Description
This midterm assignment is focused on data driven decision making using the frameworks of conversion rate optimization and the customer journey in an online shopping context.
First you will need to review the detailed case study ‘Direct-to-Consumer Brand Suta – Weaving in Conversion Rate Optimization’ and the ‘Customer Journey at Suta’ tab of the Excel worksheet. The case study is available from my coursepack – https://hbsp.harvard.edu/import/1154007 You should also explore the website to which the case refers – www.suta.in
You have been asked by Taniya and Sujata (the owners of Suta) to write a business report (max 5 pages single spaced) to help in their future decision making. Your report should include:
An executive summary
An evaluation of the performance of Suta’s website, based on the information in the case study. Your analysis should be data-driven, drawing out conclusions from the case exhibits. In this section you should identify:
What happened as the website grew and your analysis of the reasons for this.
The key performance issues that Suta now faces.
The areas of success that Suta can build on moving forward.
Your recommendations on what the team could do to improve the conversion rate of the site. Look closely at the data in the exhibits and the the Customer Journey map which can be found in the Excel workbook. Present your recommendations using the Customer Journey ‘Steps A-F’ framework.
Your recommendations on other initiatives that Suta could follow, besides increasing conversion rate, that could be pursued to increase overall revenue.
Your report will be assessed on the following criteria:
A clear understanding of the case study and the data presented – take the time to ensure that you have understood all of the concepts and metrics.
The quality of your analysis and diagnosis
The quality of your recommendations and the level of data and evidence used to support them
Original thinking and creativity
Thoroughness, accuracy, grammar and spelling.
Please note that you do not need to source any additional data for this assignment. All of the data you need is in the case study.
DO NOT USE ANY AI OR PLAGIRARIM TOOL. THIS PROFESSOR IS SUPER STRICT WITH PLAGIARISM. BE CREATIVE PLEASE!!!
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DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER BRAND SUTA: WEAVING IN CONVERSION
RATE OPTIMIZATION
Sheila Roy and Renuka Kamath wrote this case solely to provide material for class discussion. The authors do not intend to illustrate
either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The authors may have disguised certain names and other identifying
information to protect confidentiality.
This publication may not be transmitted, photocopied, digitized, or otherwise reproduced in any form or by any means without the
permission of the copyright holder. Reproduction of this material is not covered under authorization by any reproduction rights
organization. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, contact Ivey Publishing, Ivey Business School, Western
University, London, Ontario, Canada, N6G 0N1; (t) 519.661.3208; (e) [email protected]; www.iveypublishing.ca. Our goal is to publish
materials of the highest quality; submit any errata to [email protected]. i1v2e5y5pubs
Copyright © 2023, Ivey Business School Foundation
Version: 2023-01-18
“Marketing analytics seems to have a problem of plenty,” said Sujata Biswas to her sister Taniya Biswas
as they discussed the next steps for their business. The sisters co-founded Suta, a growing direct-toconsumer (DTC) start-up in the ethnic apparel and accessories segment in India, in 2016. They found a
way to stand out from the competition by reviving and popularizing sarees, the traditional wear of women
in India. Seated in the conference room of their new spacious office in Mumbai, India, in August 2021,
Taniya reflected on the pace of Suta’s profitable growth in the last four years. From 2017 to 2021, the
company’s revenues grew ten times to approximately US$7 million1 on the back of increased product range
and stellar social media strategies and campaigns that allowed them to acquire customers profitably. Among
DTC apparel brands, Suta’s social commerce venture was reputed to have one of the best returns on
marketing spend on social media platforms, especially Facebook and Instagram. The average order value
(AOV) increased steadily over the years, and the company had a sizable base of loyal customers who made
repeated purchases. The sisters’ plan of scaling up operations required additional investments, especially in
marketing, to acquire new customers. While most of Suta’s performance indicators, such as revenue and
number of orders, had increased multiple times, some metrics were showing a decline.
Suta’s profitability rested on a key marketing metric of return on advertising spend (ROAS), which was the
ratio of revenue generated from a channel or a campaign to the advertising expenditure toward that channel
or campaign.2 Their campaigns on social media had fetched ROAS rates between 9 and 12, which meant
the cost of marketing was 8–11 per cent per order—one of the best in the industry.3 But while ROAS had
remained more or less consistent over the last three years, lately it seemed to be under strain. As the sisters
pored over the Google Analytics (GA) reports that their team had extracted, they were surprised to discover
that the conversion rate had also dropped between 2019 to 2021.4 The question on their mind was how this
was possible when ROAS had remained stable over the same period.
