Chuko online store drives sales 16% up

Chuko is a popular Japanese online retailer with a very wide range of household products. Following the extensive product data tagging, Chuko online store drives sales 16% up compared to the untagged products in the same period of time.

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COMPANY OVERVIEW

Chuko is a popular Japanese online store that offers thousands of household products, from vacuum cleaners, through storage solutions, to clothing and home appliances, and more. The store operates both through a dedicated website, and through a store in Rakuten marketplace.

THE PROBLEM

Despite operating through two different marketing channels, Chuko has been dissatisfied with current performance, and felt there is a lot more room for improvement, particularly in the main KPI’s of page views and sales.
 
THE SOLUTION

Looking for a way to improve performances, Chuko engaged Lisuto to tag its products with navigational tags, for the purpose of increasing findability of the products in the Rakuten marketplace.
 
METHODOLOGY

To verify the assumption that tagging of products increases findability and contributes to business performance, Chuko and Lisuto cooperated to conduct a case study on the effects of tagging. The case study examined the impact of tagging specifically on sales and page views as the main KPI’s. 

The tagged products’ results and untagged products’s results were compared in order to get an accurate measure of the impact of tagging. To gain more accuracy, only the top 1,000 most viewed tagged products during the test period were included in the case study, and were compared to the top 1,000 most viewed untagged products.

The study began in November 2021 and lasted until January 2022. November 2021 served as a benchmark for the following months, as no products were tagged at the time.

  

THE RESULTS 

The study’s results demonstrate that tagging products impacts performances favorably, as tagged products outperform untagged products throughout the test period.  

Page views

The page views results indicate a significant advantage for tagged products. December is a high traffic month because of the holiday shopping people do, so it is natural for all types of products to see an increase. However, tagged products doubled untagged products’ increase in December, registering an almost 25% increase compared to November, while untagged products only managed to climb less than 13%. 

In January, which immediately follows the holiday shopping frenzy, traffic drops way down. Despite both types of products declining in January compared to November, tagged products still dropped by only half of untagged products.

On average, throughout the test period, tagged products did 6% better than untagged products in terms of page views.  

Sales 

The results for the sales indicator demonstrate a much more clearly the advantage of tagging products. Despite December being a high traffic month, untagged products declined in sales compared to November. In the same month, however, tagged products saw an almost 12% increase in sales. 

In January, as expected, both tagged and untagged products experienced a drop in sales. However, there is a significant difference: while untagged products plummeted by more than 31% in sales compared to November, tagged products managed to stop the decline at only 11%, meaning tagging is not only beneficial in improving results, but also in restraining declines. 

The test period taken together, Chuko online store drives sales 16% up as a results of product data tagging compared to the untagged products in the same period of time.

CONCLUSION 

The results of this case study corroborate the assumption that tagging products help improve their performances. The results have shown that throughout the test period, tagged products significantly outperformed untagged products. 

The results of this case study joins a long line of case studies conducted by Lisuto to measure the impact of tagging, such as Hikari, Himeji City Prefectural Shop, Mizuno, Naturum, and others. All of these case studies clearly indicate that tagging products significantly contributes to their findability and exposure, which naturally leads to increased sales.