Geek Wire writes on the recent blog by RichRelevance’s Mariah Walton
One particularly bleak January day, while staring at my computer screen for what seemed the 17th hour on an incredibly tedious, time-consuming freelance project, I did what many would do — I turned to Zappos.
Two days later, more than $800 in Frye boots landed at my doorstep. It was then that I realized that I had a little problem: shopping online when I was bored and frustrated, especially when going outside did not seem that appealing.
I may not be alone. RichRelevance, a San Francisco-based firm that analyzes behavior and data for its retail clients like Wal-Mart and Target, asked the question: Does weather affect online shopping habits? And they turned to none other than our fair cloud-and-mist-covered city of Seattle to start digging around.
Mariah Walton of the RichRelevance analytics team spearheaded the experiment. Walton has studied climate change, and she was curious about how the environment affects our shopping habits.
“My original hypothesis was simple: Weather affects how and when people shop,” Walton writes on RichRelevance’s blog. “To extrapolate that even further, I’ll surmise that people habituated to rain, like Seattle natives, will abandon the digital world when it’s sunny and enjoy the great outdoors.”
Matalan customers now receive relevant, meaningful product recommendations when they shop online
Reading, UK — 24 August 2012— RichRelevance®, the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalisation for the world’s largest retailers, today announced that Matalan, a fashion-forward apparel and homeware goods retailer, joins John Lewis and Marks & Spencer on its list of leading British retail customers. Matalan implemented RichRelevance to deliver dynamic e-commerce personalisation on its site with the specific goal of increasing merchandising control and extending its personalisation across multiple channels.
By integrating RichRelevance’s personalisation technology online, Matalan is able to analyse shopping behaviour and affinities alongside data on relationships between products, product categories, brands and attributes, offering every customer a unique and personalised experience. Recommendations are based on shopping patterns such as past view or purchase behaviour and adjust dynamically to ensure that each customer is presented with products that are highly relevant and meaningful. The retailer also uses fashion-relevant messages such as “customers with similar style also viewed” to engage their customers. RichRelevance’s approach to personalisation is the only one on the market that facilitates competition among 100 independent algorithms (recommendation types) and then determines, in real time, which algorithm is best matched to a particular customer’s needs at a specific place and time.
“Personalisation enables us to build trust and loyalty with our customers, by providing an experience that is dynamically tailored for them. Having worked with other personalisation providers, I can attest to the fact they are not created equally. With RichRelevance, we gained increased flexibility in merchandising controls and in-country support,” said Andrew Scott, Head of eCommerce and International at Matalan. “We have been very impressed with the initial results of the implementation and I am confident that our partnership with RichRelevance will continue to grow as we grow.”
“It is a very strategic move for Matalan to implement a personalisation initiative. Matalan’s unique offer is to provide customers with on-trend fashion at competitive prices. When product prices are low, increasing AOV is one of the most efficient ways to enhance revenue. Personalised recommendations are extremely effective for driving up AOV and we’ve seen significant results with this implementation since launch,” said Darren Hitchcock, vice president of UK and Europe, RichRelevance. “We are delighted to partner with Matalan on this initiative and to be able to name the brand as our first British fashion retailer.”
About Matalan
Matalan is the UK’s leading out of town fashion and homeware retailer and operates through 217 stores in the UK, an e-commerce platform and 9 overseas franchise stores. Shopping at Matalan offers outstanding quality at prices that are simply unmatched elsewhere. By buying direct from the manufacturer and having convenient out of town stores with low overheads, Matalan is able to offer unbeatable value for money.
Matalan offers something for all the family. With an average 30,000 sq. ft per store, Matalan’s product range offers a comprehensive selection of quality homewares, ladies’, men’s and children’s clothing and footwear – all under one roof. Matalan’s in-house design teams work to create a broad range of product to suit every need and differing tastes. With the latest key looks for the season, customers can choose from a range of in-house brands like Be Beau, Et Vous, Rogers & Rogers, 24:7 and Denim 73.
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance delivers over 850 million product recommendations daily, powering the personalised shopping experiences for consumers shopping the world’s largest and most innovative retail brands like Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, Walmart, Sears and Target. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who helped pioneer personalisation at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase sales and customer engagement by recommending the most relevant products to consumers regardless of the channel they are shopping. RichRelevance has delivered more than £3.5 billion in attributable sales for its retail clients to date, and is accelerating these results with the introduction of a new form of digital advertising called Shopping Media which allows manufacturers to engage consumers where it matters most—in the digital aisles on the largest retail sites in world. RichRelevance is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in London, New York, Seattle and Boston. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.co.uk.
TechCrunch’s Crunch Base on recent RichRelevance funding announcement
In May, we reported that e-commerce recommendations provider RichRelevance had raised $20 million in new funding led by Crosslink Capital, with Greylock Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Tugboat Ventures participating. The company has added an additional $8 million to close out the oversubscribed round, with new funding coming from RTP Ventures, Shea Ventures, and Gray Ventures, and with existing investor Tugboat Ventures participating.
