Paperplus Case Study

  1. Home
  2. Case Studies
  3. Paperplus Case Study

Paperplus - the Business

Paper Plus is New Zealand's largest book retailer with over 80 stores located around the country. Paperplus sells mainly books, stationery and gift accessories.

When Paperplus approached Greg Randall from Comma Consulting, they had an eCommerce channel that was performing "OK" by their definition. However, the executive team knew it could do much better.

The Board had no appetite to replatform so Greg had to work with the eCommerce technology that was currently in place. No technology or architectural changes can be made.

This is a common scenario for Greg, and this is how he produced huge wins for this retailer.

Paperplus Pain Points:

The eCommerce technology powering Paperplus was considered outdated, unable to keep up with other international eCommerce platforms. This created anxiety in the business. And it made them feel like they could not improve performances on this old tech.

Their current eCommerce Agency were a great support team, but they lacked the subject matter expertise to construct intuitive journeys that Paperplus customers expected.

This Agency would provide recommendations for change but none of these recommendations increased online transactions.

This became a primary fault of the eCommerce system for Paperplus. This became the motivation to bring in Greg Randall.

The Solution:

Two of Greg's services launched into action to solve the Paperplus pain points:

  1. eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimisation
  2. User Experience (UX) Design

Greg met with the executive team to understand the business-wide strategy and the CIO to understand all the nuances of how all the technology systems are working together.

Once that all became clear, Greg launched into his conversion rate optimisation process.

Step 1: Deep analysis of consumer behavioural data:

This process allowed Greg to understand exactly where all the "experiential chaos" was happening for people trying to engage and buy online.

As part of this process, Greg also interviewed the customer support team and analysed incoming questions from emails and social media comments from customers.

This gave a rare insight into why the chaos was happening.

Step 2: Ranking the Issues:

Those issues that were created the most significant problems for consumers were documented and ranked by most important to least important.

This ranking system was influenced by the following...

  • The issues that would make the most significant impact commercially, if removed.
  • The issues that were the easiest to fix on the existing eCommerce technology.
  • The issues that align with the Paperplus business strategy.

Step 3: Recommendations - Fixing the Issues:

From the above list of issues, a specific section of the document was created to explain (in everyday business language) how to fix the top 20 issues that would make the most commercial impact to the Paperplus site.

These top 20 issues formed the scope of a Phase 1 CRO project.

Step 4: UX Design Planning:

Once Paperplus approved the scope, Greg embarked on the creation of wireframes for both Desktop and Mobile devices. This precise mix of wireframes and commentary, which defined the structure and mechanics of all page layouts, became the change bible for the eCommerce Agency.

Once this UX document was approved by Paperplus it was submitted to the eCommerce Agency to bring to life.

Step 5: Collaborating with the eCommerce Agency:

Greg worked closely with the eCommerce Agency, ensuring they followed the wireframes exactly. The eCommerce Agency followed the UX blueprint perfectly.

Once all changes went live, Paperplus saw an immediate lift in site performance.

The Results:

  1. Bounce rates on the Smartphone home page decreased by 20%.
  2. Overall smartphone conversion rate grew by 35%.
  3. Revenue from the Smartphone devices increased by 116%.
  4. Bounce rates on the Desktop homepage decreased by 27%.
  5. Revenue from Desktop screens increased by 45%.