1
All dollar amounts are in US dollars unless otherwise specified.
The return on advertising spend as coined by Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook) referred to revenue, not profit or
contribution to profit (as in the case of return on marketing investment, or ROMI), and the case authors use this definition for
the purpose of this case; “Meta Business Help Centre” Meta, accessed December 16 2021,
https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1283504535023899.
3
Masooma Memon, “18 Ways to Optimize Your Facebook Return on Ad Spend (ROAS),” Databox, September 14, 2020,
https://databox.com/facebook-roas-optimization.
4
The conversion rate was the number of sessions in which an order was placed divided by total number of sessions on the website.
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There was definitely a problem simmering under all those numbers, and it needed to be fixed before it grew
any further, especially since the co-owners were planning to scale the business and increase the advertising
spend. Looking through the key GA reports, the sibling entrepreneurs worried that the momentum of the
business was slowing down. As the sun set over the Mumbai skyline, Sujata and Taniya realized they were
running late and needed to rush back home. They were both mothers of young children and knew their kids
were waiting for them to start the harvest of the homegrown spinach that had been planted a couple of
months back. But tomorrow, the sisters would come back to the office with fresh minds to try to figure out
the root cause of the problem, just as they had been doing from the very beginning of Suta.
DTC BRANDS AND CONVERSION RATE
DTC brands were businesses in which the majority of revenue came from online channels that sold directly
to consumers or which started with social-first or online-first distribution before going omnichannel.5 These
brands built their own online stores and/or mobile applications to distribute their products and services.
According to market intelligence provider Traxcn, from 2019 to 2021 nearly 590 new DTC companies
entered the Indian market and raised significant capital.6 Most DTC brands initially focused on social
commerce to launch their brands and leverage the full extent of digital channels to acquire customers.7 DTC
brands extensively used marketing analytics to improve their performance.
Anshuk Agarwal, co-founder of a leading marketing automation platform for e-commerce in India called
Adyogi (adopted by Suta in 2017), specified four key drivers that determined the success of DTC brands. The
first two were superior differentiation of a DTC brand and the ability of the brand’s online store to convert
visitors to customers; that is, to achieve a high conversion rate. Next, it was important to ensure repeat
purchases by customers. This had a large impact on the cost of acquiring customers and the return on
marketing investment. And finally, brands had to aim for a high AOV to maximize ROAS. Brands specializing
in physical products such as cosmetics, apparel, and food needed to ensure that the AOV of each transaction
was enough to recover the cost of goods sold, marketing expenses, and cost of shipping each order.
DTC brands had to understand how the interplay between the conversion rate and AOV impacted ROAS.
ROAS was a key metric in analyzing marketing campaigns, which could be raised by increasing revenue
or decreasing advertising spending. For an online brand, there were three methods of increasing revenue—
by increasing the number of visitors to the website, by increasing the conversion rate, or by increasing AOV
(see Exhibit 1). If the number of visitors and the advertising spend increased proportionately (from baseline
performance outlined in Situation A in Exhibit 1), and the conversion rate stayed flat, ROAS would remain
the same (Situation B). ROAS could be increased by increasing the conversion rate without any additional
advertising spend (Situation C) or by increasing the AOV (Situation D). However, if AOV increased, and
the conversion rate decreased proportionately, ROAS would remain unchanged (Situation E).
Along with Suta, several other DTC ethnic wear brands were launched between 2014 and 2016, including
AKS, Rustorange, Mulmul, and Bunaai. Because apparel was considered an impulse purchase, much of the
Sagar Malviya, “2021 Sees a Dip in Launch of Online-Only Firms,” Economic Times, January 19, 2022,
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/company/corporate-trends/2021-sees-a-dip-in-launch-of-online-onlyfirms/articleshow/88984772.cms.
6
“Channel Shift by Consumers Fuelling D2C Growth: HUL Chairman Sanjiv Mehta,” Economic Times, accessed December
16, 2021, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/retail/channel-shift-by-consumers-fuelling-d2c-growth-hulchairman-sanjiv-mehta/articleshow/89050638.cmst.
7
Abhishek Chatterjee, “Social Commerce to Grow Three Times as Fast as Traditional E-Commerce: Accenture,” The Hindu,
January 6, 2022, https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/social-commerce-to-grow-three-times-as-fast-as-traditionale-commerce-accenture/article38143223.ece.
