.
Unlike fast moving consumer goods, the purchase funnel for luxury goods is quite long. After all, you think twice about buying a new car, kitchen or bathroom cabinet. Salespeople in these sectors are cleverly responding to this by using fairly traditional sales techniques. With great promises, high discounts and “now or never” promotions, you as a consumer are lured to the showroom. Due to the lack of price transparency, as a consumer, you often know little about the real price-quality ratio, so you are completely dependent on the seller.
“A large part of the profit was in the area of personalization — one of our specialties.”
At the beginning of 2016, Tegeldepot came to Yellowgrape for a review. Indeed, the year before, the webshop had migrated from a custom-made platform to Magento, resulting in a significant drop in conversion (-40%). In addition, the canals were under pressure due to the explosive growth. Until then, the general approach was mainly driven by an SEO/SEA strategy. The right keywords were simply advertised and organic search rankings were strong. Both Tegeldepot and Yellowgrape quickly agreed: there was more to it, much more.
In order to continue to grow healthily and get the conversion back to the level, Yellowgrape developed an omnichannel online marketing strategy, based on a traffic plan. Indeed, by planning growth, you can work much more efficiently and create insight into the required traffic, conversion and order value per channel in order to ultimately achieve the intended turnover. Spoiler alert: in four years, we have jointly achieved a growth of 500%.
Ads, Affiliate & Retargeting
Yellowgrape restructured Google Ads campaigns and implemented a data-driven attribution model, which quickly led to a significant increase in volume in Google and Bing while maintaining ROI. With the expansion of a strong cross-device retargeting campaign, we were able to get the most out of it. We have also made significant steps in the field of affiliate marketing in a short period of time. For example, important publishers and price comparators have been added to the network, with whom we have built up good contacts.
E-commerce personalization
A large part of the profit was in the field of personalization — one of our specialties. We've packed a coherent package of notifications, recommendations, pop-ups and triggered emails. Sophisticated analyses run in the background. Who is the customer, what are his current needs? Personalization is a combination of knowledge and the right dosage.
One explanation for the declining return was the fact that mainly A-brands were being pushed. However, the well-known sanitary brands are not distinctive in the product range. In addition, competition on these items had increased considerably and the margin decreased. While advisors in Tegeldepot's showrooms can focus and successfully focus on selling private brands, this is simply less easy online. Although the quality of their 'own' products is not inferior to that of the A-brands, consumers who buy products via the webshop are more likely to lean towards the 'trusted' brands. We had to be able to change this.
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Tegeldepot further expanded the range of its own brands with modern items that are in line with the latest bathroom trends. For example, Tegeldepot was (one of) the first sanitary shops in the Netherlands to introduce a completely matt black product line, ultra-modern taps in gold and copper were added to the collection, and they came with army green and old pink toilet bowls. The tile range has also been expanded to include Old Dutch variants in trendy colors. In short: everything with a high Pinterest and Instagram content.
Purchase funnel from A to Z
In order to be top of mind with the customer from orientation to decision, we developed a streamlined strategy for each phase. Since most consumers start orienting themselves at home on the couch and watching pictures on social media, we have fully focused on social advertising in the form of inspirational content. The new, trendy and Instagram-proof items from the private brands are ideal for this. We are still strongly committed to search and SEO, which allow us to generate relevant traffic to the webshop. Through smart retargeting and personalization elements, we gradually drag consumers through the funnel.
We have fully depended on this new marketing strategy on the private brands and renewed product lines. First of all, we focused on improving the online visibility of these brands via Google Shopping. Tegeldepot offers a selection of top products based on popularity, price and margin. Yellowgrape targets all general keywords for its powerful core range of private label items and ensures maximum visibility. Due to the higher margins that are associated with this, we can lower the return targets and thus capture 90-100% of the search volume for the generic search terms that are important to Tegeldepot, which improves profitability.
Online-offline return
In addition, we have expanded the existing campaigns with local inventory ads. These contain relevant, up-to-date information about, among other things, the price, popularity, availability of the products, but also the distance to the nearest showroom. In doing so, we encourage offline shopping. In order to continuously improve the campaigns, we have made the effect of online activities on physical store visits transparent and measured (ROPO effect).
On the website, we also ensure that the private brands are pushed to the maximum. Using data collection and profile recognition, we are then able to retarget consumers cross-device.
Magento 2 and Redesign
We used the platform's migration to Magento 2 to give the design a new look. From a UX point of view, this was a big challenge, as Tegeldepot sells many products with a wide variety of options and combinations. In addition, the design had to be able to respond to the different phases of the purchase process. Both exploratory website visitors, who are looking for inspiration for a completely new bathroom, and bargain hunters who ensure quick conversion, had to be able to find their way. This is reflected in the new configurators in two ways. On the one hand, we offer the possibility to put products together intuitively, and on the other hand, we guide consumers in the purchase process through images and explanations of steps where this is necessary.
The landing pages contain inspirational content that responds to the latest bathroom trends and are provided with clear filtering. In addition, the category menu is always accessible, which has significantly improved user-friendliness. This also applies to the check-out flow, which we revised based on extensive A/B tests. Finally, we struck a balance between stimulating online conversion and generating offline traffic. This was done by consistently highlighting showrooms and dynamic notifications based on the location of the webshop visitor.
