Creating a digital shopping experience

Online shopping is no longer something special, rather it’s part of most customers’ everyday life. Therefore, it’s important to make the shopping experience both interesting and as easy as possible. Because online shoppers are used to smooth processes, user-friendly applications, such as filter options or an easily manageable shopping basket, should be standard in professional e-commerce. But the shopping experience itself is also becoming increasingly important. Numerous special features are intended to leave a lasting impression on customers so that purchases continue to be made through the online platform in future as well. Above all, online shops need to be able to stand out from their strong competition.

The PLAYMOBIL® brand was faced with the challenge that basic PLAYMOBIL® products are sometimes cheaper to purchase from retailers than from its own online shop. In addition, a bounce rate before purchases were concluded was able to be determined because customers were often lacking the full package – in other words, a successful user experience with a straightforward process for concluding purchases.

For PLAYMOBIL®, the objective is clear: a digital shopping experience should be created for the customer that leads to greater loyalty compared to the PLAYMOBIL® online platform and generates recurring customers.

To accomplish this, the familiar business model of brick-and-mortar shops, where products are sold offline by retailers, must be considered as a separate sales channel that has other unique selling points than the online shop. The digital platform’s USP must be appropriately marketed in order to create a particular incentive for shopping on playmobil.de. This also includes the personalised customer experience that PLAYMOBIL® strives to provide its clientele.

In order to make its own online shop stand out from other sales channels, such as brick-and-mortar shops or online retailers, PLAYMOBIL® relies on the Salesforce Commerce Cloud. The strength of the Commerce Cloud is that – unlike other competitors – it’s highly customisable and therefore constitutes a platform that’s both scalable and high-performance. To achieve the goals that were set, it’s also highly important to continually optimise the online shop to improve customer experience. Digitally marketing the PLAYMOBIL® online shop’s USPs is gaining in importance as well: unique selling points include the spare parts service, the sale of extensions, discontinued models and online-only models, as well as additional digital realms of experience for parents and children.

Because PLAYMOBIL® is concentrating more heavily on its unique selling points in its online shop and using storytelling to bring the products to life online, customers, and therefore parents and children, are identifying more strongly with the brand, which is simultaneously leading to greater customer loyalty.

In addition, the PLAYMOBIL® digital sales channel was able to be successfully revitalised thanks to a high-performance online shop that’s laid out more clearly and intuitive to use.