N Brown Group Gained Visibility into Customer Journey Hijacking, Resulting in a Significant Conversion Uplift

N Brown Group is a leading multi-channel retailer headquartered in Manchester employing over 3,200 people. The company’s strategy has been to focus each of the brands in its portfolio towards niche markets which are poorly served on the high street. The Group has total sales of over £818m as of February 2015 with online sales representing over 59% of total revenue. N Brown brands include Simply Be, Jacamo, Fashion World, JD Williams, Marisota, House of Bath, Figleaves, Gray & Osbourn and High and Mighty.

The Problem

The customer’s pro-active approach led it to learn about severe, yet invisible, threats due to unauthorized ads, banner, pop-ups and spyware that were injected to its website without its permission.

In recent years, the online retail sector has been facing a new yet rapidly growing problem. Unlike other threats that target online retailers’ servers and infrastructure, Customer Journey Hijacking runs through users’ devices or browsers and therefore bypasses any server-side security shield.

Customer Journey Hijacking is often bundled into software actively installed by end-users and therefore not illegal. Malware-driven injected brands include ads are invisible to online retailers, as they are served on end-users browsers. Once installed, these injections mutate continuously and autonomously on an hourly basis.

eCommerce sites are threatened by unauthorized injected ads, banners, in-text ads, pops-ups and competing product / price comparison ads that not only lure customer away, but also jeopardize the page layout integrity and the conversion-driven customer journey. Many product ads re-direct customers within the website exploiting the online retailer’s affiliation codes, resulting in significant increase in affiliation costs.

The Results

Within 24 hours from adding Namogoo’s tag to three of N Brown’s brands (JD Williams, Jacamo and Simply Be), N Brown was able to gain visibility, for the first time, to the many types of injected ads that threaten their online assets. Namogoo’s platform identified hundred of thousands of ads as well as unauthorized spyware.

N Brown’s implementation of Namogoo’s solution reaped benefits from the visibility into new threats. Blocking these disruptions resulted in significant reduction of unauthorized re-direct links, prevented customers from leaving the websites and enabled N Brown to maintain the integrity of its user experience and conversion funnel.

Namogoo provided detailed live stats and trends of infection rates, spyware, a full cookies audit as well as real-time visibility into actual banners and inappropriate content injected into N Brown websites. In addition to helping protect the strength of its brands and customer base, blocking these injections also resulted in a significant uplift to conversion rates. By protecting the designed user experience and by removing injected ads (especially video ads) the loading performance was reduced thus improving the way end users perceive and experience the website.

The Value

• Improve the customer journey and ensure its sales funnel is optimized as designed, blocking customers from being lured away
• Ensure customer trust by offering a distraction-free experience while protecting sensitive and private customer data
• Protect the strength of its brand and customers loyalty by removing unauthorized ads and inappropriate content
• Significantly improve to conversion metrics and loading performance by removing unauthorized video ads and other hidden components

“We know that the new Namogoo technology will help ensure the optimum online experience free from distractions, but also that our customer’s security is protected.” Jen Mossop Scott | N Brown Head of Development

The Bottom Line

N Brown Group gained visibility for the first time, to the many types of injected ads that threaten their online assets. Namogoo’s platform identified hundred of thousands of ads as well as unauthorized spyware. Eliminating these disruptions from their customer experience also resulted in a significant conversion uplift as well as an improvement in loading performance.