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industry’s budget in digital marketing was spent on Facebook and Instagram, followed by the Google
Shopping platform.8 Among these brands, AKS, which was launched in 2014, earned $13 million in revenue
in 2020, while Bunaai, launched in 2016, earned revenue of $4.4 million in 2021. However, the growth of
many of the companies like AKS and Rustorange (with revenue of $2.6 million in 2021) was fuelled by
distribution on large online marketplaces such as Myntra and Nykaa.9 Suta, on the other hand, had focused
on developing its own distribution.
ABOUT SUTA
Sujata and Taniya co-founded Suta in 2016. The company name was a blend of the first two letters of both
their names: Su and Ta, as the sisters were often referred to.10 By 2021, Suta had become a well-known
Indian DTC brand in the apparel segment with a focus on sarees, the traditional wear for women in India.
The company was founded with the purpose of creating a sustainable, stylish, and comfortable ethnic wear
brand that would support the livelihoods of the 16,000 weavers and artisans in rural India who handcrafted
the sarees. The main goal was to profitably scale the business without compromising on the quality of
products. The co-founders also placed emphasis on ensuring a steady income for the weavers and artisans
who created the products and a good working environment for their employees.
Sujata and Taniya had made the difficult decision to bootstrap by funding their growth through cash flow
that the business generated online, and they therefore exercised extra caution with regard to all costs,
especially marketing spending. The main channel of distribution was Suta’s own online store (accounting
for 95 per cent of revenues) that could be accessed both on a desktop and on a mobile phone. The company
worked toward delivering a seamless customer experience on desktops and mobile devices. They had
refrained from building a mobile application (app) for the online store, as they felt it would incur additional
cost in technology without any incremental revenue benefit compared to a mobile browsing experience.
Many of the competing DTC brands had opted for online marketplaces such as Amazon, Myntra, Tata
CLiQ, and Nykaa to fuel growth. However, Sujata and Taniya preferred to build their brand name and
operational capability to deliver quality products at scale before venturing into marketplaces. The industry
was replete with examples of brands that scaled up too quickly to meet the demand of online marketplaces
and failed to ensure quality products when volumes increased.11
Suta’s core product offering was sarees. In India, sarees accounted for 50 per cent of women’s ethnic wear
segment worth around $5.3 billion, in 2020.12 Starting from approximately the 1990s, urban working
women started substituting the saree with the more comfortable Western wear because of the time it took
to drape the saree. Suta took the unique path of reviving the love for sarees, bringing them back into Indian
“How to Get Efficiency from Facebook and Google Ads,” Adyogi, accessed March 8, 2022,
https://www.adyogi.com/efficiency-from-facebook-and-google-ads.
9
Divya Nair, “From Rs 3 Cr to 20 Cr: RustOrange’s Success Story,” Rediff.com, December 13, 2021,
https://www.rediff.com/getahead/report/from-rs-3-cr-to-20-cr-rustoranges-successstory/20211213.htm#:~:text=Seven%20years%20later%20(as%20of; Rekha Balakrishnan, “How Online Women’s Wear
Brand AKS Pivoted during the Pandemic and Now Is All Set to Clock Rs 160 Cr Revenue,” YourStory.com, October 4, 2021,
https://yourstory.com/herstory/2021/10/online-brand-aks-pivot-pandemic/amp.
10
Suta also means “thread” in Hindi, the official language of India.
11
Sumit Chakraberty, “Struggle to Survive in a Market Bossed by Amazon and Walmart,” Mint, September 1, 2021,
https://www.livemint.com/news/business-of-life/struggle-to-survive-in-a-market-bossed-by-amazon-and-walmart1567954506864.html.
12
Renuka Kamath and Monisha Mohan, “The Indian Saree League: The Six Yards in Spotlight,” ETBrandEquity.com, October
3,
2021,
https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/marketing/the-indian-saree-league-the-six-yards-inspotlight/86723733.
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women’s wardrobes. One of Suta’s earliest wins, which made them stand out in the market, was a particular
type of saree called “mul saree,” which went on to become their highest-selling category. Its appeal lay in
being simple, very lightweight, ultra-soft, and relatively easy to drape. With more than fifty colours and
thirty prints, mul sarees gave customers plenty of versatility in draping and accessorizing. As Taniya said,
“We saw our customers wear these for weddings and at their workplaces with equal aplomb! They started
wearing varied draping styles, they rode motorbikes wearing the sarees, practised yoga in sarees, and wore
them at home. The sarees took their shape, became symbols of inclusivity, and became part of their stories
as if they were meant to be.”
