Cox online fashion doubled its visitors traffic

Cox online fashion doubled its visitors traffic for the tagged product listings compared to the non tagged product listings in the same period of time. Similar improvement gap observed in unique users statistics.

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COMPANY OVERVIEW

Cox is a Japanese online fashion store that sells thousands of clothing items through its Rakuten marketplace store. The store offers its customers a wide selection of the latest fashion, covering women’s, men’s and children’s clothes and accessories. 

THE ISSUE

Throughout its time operating on Rakuten, Cox has been rather satisfied with its performance. Recently, however, Cox has decided it is time to go to the next level, and was searching for a way to improve its performances further. 

THE SOLUTION

Cox approached Lisuto for advice on marketplace optimization, and the solution they decided on was tagging the products in the store with Xtags. Xtags are the relevant attributes of the products which are vital for site navigation, and Cox hoped that tagging their products will improve their performances.   

METHODOLOGY

In order to ensure that Xtags function as hoped - improving the store’s performances by increasing findability and exposure - Cox and Lisuto cooperated in a case study that measured the impact of tagging. This particular study measured and compared the performances of both tagged and untagged products, across two key indicators: page views and unique user visits. 
 

The case study took place over a period of three months. The first month, November 2021, served as a benchmark, since Lisuto began tagging products only by the end of it. Once a benchmark has been established, the following months’ results were compared to November’s results. 

For the purpose of this case study, Lisuto collected information only on the top 1,000 most viewed tagged products during the test period. To serve as a control group, similar information has been collected on the top 1,000 most viewed untagged products 
  

THE RESULTS

The results of this case study verify Cox’s assumption that tagging products with Xtags improves their overall performance over time, compared to untagged products. 

Page Views

The case study results regarding page views significantly show how tagging products improves their performance. In December, the first month with Xtags, tagged products saw a sharp increase of almost 87% in page views, compared to the previous month. By comparison, untagged products registered less than 18% increase in the same period. 

As if December wasn’t conclusive enough, January provided even more evidence of the benefits of tagging. While untagged products nearly remained at the same number of page views as in November, tagged products’ page views increased by almost 150%!

The page views’ results are as clear as can be as to the advantage tagged products have over untagged products. Throughout the test period, tagged products outperformed untagged products by an average of more than 106%.

Unique User Visits

Unsurprisingly, the unique user visits results mirror the results for page views. As more users visit the page in general, it is only reasonable that more of them will be unique users. In December, we see an increase in unique user visits in both types of products. But while untagged products managed to generate an increase of 17%, tagged products generated nearly a 90% increase in unique user visits compared to November. 

January has proven significant in terms of unique user visits as well. Untagged products saw a meager uptick of less than 5% compared to November, but at the same time, tagged products saw a surge of more than 140% in unique user visits compared to the benchmark month. 

Overall, tagged products did better than untagged products in terms of unique user visits by an average of almost 105%.

CONCLUSION 

This case study helped verify Cox’s assumption - tagging product listings with navigational tags improves listings' performance on the marketplace. Throughout the test period, tagged products significantly outperformed untagged products, both in terms of page views and in terms of unique user visits. Cox online fashion doubled visitors traffic to test period of time

These results are in line with the results of numerous other case studies conducted by Lisuto to examine the impact of tagging. As the case studies of Hikari, Himeji City Prefectural Shop, Mizuno, Naturum, and more show, tagging products with Xtags instantly impacts their performance.