242 %
increase in revenue YoY
101 %
increase in transactions
267.50 %
increase in AOV
The challenge
How do you increase PPC profit without spending all your time on it?
Garden4Less is one of the UK’s largest online retailers selling an extensive range of garden equipment and furniture. They care deeply about their customer service and ensure that all 15,000 products are of the highest quality.
This is matched with a high ambition: to become the UK’s leading online garden retailer. As well as this, they wanted to maintain a market presence in paid media whilst ensuring the client has a steady supply of stocked products to continue to sell at a total marketing spend of 5% of revenue. They knew that to achieve a goal like this, they were going to need some help.
The manual programming of thousands of advertising bids by their in-house team was holding them back. Precious hours were being wasted on the time-intensive task and they were at risk of missed sales opportunities from simple human error. That’s when Hallam stepped in to help.
The solution
Hallam developed several bespoke automation tools that filter potential customers into different categories:
- Window shoppers
- Higher intent to buy
- Products with higher profit margins
- Branded products
- Unbranded products
By doing this, it was easier to spend less on low converting items and more on high-end items and searches which maximised ROI.
Each product group Gardens4Less has contains over 3,000 variations – this used to mean days of manual work for bidding until Hallam implemented automation tools. Running 24/7, they automate over 30m checks a year, which not only saves time but also removes human error and emotional decision making.
With this extra time, Hallam also carried out split user testing – a scientific method to measure and track the best conversion rate opportunities. This made targeted improvements to their website and CRO using data from over a million visitors.
Obstacles
The coronavirus pandemic hit and this caused serious stock issues for Gardens4Less, with the cost and delivery lead times of obtaining stock nearly tripling overnight. This drastically changed what was profitable for them and what products they needed to sell.
Our required ROAS quadrupled at a time when we were pushing more spend towards products without a proven record of conversion. For these reasons we adapted our approach and focused on specific categories of the product catalogue, rather than viewing it as a whole.
Mainly the garden furniture segments where sales for the client were heavily monopolised by the items brand and type. By doing this we managed to diversify the spend of this segment of products without negatively impacting the best seller sales. We saw sales for products the client had never sold online before reaching quarterly sales of up to £200,000.
The results
We helped Gardens4Less became one of the UK’s leading online garden retailers, with a massive amount of growth in a short time. In Q1 of 2020 alone, we saw revenue grow from £1.5m to £11.7m year on year.
- 242% increase in revenue YoY
- 101% increase in transactions
- 267.5% increase in AOV
‘Efficient management of a successful ecommerce operation requires the right skill sets, and the team from Hallam are leaders in the field. When it comes to online advertising, they have the expertise and experience to make our business stand out from the competition. We continue to grow, and this is due in no small part to the great work from Hallam.’
Robert Osborne, Director, Garden4Less
Do you have a similar project in mind?
We don’t work with only the world’s biggest brands. Our clients include many small to medium-sized businesses, non-profits and startups.
Just tell us what you want to achieve, and we’ll let you know what experience we have in your sector, and how we can help you. Alternatively, you can check out more of our work here. Our methodology has been successful in almost all sectors, delivering double and triple-digit improvements on average.
