This department store giant is one of the oldest U.S. retailers, owing its longevity in large part to its willingness to evolve its business strategy with changing consumer behavior and maintain its role as a retail leader. From existential changes like appointing its first CTO and slimming down its real estate portfolio to shift resources to digital, to more tactical innovations to improve the customer experience, the team consistently works to optimize the online shopping experience.

It also was among the first retailers to identify and focus a team on the post-purchase opportunity to reduce friction for customers by closing the gap between purchase and delivery.

“We realized that the tracking solution we were providing through our site wasn’t easy or intuitive for the consumer,” says their digital product manager. “Customers were still contacting us regularly to find out where their package was.” Looking for ways to improve the customer journey after the “buy” button, the team began to evaluate what was happening elsewhere in the space.

Create a seamless, simple post-purchase experience

Says their digital product manager, “We started asking questions internally. ‘What has everyone been seeing? What does a positive tracking experience look like?’ Narvar was a name that just kept popping up.”

The team decided to take the leap and invest in new, innovative technologies that could optimize the customer’s post-purchase experience. But instead of committing to Narvar straight off the bat, they did some serious due diligence, including building its own solution in-house. As their manager of product management says, “Before we go whole hog with anything, we always make a point to test and learn first.”

“We’ve fostered a great relationship with the Narvar team, which has allowed us to move faster on other digital projects that we wouldn’t have otherwise had time for, while still maintaining a best-in-class tracking experience.”

Manager of Product Management

The product team reallocated its resources to build an in-house system and then A/B tested against Narvar’s solution. They knew a side-by-side comparison would ultimately lead them to the most efficient, cost-effective platform. “We put a lot of work into figuring out which option would ultimately be best for us,” says their manager of product management.

Narvar helps close the post-purchase gap

While its homegrown tracking project saw some success, it ended up costing the team time and other resources. “We realized that it made a lot more sense to partner with Narvar, who could offload some of that development energy and the infrastructure hosting of the experience,” says their manager of product management about the final decision to implement Narvar. “We’ve fostered a great relationship with the Narvar team, which has allowed us to move faster on other digital projects that we wouldn’t have otherwise had time for, while still maintaining a best-in-class tracking experience.”

“We see this as the future of order tracking,” says their manager of product management. “From the time a customer hits ‘buy’ to the time the package is received, Narvar helps us extend our brands through post-purchase channels and improve our buyer’s experiences across all touchpoints.”

Increased visibility decreases tracking-related call volume

From a decrease in customer calls to opening up revenue opportunities, the company has enjoyed a multitude of wins with Narvar. Its flagship brands have both seen customers come back to the sites through branded tracking pages and make even more purchases, with the more upscale brand seeing a slightly higher conversion rate. Overall, 2-3% of both brands’ customers bought something else after clicking through a Narvar tracking page.

 Since the implementation of Narvar, the company has seen:

• 30% tracking-related call reduction within two months of implementation
• 9% click-through rate from a branded tracking page back to the website
• 2-3% conversion rate for click-throughs between both brands, on par with site visitors from other sources
• Similar AOV (average order value) with post-purchase conversions as with all other site traffic

Their digital product manager sums up the full-circle experience that Narvar provides by saying, “Without that branded tracking page, those repeat customers probably wouldn’t have clicked back through to the site and bought something else.”