Case Study: The Product Bundling Strategy That Increased Revenue Per User By 86%

DockATot: Brand overview

The DockATot brand was born in 2006 when Founder Lisa Kotsianis identified a need for a new baby product that was comfy, functional and safe, but also aesthetically pleasing. Their multi-award-winning, multifunctional baby Dock has become a huge hit with parents across the globe and a staple nursery accessory. Recently, DockATot have expanded their product portfolio with home and travel collections, including pillows, cushions, play tents and a changing bag.

Based in the US market, but also serving multiple European countries, DockATot’s primary customers are parents and grandparents of babies and children aged between 0-36 months, as well as gift givers in this category.

Swanky have been working with DockATot since 2019, first supporting their direct to consumer expansion in the UK, and then helping them navigate an ecommerce rebrand. More recently, we’ve been following a commercially-guided conversion rate optimisation (CRO) strategy to drive digital growth for this ambitious baby brand.

This particular case study dives into the tests we ran to better promote DockATot’s accessories.

The challenge: Missing upsell opportunities

The customer surveys we conducted showed that a large majority of visitors to the DockATot website are there with a particular Dock product in mind. Their journey through the website is focused and efficient, therefore they often miss the large range of additional accessories and products also available to purchase, many of which are essential when buying a Dock.

We also found that a large number of customers are gift givers, many of whom are likely to want to spend more than the price of a single Dock. Often directed to the website through a specific URL or gift list, these users likely have a high purchase intent but are unaware of the other DockATot products on sale.

Having identified that upsell opportunities weren’t being leveraged properly across the site, we pinpointed an opportunity to better promote Dock accessories and therefore increase average order value (AOV).

What we did

Having never tested any strategies to upsell complementary products on the DockATot website, we wanted to start with a test to sense-check and validate our hypothesis.

Step 1: Promoting spare covers on product pages

Spare covers are essential for any user purchasing a Dock. In fact, it’s recommended that customers have a minimum of two covers, ensuring the Dock can be used continuously even if one cover is being washed.

At the time of our test, spare covers were not visible on the product pages. As a result, users would often miss the need for adding these to their purchase.

We hypothesised that by introducing the option to add a spare cover to a purchase on the Dock product pages, we would increase spare cover sales and therefore increase the site AOV.

Our test variant featured a “spare cover block” underneath the Add to Cart button:

When clicked on, this opened up a new popup window where customers could choose a design for their cover and add the product to their cart:

Results

Interestingly, we didn’t see a large increase in AOV when comparing the variant to the control. However, we did see a 7% increase in revenue per user (RPU), as a result of a 7% increase in conversion rate.

Whilst not driving a big increase in our target metric, the spare cover block had a good engagement rate, and we saw a significant increase in the sale of spare covers, which led us to progress to stage two of this testing stream. This highlights that ecommerce testing isn’t just about “winning” – there’s lots to be learnt about user behaviour, even from tests that result in “losing outcomes”.

Step 2: Implementing product bundling

In this next step, we wanted to test the effectiveness of a product bundling strategy, measuring its impact on AOV primarily.

Product bundling is a popular tactic amongst ecommerce retailers, which involves packaging complementary products as a group of items to be purchased together. Sometimes, bundles are offered at a discount. Implementing a product bundling strategy has been shown to drive sales, boost AOV and increase product awareness, amongst other benefits.

We experimented with the implementation of a “Bundle Builder”, which guided users through a streamlined multi-step process to select a Dock, spare cover and accessories.

Users were provided with a discount in incremental value based on the amount they had added to their cart. They were also given prompts to tell them how much they needed to spend to reach the discount threshold, encouraging users to add additional items to their cart.

Results

72% of all sessions that enter the Bundle Builder add a Dock to their cart. This makes the Bundle Builder the most successful route-to-purchase, with a 30% higher conversion rate than the average conversion rate for a product page.

We also saw a 55% increase in AOV when the Bundle Builder was tested against the control, as well as an 86% increase in RPU.

Since the Bundle Builder was pushed live to 100% of traffic, we’ve seen a 15% increase in AOV month-on-month, and an 8.5% increase in AOV in comparison to the 2022 yearly average.

What happens next?

As part of our ongoing CRO strategy for DockATot, we’re now planning to work our way through a prioritised roadmap of optimisation tests for the Bundle Builder, starting by increasing awareness of the tool for all users.

Having a detailed step-by-step schedule of tests in place ensures we’re taking a strategic, data-led approach to CRO, rather than simply going off gut instincts. There are plenty of other benefits of having a testing roadmap to follow, including being better able to plan resources, getting sign off on tests ahead of time and ensuring everyone has visibility over an experimentation programme. Check out our guide to creating a testing roadmap to learn more about why it’s important for your business.

Award-winning CRO specialists

As the UK’s CRO Agency of the Year (UK Digital Growth Awards 2021), we know what it takes to drive impressive digital growth through ecommerce testing, personalisation and other commercially-guided CRO services. Our dedicated team of CRO specialists combine creativity and innovation with data and technology to unlock their clients’ ecommerce potential, driving millions of pounds worth of additional revenue.

Contact one of our Shopify Plus Experts today to find out more about our CRO programmes.