Petit Bateau, the French clothing brand, wanted to understand the online-to-offline behavior of its customers. With insights from Google Analytics, it was able to understand how mobile and online shopping drives conversions—and how to better allocate its digital marketing budget.
Goals
Develop better understanding of online-to-offline behavior
Approach
Uploaded 36 days of in-store purchase data into Google Analytics
Matched traffic from logged-in website users to in-store purchases made with loyalty cards
Results
44% of in-store buyers visited the site within seven days prior to their in-store purchase
Consumers with the highest in-store basket value conduct up to 3X more research online before their purchases
Mobile visitors convert in-store at an 11% higher rate than desktop visitors, while also spending 8% more on in-store purchases
6X higher return on ad spend with AdWords than on classic online ad spend, with in-store sales incorporated
The Challenge
Petit Bateau customers in France can shop in 153 physical stores and on Petit-bateau.fr. While the brand knew that many people research products online before going into a physical store to make a purchase, it didn't understand the online-to-offline behavior of its customer base. A significant number of online users log in to its website using the company's loyalty card, which makes it possible to match the traffic of logged-in users with subsequent in-store transactions made with a loyalty card. So, it used Google Analytics to develop an innovative study.
The Approach
Petit Bateau uploaded 36 days of in-store data into Google Analytics and discovered that digital played a significant role in driving in-store purchases: forty-four percent of in-store buyers visited the site within seven days before making their purchases, and 9% of in-store buyers visited the site on the same day as their purchase in the physical shop. And when the basket value is high, consumers conduct up to 3X more research online than when the value is low.
Further analysis revealed the online-to-offline effect was particularly important on mobile. With Petit Bateau's mobile traffic share currently at 34% and still growing, mobile visitors converted within stores at an 11% higher rate than desktop visitors, and their in-store spend was 8% greater.
Using Google Analytics to measure online-to-offline purchase behavior, Petit Bateau was able to recalculate AdWords return on ad spend—which proved to be 6X higher with in-store sales incorporated.
By using Google Analytics to measure online-to-offline purchase behavior, Petit Bateau was able to better understand the impact of online marketing on in-store sales and use the data to recalculate AdWords return on ad spend—which proved to be 6X higher with in-store sales incorporated.
Taking in-store transactions into consideration in this way enables Petit Bateau to optimize its digital marketing programs, make more informed decisions around media budget allocation, and design better experiences for consumers moving between digital and physical shopping environments.
With agency support from NetBooster, Petit Bateau has been shifting its marketing budgets from offline to online, with a significant focus on driving new customers through generic search terms. The company increased investment on Google Search by 60% year over year, mainly financed by the communications team. It also increased mobile bids by 20%. As a result, the mobile share of its search budget reached 43%, which is above the share of mobile traffic. Meanwhile, internal communications are helping store teams understand digital's role in the customer journey and to appreciate the importance of encouraging digital shopping, browsing, comparing, and buying.
