It’s been 4 weeks since we launched Upfront 2.0, the most significant upgrade to TheFind’s Merchant Program since its inception. We’re excited to report that to date over 2,000 merchants have signed up for Upfront 2.0! This blog post provides a sneak peak of the early results these Upfront 2.0 merchants are experiencing.
As readers of our newsletters and blog well know, Upfront 2.0 was 9 months in the making – starting with an in-depth survey of TheFind’s shoppers to understand their challenges and fears when shopping online. That’s where the “problem” was identified that Upfront 2.0 addresses. We found that “merchant trust” was tied with “getting a good price” as the top challenges shoppers face when deciding where to purchase a product. So we went to work to figure out how we could lower the shopper’s risk, while providing trustworthy merchants a way to communicate why shoppers should, in fact, trust them.
From this insight, we developed the core concept of the Upfront 2.0 Program – the Upfront Promise – where merchants commit to 5 key statements right on TheFind’s search results pages “preview window” — building real trust with shoppers at a critical decision point – “where should I buy”. To strengthen the trust factor with shoppers, we built in a feedback loop for consumers to let TheFind know if they believe the merchant is not honoring these commitments.
We also designed a new Upfront Badge that communicates trust, transparency and quality (shown above). We then conducted a merchant survey with our registered merchants, where we received thoughtful feedback that helped us refine the promise statements and overall program design. This survey also found very strong merchant interest in becoming Upfront 2.0, with 82% saying they were “Extremely” or “Very” interested in participating. This is why we weren’t completely surprised by the initial adoption of this program.
“Sneak Preview” Early Results
As you might expect, we are tracking the business impact on merchants who have joined Upfront 2.0. It’s quite early yet, but we’ve been able to track the change in Click-Through Rate and Total Clicks for the 2-week period just before and just after a merchant joins Upfront 2.0 (for the first two weeks of merchants who signed up). Undoubtedly, there are multiple factors that could explain time-series-based results, but the total traffic sent from TheFind to all merchants was relatively constant during the tracking period.
We found a pretty wide range of CTR and Total Click changes for the initial group of Upfront 2.0 merchants, so we can’t suggest a statistically significant uplift attributable to Upfront 2.0 from this analysis. But we did find an average uplift in CTR of 5.6 % and uplift in Total Clicks of 22%. Because of the limited time span, we can’t make any conclusion yet, so we will be continuing the analysis with a much larger universe of merchants and over a longer duration. Either way, we see Upfront 2.0 as a very important driver of consumer trust on TheFind and a free program we recommend to all merchants in our Merchant Program.
Examples of Upfront 2.0 Merchants
I thought it would be useful to highlight a few Upfront 2.0 merchants and how they display the Upfront 2.0 badge on their website, as well as and how they are highlighted on our search results page. (These merchants experienced significantly higher-than-average uplifts in CTR and Total Clicks.)
OutInStyle.com – shown below with the Upfront Promise “wing” highlighting OutIntStyle as a trustworthy merchant on the Store Tab of our search results pages. (OutInStyle experienced CTR uplift of 12% and Total Clicks uplift of 32%.)
CallingAllDogs.com – shown below with the Upfront Merchant “trust badge” on the Product Tab of our search results pages. Below that, showing their use of the Upfront 2.0 “text link” on their footer. (CallingAllDogs experienced CTR uplift of 8.2% and Total Clicks uplift of 46%.)
CuddleWorks – shown below with their Upfront 2.0 Badge (highlighted in white) on the bottom of their home page. And below that, the Upfront badge and promise statements on the Store Tab in our search results pages.
Hastings Entertainment - shown below using the ”goHastings.com is Upfront” text link on their standard footer.
Specific merchant results may be different from these examples but the Upfront 2.0 criteria are set up to help provide a better experience for shoppers and as such would be very helpful to every retail business.
To upgrade to Upfront 2.0, click here. To learn more about Upfront 2.0, download the Upfront 2.0 Data Sheet.
