project:

eCommerce Product Compare

client:

Nikon

design partner:

Sposto Interactive

Nikon is perhaps most well known for its reputation as a world leader in imaging products. Its technologies continue to play a significant role in defining the photographic industry. Our team has been working with Nikon Inc. since 2007.

Challenge

Customer satisfaction survey results and support calls had shown that Nikon’s customers needed a way to easily compare products on the website. To increase customer satisfaction and drive both online and offline sales, Nikon Inc. asked Kanban to provide online comparison functionality that was on par with their competitors.

solution

Kanban, working with creative partner Sposto Interactive, designed and developed a set of features to improve product comparisons and streamline the purchase funnel towards conversion. Key features include:

  • Quick comparisons. The tool loads quickly with the information that customers care about most.
  • Easy selection of products to compare. Products can be added to the tool from multiple places: from the detail page for the product, from the listing page, and from within the tool itself.
  • Archived products are included. Customers can compare an older product that they own to a newer version to see the differences.
  • No customer restrictions on the types of product. Unlike other compare tools, ours allows customers to compare many different types of products at once. The tool lets customers switch from product type to product type at any time without removing other products.
  • No customer restrictions on the number of products. Unlike other compare tools, our customers never encounter any errors telling them that they’re trying to use the tool incorrectly. Not only can they compare all types of products, they can compare as many products as they want.
  • Drag and drop. The customer can reorder and delete products in the tool at any time so that they can control what products are right next to each other.
  • Highlights on similarities. Data that is the same across products can be highlighted, instantly pinpointing which specifications are the same and different.
  • Same functionality across locales. Changes to the tool in the US immediately propagate to the Canada, Mexico, and Brazil sites. The same functionality that is available for imaging products also works for sport optic products.

results

The resulting experience improved on competitor usability and functionality; gave Nikon Inc. the control to manage the content, data, and interaction within the content management system; and made the tool flexible enough to work in multiple regions & languages. More specifically, we have realized the following impact:

  • Consumers using the product compare tool were 2X as likely to look for Nikon retailers (purchase intent).
  • Users of the product compare tool spent 20X more time on site (brand engagement).
  • Consumers using the product compare tool visited the site 5X more often than non-users (customer retention).

technology

The technology stack includes:

  • XML, Autonomy LiveSite, Spring Framework, Hibernate.
  • Autonomy TeamSite is used as the back-end content management system. Nikon Inc. sees this system to manage all products and content. This content is stored in XML files and deployed to a relational database using DataDeploy.
  • JSON, jQuery, local browser storage, JCS cache framework session.

“For the Product Compare project, Kanban knocked it out of the park. They expertly collaborated with our creative agency to both push the limits of the experience and create a backend content management interface that was easy to use. As always, the project was delivered on-budget and on-time, and the feedback from consumers has been overly positive, contributing to online and offline sales.”

Cindy Jeffus, Internet Operations Manager, Nikon Inc.