Total Gym Fitness Flexes its Mobile Muscle
For 26 years, the privately-held supplier of functional and bodyweight training equipment, Total Gym Fitness (www.totalgymdirect.com), has achieved strong results via infomercials for its home fitness equipment. However, as shoppers began shifting to web and mobile interaction with the brand — away from its call center — the retailer was in search of a program to help improve its conversion in these channels.
As with many retail brands, the company recognized that while mobile traffic increased, its conversion rates remained lower on smartphones compared to desktops and tablets. This is likely a result of the casual browsing mentality of mobile visitors who are conducting initial research. There are opportunities to better engage these visitors by optimizing usability and related design and recognizing the different nuances in smartphone user behavior versus desktop and tablet.
Total Gym identified its phone communications and customer relationships as its greatest strength and wanted to find a way to bring this experience online. To do this, Total Gym selected TouchCommerce (www.touchcommerce.com) to develop and test new solutions to identify shopper preferences and incorporate the latest e-commerce best practices.
Similar to its use of TouchGuides for desktop, Total Gym began leveraging mobile TouchGuides to complement live online engagement. The solution helps customers navigate through the site and self-serve quickly with less strain on customer service resources. By automating the guides the retailer is able to provide simple step-by-step product comparison navigation, resulting in the selection of the optimal product for the consumer.
“For us, mobile guides have been very effective in boosting interactions with our smartphone visitors who may not have engaged with us through other online engagement channels,” says Joe Crowley, VP of marketing at Total Gym Fitness, LLC. “We are continuously assessing new strategies and optimizations to take customer engagement to the next level.”
As an early adopter of the mobile solution, Total Gym Fitness has observed significant increases in mobile engagement. Overall, the live chat is responsible for more than 70 percent of orders that TouchCommerce secures for Total Gym through its online engagement program.
In a recent A/B test on Total Gym’s site, visitors coming from smartphones were five times more likely to engage with an automated mobile guide than click-to-chat to assist in the early stage navigation of the site. This supports the retailer’s theory that customers have a different browsing mentality when shopping on their smartphones versus desktops and tablets.
“Using the solution helped us revamp the website knowing what customers wanted to see,” says Crowley. “The ancillary benefit was all the data that was being collected in chat transcripts provided feedback for us. Now, we audit the chat transcripts on weekly basis to evaluate the frequency of questions and issues.
*From the May/June 2015 issue of RIS News (sister publication).
As with many retail brands, the company recognized that while mobile traffic increased, its conversion rates remained lower on smartphones compared to desktops and tablets. This is likely a result of the casual browsing mentality of mobile visitors who are conducting initial research. There are opportunities to better engage these visitors by optimizing usability and related design and recognizing the different nuances in smartphone user behavior versus desktop and tablet.
Total Gym identified its phone communications and customer relationships as its greatest strength and wanted to find a way to bring this experience online. To do this, Total Gym selected TouchCommerce (www.touchcommerce.com) to develop and test new solutions to identify shopper preferences and incorporate the latest e-commerce best practices.
Similar to its use of TouchGuides for desktop, Total Gym began leveraging mobile TouchGuides to complement live online engagement. The solution helps customers navigate through the site and self-serve quickly with less strain on customer service resources. By automating the guides the retailer is able to provide simple step-by-step product comparison navigation, resulting in the selection of the optimal product for the consumer.
“For us, mobile guides have been very effective in boosting interactions with our smartphone visitors who may not have engaged with us through other online engagement channels,” says Joe Crowley, VP of marketing at Total Gym Fitness, LLC. “We are continuously assessing new strategies and optimizations to take customer engagement to the next level.”
As an early adopter of the mobile solution, Total Gym Fitness has observed significant increases in mobile engagement. Overall, the live chat is responsible for more than 70 percent of orders that TouchCommerce secures for Total Gym through its online engagement program.
In a recent A/B test on Total Gym’s site, visitors coming from smartphones were five times more likely to engage with an automated mobile guide than click-to-chat to assist in the early stage navigation of the site. This supports the retailer’s theory that customers have a different browsing mentality when shopping on their smartphones versus desktops and tablets.
“Using the solution helped us revamp the website knowing what customers wanted to see,” says Crowley. “The ancillary benefit was all the data that was being collected in chat transcripts provided feedback for us. Now, we audit the chat transcripts on weekly basis to evaluate the frequency of questions and issues.
*From the May/June 2015 issue of RIS News (sister publication).