Additional investment from RTP Ventures, Shea Ventures and Gray Ventures completes $28 million round
San Francisco, CA – Aug. 14, 2012 –– RichRelevance®, the leading provider of dynamic personalization for the world’s largest retailers and brands, today announced that it has closed an additional $8 million in venture capital financing from RTP Ventures, Shea Ventures and Gray Ventures, as well as from existing investor Tugboat Ventures. This financing completes RichRelevance’s $28 million round which also includes investment from Greylock Partners, Crosslink Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The company will use this round to drive continued investment in its infrastructure and technology to support new product innovations and global expansion.
“RichRelevance has been at the forefront of how shifting consumer behavior impacts retail and we are uniquely equipped to help our partners evolve in this rapidly changing landscape,” said David Selinger, founder and CEO RichRelevance. “Our strategy of combining best-in-class product, an excellent sales organization, and a standout service model is proving to be differentiated and highly successful. We will use this funding to continue to grow our footprint while relentlessly expanding our value creation for our existing clients.”
Developed by the architects of Amazon.com’s recommendation technology, RichRelevance allows retailers to deliver dynamic, tailored experiences that put the customers at the center of retail strategy. Six of the top 10 internet retail chains choose RichRelevance as their personalization provider and the company serves more than 850 million product recommendations daily. This means consumers click on a RichRelevance recommendation every 21 milliseconds—all delivered with an average round-trip-to- consumer latency of under 70 milliseconds (faster than you can say “Wow, that’s really fast!”). The company consistently innovates new personalization solutions that allow retailers to monetize every pixel of their sites through product recommendations, targeted promotions and advertising. Through its services, RichRelevance has delivered more than $5.5 billion in sales for its retail clients.
In addition, RichRelevance offers a groundbreaking Shopping Media suite for brand advertisers. Launched in December 2010, RichRelevance’s advertising offerings are used by leading brands to engage shoppers on the world’s largest retail sites with custom content while they are researching and purchasing products. RichRelevance’s Shopping Media campaigns yield significantly higher engagement rates — double that of traditional rich media ads — and deliver a 60-100% sales lift for the advertised brand’s products. The company recently appointed AOL/Time Warner veteran and former publisher of Rolling Stone, Jack Rotherham, as SVP of Shopping Media Sales and Partnerships.
“We have entered a new economy where the largest forces shaping retail are big data and cloud computing,” said Kirill Sheynkman, Senior Managing Director at RTP Ventures. “RichRelevance’s team, platform and product suite place them in the center of the future of shopping and brand engagement. We’re extremely excited about RichRelevance’s path forward as they continue to innovate new markets and new products, better serving retailers, brand advertisers and consumers.
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance delivers over 850 million product recommendations daily, powering the personalized shopping experiences for consumers shopping the world’s largest and most innovative retail brands like Walmart, Sears, Target, Marks & Spencer and John Lewis. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who helped pioneer personalization at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase sales and customer engagement by recommending the most relevant products to consumers regardless of the channel they are shopping. RichRelevance has delivered more than $5.5 billion in attributable sales for its retail clients to date, and is accelerating these results with the introduction of a new form of digital advertising called Shopping Media which allows brands to engage consumers where it matters most—in the digital aisles on the largest retail sites in world. RichRelevance is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York, Seattle, Boston and London. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.com.
Ecommerce on an Olympic level: Darren Hitchcock, VP of EU/UK at RichRelevance, shares three important tips.
There has been a lot of discussion—since 2008, in fact—about the consequences of intensified demand on London’s data centres during the Olympics. As a retailer, you may have taken note of the warnings and put a plan in place long ago to ensure your infrastructure’s uptime and reliability. You’re sorted. Right?
Maybe not. If you haven’t considered how your third-party application providers could impact your website during the Olympics you could be putting your business at risk. Recommendations, reviews, video, gamefication—any time you’re adding technology to your site through a partner, you need to consider what precautions they’re taking to ensure their own data centre solutions are reliable. If one of your features goes down it could disappear from your site or, worse, cause your site to slow down significantly.
It’s too late to make serious changes before the Games, but the Olympic challenge retailers are about to face does shine a much needed spotlight on this issue. So what can to ensure your website is as good as gold?
Choice is great, but at times it can also be overwhelming. Wine.com’s customers, who are not oenology experts, felt confused when they went to the site to buy wine. With such a wide selection of vineyards and varietals, they sometimes found the process of choosing a bottle unwieldy.
To further compound matters, about half of the wine retailer’s customers buy gifts when they visit the site, says Cam Fortin, Wine.com’s director of business development. This statistic added pressure on the company to help customers make the right choice.