Bob’s Discount Furniture

Maximizing Search Efficiency: Hycentra’s Bloomreach Enhancement for Bob’s Discount Furniture

Bob's Discount Furniture

Bob’s Discount Furniture, a prominent leader in the furniture retail industry, operates 177 stores across the United States as of July 2024. Known for its extensive range of stylish and affordable furniture, Bob’s Discount Furniture has built a strong reputation for delivering quality products and exceptional value to its customers. With a commitment to customer satisfaction and a robust retail presence, Bob’s continues to be a driving force in the industry, consistently evolving to meet the needs of its growing customer base.

Bob’s Discount Furniture offers a wide range of products, including living room, bedroom, and dining room furniture, as well as home decor and accessories. Known for its distinctive approach to customer service and its extensive selection of budget-friendly options, Bob’s has established a strong presence in the competitive retail furniture market. The company’s dedication to affordability and customer satisfaction has made it a go-to destination for millions of households looking to furnish their homes without compromising on quality.

Challenge

Bob’s Discount Furniture faced significant hurdles with their Bloomreach implementation, which hampered their ability to leverage the full potential of this powerful tool. The issues were multifaceted, stemming from inadequate implementation and a lack of expertise, which resulted in unmet expectations and dissatisfaction among the C-Level executives. The key challenges included:

  • Lack of Bloomreach Expertise:
    The previous service provider lacked sufficient experience and knowledge in implementing Bloomreach
    products, leading to suboptimal results.
  • Hardcoded Customizations:
    Many hardcoded elements were used in the implementation, resulting in a lack of personalization and ineffective
    search results for customers.
  • Underwhelming Performance and Executive Discontent:
    The business did not see an increase in sales performance, which led to a belief that Bloomreach was
    unsuitable. This, coupled with dissatisfaction among C-Level executives who were unhappy with the investment
    due to the failure to achieve anticipated results, highlighted the implementation issues rather than the
    product itself.

  • Lack of Comprehensive Expertise:
    Finding a provider with the necessary skills in SAP Hybris, Bloomreach Content, and Bloomreach Discovery,
    combined with the business and e-commerce experience required for effective implementation, proved challenging.

Solution

Hycentra addressed the challenges with Bob’s Discount Furniture’s Bloomreach implementation by optimizing the search experience and enhancing personalization. Our expert team provided targeted guidance and made the following improvements:

  • Optimized Bloomreach Search Experience: We refined the search experience by moving away from the Bloomreach blueprint implementation, ensuring it was tailored to Bob’s unique needs and improving search accuracy and relevance for customers.
  • Pathway Recommendation Widget: Hycentra guided Bob’s team in properly creating and configuring the Pathway Recommendation Widget. This allowed for better product recommendations, leading to more personalized shopping experiences for customers.
  • Merchandising Best Practices: We provided guidance on the best practices for product merchandising within Bloomreach, helping Bob’s optimize product displays and placements to increase visibility and drive sales.
  • Unlocking Full Pathway Recommendation Potential: By removing hardcoded widgets and unlocking the full potential of Bloomreach’s Pathway Recommendation, we enabled dynamic and highly relevant product suggestions that enhanced the overall shopping experience and drove conversion rates.

Results

The solutions implemented by Hycentra had a significant impact on Bob’s Discount Furniture, driving impressive growth across multiple performance metrics:

  • Site Search Performance:
    • Search Usage: Achieved double-digit growth year-over-year (YoY), indicating increased engagement with the search feature.
    • Search Conversion Rate (CVR): Saw double-digit growth year-to-date (YTD), reflecting improved efficiency in driving sales through search interactions.
    • Overall Site CVR: Demonstrated double-digit growth YTD, highlighting the positive impact of the optimized search experience on overall conversion rates.
  • Category/PLP (Product Listing Page) Performance:
    • User Engagement: Users viewing product listing pages (PLPs) increased by over 30%, showing enhanced interest and engagement with product categories.
    • PLP Conversion Rate: Significant improvements in PLP CVR were seen, driving higher sales from category pages.
    • PLP Revenue: Achieved double-digit growth in PLP revenue from quarter to quarter, demonstrating the effectiveness of optimized merchandising.
  • Product Recommendation Performance:
    • Algorithm and Widget Usage: The use of various algorithms and recommendation widgets increased by 15%-28% quarter-over-quarter, resulting in more personalized and effective product suggestions for customers.

These results underscore the success of Hycentra’s optimization efforts, directly contributing to higher customer engagement, improved conversion rates, and significant revenue growth.