Case Studies
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Studio.co.uk
case study

Growth acceleration in a challenging economic climate that leads to increased revenue and reduces costs

Studio.co.uk (a part of Frasers Group) is a market-leading digital value retailer providing a broad range of products and flexible payment options that allow customers to easily purchase necessities and “nice-to-haves.” Selling more than 40,000 items online, Studio.co.uk has more than 2.2 million active customers. With an AOV of +£50 and ASV of +£150 per customer, Studio.co.uk’s annual revenue for 2021 was £578.6m (92.9% online orders), and its profits (before tax) were £41.7m.

Studio.co.uk’s mission is to become the UK’s #1 digital value retailer for families that want payment flexibility. To achieve this goal, they are focusing on 3 key growth pillars:

  • Choice

Studio.co.uk strives to provide customers with broad product choices to increase spending per customer and their share of customers’ wallets.

  • Value

Studio.co.uk aims to build its core customer base, which is attracted to the unbeatable value they offer.

  • Payment Options

Studio.co.uk wants to broaden its appeal to a wider customer base that seeks great value and flexible payment options by offering an innovative, tailored credit proposition.

Creating an enhanced customer experience

Key Challenges

Studio.co.uk recognised that creating an enhanced customer experience is essential to growth. This requires a best-in-class CRO aligned with best-in-class CX to maximise marketing budgets under pressure. Some of the challenges Studio.co.uk may face in reaching its growth goals include:

1. Cost of Living Crisis: The near-term economic climate will be tested as the cost of living, energy, fuel, food, and interest rates will depress disposable household incomes. As a result, Studio.co.uk will be pressured to maximise every penny of their marketing spend.

2. Rising Material Costs: The rising cost of materials is expected to bring the biggest downward pressure on the retailing market. Consumers cutting back on their spending may impact Studio.co.uk’s revenues, increase costs, and squeeze their net profit.

3. Increase in Customer Acquisition Costs: If Studio.co.uk doesn’t have the items customers want and can’t provide suitable alternatives, their marketing may bring customers to their website only to disappoint them. This increases customer acquisition costs.

4. Selling Stock Within Time: Optimising the sale of available items helps Studio.co.uk minimise the risk of being left with out-of-season lines, which ultimately puts pressure on costs and profit margins.

5. Supply Chain Management: Failure to successfully manage and leverage supplier and brand partner relationships could impact targets, performance, and long-term growth.

Endless Gain Helps Accelerate Growth

Since 2017, Studio.co.uk has partnered with Endless Gain to achieve its growth goals. Endless Gain and Studio.co.uk have continually addressed customer opportunities (needs, pain points, and desires) that allow Studio.co.uk to achieve its growth objectives and create business value.

Some of these opportunities include:

1. Increasing the share of their customers’ ever-tightening purses

Through multiple experiments designed to optimise the popularity of certain products, keep the basket at the forefront of the shopping experience, and help customers buy additional products that complement those in their basket, revenue gains of between 1.3% and 3.2% have been achieved.

2. Offering flexible payment options

Promoting and offering flexible payment options throughout the customer lifecycle has increased overall sales. This is especially true in the more profitable credit customers segment, where sales have increased between 1.2% and 2.6%.

3. Improve digital marketing performance

Optimisation and experimentation have improved the performance of Studio.co.uk’s digital marketing investment, driving down paid search costs per acquisition by as much as 4%.

4. Improving customers’ self-service ability

Customers wishing to return products struggled to complete this task on their own, so they had to contact Studio.co.uk’s call center. After better understanding customer pain points like this, Endless Gain designed a new digital self-serve experience. This reduced call center contacts for returns by 43%.

Addressing Customer Opportunities to Create Business Value

By integrating a detailed understanding of digital marketing with an improved customer experience, Studio.co.uk, and Endless Gain are energetically addressing opportunities (customers’ needs, pain points, and desires) that have the biggest impact on achieving their desired outcomes and creating business value.

Being a part of Fraser Group, Studio.co.uk is now in its strongest position ever to achieve its goal of becoming the UK’s #1 digital value retailer. Having the right products in the right place, at the right time, and the right price while offering flexible payment options are key components of realising this goal.

Along with an improved customer experience consistently delivering higher sales growth with less digital marketing spend, Studio.co.uk is in a leading position to accelerate growth through this challenging economic climate. They are future-proofing the business for continued growth during challenging economic times.

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"Beyond their expertise in optimisation, they are professional, likable, and genuinely interested in our business. Nothing is too much trouble for them. Their method of working suits us perfectly and continues to strengthen our partnership."

Craig Elwell
Head of E-commerce | Studio.co.uk