Simplicity and “no fuss” were their go-to mantra for all product launches. From 2019 onward, Suta started
launching new collections of sarees every quarter. These new types of sarees were more expensive than
previous collections. They also added new categories including comfort wear, men’s ethnic wear, and lounge
wear, but the sarees continued to be their crowd-pleaser (see Exhibit 2). The online store was full of colour
thanks to carefully curated images of sarees and blouses. Suta’s distinctive positioning and product-market fit
helped the company command a premium such that the AOV in six years reached ₹4,200 ($55), almost twice
the industry average.13 The higher price also ensured sufficient margins to cover the advertising costs.
Much of Suta’s marketing success could be attributed to the social media presence they had created with
their distinctive and minimalistic design. It appealed to their target customer: a modern working woman
aged eighteen to thirty-five who took pride in creating her own unique style. Through authentic storytelling
on Facebook and Instagram, Suta was successful in bringing traditional garments back to women’s fashion.
The sarees’ distinctive patterns, different from any other saree or ethnic wear brand, combined with clear
storytelling, helped build Suta’s follower base on Instagram to around 450,000 followers. The products the
company created and its ability to attract an audience who valued these products ensured a product-market
fit. Suta’s success won the co-founders recognition and many awards (see Exhibit 3).
Suta’s deep commitment to their customers and the weavers working for the company continued through
the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 24, 2020, the Indian government declared a complete lockdown, which
continued until the end of June 2020. Delivery of non-essential items was banned. Suta’s fans, however,
continued to patronize the Suta store, even though it was not possible to have the products delivered. The
company not only offered a 20 per cent discount on sarees during this period but also promised to share the
proceeds above and beyond their regular payment to the weavers who were struggling to make ends meet.
There was an overwhelming response from customers who bought the products and did not mind delaying
delivery until the lockdown was lifted, which demonstrated their trust and loyalty to the Suta brand.
CUSTOMER JOURNEY DESIGNED AT SUTA
Sujata and Taniya worriedly pored over the report they had just received from their marketing analytics team
on the past four years’ performance metrics of the website, generated through GA (see Exhibit 4A). While the
AOV had been improving, ROAS was showing a decline. Moreover, the bounce rate, which was a challenge
for most companies in the online space, was decreasing, and the conversion rate was declining, as was ROAS.
The team had extracted the data for specific dimensions such as type of operating system on users’ devices,
customer age group, product category, and others. The data on the type of operating system brought out an
interesting insight (see Exhibit 4B). Clearly, users of the iOS operating system, developed by Apple Inc.
(Apple) and exclusive to its devices, had higher AOVs and conversion rates. Apparel tended to be an impulse
purchase, and most Suta customers preferred to browse the online store on their mobile phones (95 per cent
13
₹ = INR = Indian rupee; ₹1 = US$0.013 on December 16, 2021.
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of Suta customers browsed on a mobile phone). Hence, the co-founders ensured that the website experience
on a mobile device was as seamless as on a desktop, irrespective of the operating system.
In order to investigate the reasons for the drop in conversion rate and to closely watch the path visitors
followed until they became Suta’s customers, the marketing team built a customer journey map (see Student
Spreadsheet, Ivey product no. W33290, worksheet entitled Customer Journey at Suta). This visual
representation of the journey of Suta’s new and repeat customers helped them observe the conversion rate and
other metrics. The analysis of the customer journey alerted the team to points at which visitors (customers)
were likely to drop off and provided information on which processes at the online store needed enhancement
for a better customer experience. The online store, which was housed on the Shopify platform, was integrated
with GA to provide data for marketing analytics.14 In GA, the shopping behaviour analysis section provided
data on how customers chose their paths, but also when and where they were dropping off. The journey of a
Suta customer was designed with the product category characteristics of sarees and other ethnic wear in mind,
and tracked shopping behaviour through steps A to F (see worksheet entitled Customer Journey at Suta).
Step A: Helping Customers Discover Suta and Its Products—Promoting Suta Products to Build
Awareness
As most DTC brands, Suta leveraged its social commerce capabilities to retail its products. The company
created awareness through social media to begin with and subsequently expanded to other digital media
such as Google Shopping and display marketing, search, and e-mail marketing. To increase Suta’s direct
touchpoints with customers, Sujata and Taniya personally attended all exhibitions held in major cities in
India, such as Delhi, Bengaluru, and Kolkata. Based on repeated requests from customers, in 2019 they
opened one physical store in Mumbai.
