Build.com Stops Online Journey Hijacking, Sees Sales Increase

The appearance of unauthorized ads injected into consumer browsers that redirect website visitors to competitor products and promotions — i.e., online journey hijacking — has been an issue for many online retailers’ businesses, Build.com being no exception. The online seller of home goods was finding that 20 percent of its traffic was being exposed to an infected site, obviously impacting Build.com's sales.

In an interview with Total Retail last week at eTail West, Patrick Berry, senior director of technology at Build.com, discussed the company's partnership with Namogoo, and how it has helped Build.com prevent online journey hijacking.

"Not having control over your own site is a bit unnerving," said Berry. "Literally 20 percent of Build shoppers were seeing an infected site, and it was happening on the browser level. Namogoo came up as a solution for this problem."

To test Namogoo's solution for online journey hijacking, Build.com ran an A/B split test. Fifty percent of the retailer's traffic were exposed to the site with Namogoo's tag solution implemented, while the other 50 percent saw the site without a Namogoo tag. The results of the test blew Berry and Build.com away. The traffic exposed to Namogoo's tag generated a 2.18 percent uplift in conversion. As for the other half of the test that wasn't exposed to Namogoo's solution, there was a 20 percent infection rate (35 percent of all infections occurred on mobile and tablet devices), and 97.7 percent of the infections featured visual ads for competitors’ offers or products.

"The returns are too good to be true," Berry thought. "After the POV, a lot of time was spent on validation [of the test]. A 2 percent uplift on conversion rate … we didn’t believe it was possible. Moving the needle is really hard these days. Most A/B tests don’t move the needle as much as this test did. It was heartening to the UX team — it validated that UX matters. The consumer experience suffered with the injected ads.

"When you give people the clean experience that you intend to, it makes a difference," added Berry. "Take the distractions out of the journey. Conversion rate, average order value, and bounce rate improvements were the KPIs we saw."

Providing Ongoing Value

Following the POV, Berry and his team received the C-suite backing needed for a 100 percent roll out of Namogoo's solution. While the pilot test was an overwhelming success, more testing is continually taking place on Build.com's website to measure the value that Namogoo is providing the retailer. Currently, 97 percent of Build.com's traffic is protected against unauthorized ads; the other 3 percent is left open and monitored. Interestingly, what Build.com has found is that infected users (i.e., those in the 3 percent traffic group) are converting at twice the rate of that of regular users. This means that Build.com must identify those users and prevent their online journeys from being hijacked. 

"We're seeing a higher AOV, conversion rate and lower bounce rate for infected blocked users," noted Berry. "Once we’ve identified an infected user, we want to know what behaviors they are taking on the site. Infected users are two to three times better customers — they are Build.com's best customers. We want to keep after these customers."

Berry noted that implementing Namogoo's solution was simple for Build.com. It deployed the Namogoo tag — five minutes to implement in the JavaScript code, according to Berry — and it works in the background. But we want to make sure it continues to produce results.

"We were spending millions to bring traffic to the site and build a great CX, and then 20 percent of them are getting a crappy, broken experience," Berry recalled.

In partnership with Namogoo, Build.com is making online journey hijacking of its website a thing of the past.