Driving Online Sales and Footfall for Big W’s Toy Mania: A Big W and Yahoo Case Study

Situation

The modern retailing landscape has easily become one of the most competitive customer driven environments. Personalised experiences are now an expectation and consumers are drawn towards unique and positive interactions to enhance their overall retail experience. To keep pace retailers are constantly tasked with seeking out those platforms best matched to their target customers and create a hassle-free and repeatable experience.

The Challenge

BIG W was faced with a multi-faceted challenge, namely, its retail stores with a deep product mix were unable to fully display their range of childrens outdoor play equipment due to limitations in available retail floor space. Online catalogues may seem like a way to address this, however, shoppers can be hesitant to purchase if they are not fully confident of conceptualising the dimensions and in-home aesthetic of larger sized items. The challenge for BIG W was to strike a meaningful balance between accentuating the shopping experience (even making it enjoyable) while defusing any stress associated with purchasing a product without prior physical interaction.

Solution

BIG W, Woolworths Group at Dentsu and Yahoo partnered to develop a range of engaging augmented reality (AR) ads – built on the Yahoo Immersive Platform – and promoted to families with children across targeted native, display, social channels, in-store and via BIG W’s website.

The AR ads enabled customers via their mobile device to have a 360 degree display of a selected item and view in a real-time location of their choice. When the user is happy with the product and their chosen location they simply click to purchase…making what was once a purchase characterised by a level of uncertainty into a streamlined and fun consumer experience.

The content was also amplified by Yahoo lifestyle editorial, combined with targeted display advertising to ensure maximum scale and relevancy.

Results

Campaign results provided by Yahoo and data intelligence provider, Azira, indicated some amazing digital outcomes in end-user interaction and online conversion of target customers.

The strong interaction component of the AR ads not only enhanced consumer UX, but also positively impacted upon with a noticeable 48% uplift in BIG W store visits from the exposed audience along with a 2.5x uplift in BIG W store visits from native AR ad engagers and a 16% CTR to the online shopping cart. In short, the BIG W and Yahoo AR solution managed to increase purchase confidence, while also accentuating an noticeable uplift in store and website visits.