Suta’s Social Media Marketing: Apparel as a category performed well on Facebook and Instagram, but
especially on Instagram, on account of the visual-first content that the platform promoted.15 The sibling cofounders were very active on social media. They modelled for many of the sarees themselves and developed
a personal connection with their audience through live streaming on Facebook and Instagram (see Exhibit
5). At the heart of Suta’s social media campaign was the concept of #SutaQueen. All Suta customers were
called “Suta Queens.” Many customers sent them photographs of themselves in Suta sarees. The social
media team created posts featuring the photographs with a genuine compliment of the customer’s personal
style and the #SutaQueen hashtag. These campaigns helped attract audience that fit the target profile and
hence ensured a product-market fit.
Every post on social media that showed a specific product or a collection had an embedded link that took
the customer to the appropriate product page or listing page in the online store.16 This ensured a seamless
customer experience. It also allowed Suta to track which posts drove the most visitors to the website. Some
of these posts were promoted. The social media performance metrics were accessible to the social media
marketing team on the administrative panels of the respective social media platforms. Metrics included
engagement with each post—number of likes, shares, comments, and saves. A typical report allowed for
tracking the effectiveness of campaigns promoting posts on Facebook and Instagram, highlighting the
engagement the posts generated (see Exhibit 6 for a typical dashboard with Facebook metrics).
Shopify provided its clients an e-commerce enabled platform to help them sell online; “About Us,” Shopify, accessed
December 16, 2021, https://www.shopify.in/about.
15
“Social Media Is Revolutionising Apparel Industry,” Fibre2fashion, accessed December 16, 2021,
https://www.fibre2fashion.com/industry-article/7518/social-media-is-revolutionising-apparel-industry.
16
A listing page on an e-commerce platform listed a range of products in a category or a search query’s results.
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As of May 2021, Suta’s social media investment accounted for nearly 75 per cent of the overall advertising
budget and was equivalent to 25 per cent of the overall revenue. ROAS on social media was around 10. In
mid-2021, however, Apple’s new privacy policy started affecting the conversion optimization algorithm at
Facebook.17 Apple’s policy prohibited collection and sharing of certain data unless people opted into
tracking on iOS 14.5 and later versions when prompted. For customers who opted out of the service, ad
personalization and performance reporting were impacted for both app and web conversion events.
Suta’s Display Marketing: Suta secured the services of the digital agency Adyogi, which had a proprietary
platform to display Suta ads on websites of relevant media (e.g., Times of India) and blogs. The agency
engaged multiple creatives who deftly created campaigns for various ad formats (e.g., different sizes) and
content types (e.g., images, videos). As a result, each customer was exposed to a variety of products through
different content types and across devices (e.g., desktop, tablet, mobile). For display marketing, the key
metrics tracked were the click-through rates (CTR) and ROAS (see Exhibit 7 for a typical report on display
marketing performance). Each campaign had a certain budget—a certain cost per click (CPC). The CTR
gave an idea of the effectiveness of a given post in generating clicks from the number of displays that were
required to generate those clicks. The revenue from the campaign was tracked and compared with the cost
of the campaign. An analysis of Exhibits 6 and 7 shows that the ROAS of many of Suta’s Facebook
campaigns was in the 20s, almost twice that of display campaigns.
Over the previous four years, the co-founders had kept a close watch over their social media campaigns and
worked with a digital marketing agency to optimize CTR on social media and display marketing campaigns.
They believed that the digital marketing agency and Suta’s own content marketing team did a good job of
driving traffic to the online store. The performance of this part of the customer journey did not worry them.
Step B: Keeping Customers Interested—the Retargeting Loop
Retargeting was a special type of display marketing campaign targeted only at customers who had visited
the Suta online store at least once in the recent past, for example in the previous month.
The social media platforms and display networks drove robust traffic to Suta’s e-commerce platform.
However, not all of these customers bought Suta products the first time they visited the online store. Once
these customers exited the Suta store, they were retargeted on other websites they visited. Retargeting
ensured that when a customer visited influencer blogs, for example, they would see a display banner
advertisement of Suta products. They would also be retargeted on Facebook or other social media websites.
The performance tracking for retargeted advertisements was similar to the tracking mechanism of display
marketing. The bounce rate performance of the online store was at a sub-5 per cent level. This indicated
that the social media, display, and retargeting campaigns were driving relevant traffic to the online store
and made customers want to explore more pages.
Step C: Helping Customers Search for the Right Product—Enhancing Findability in the Store
Customers who discovered products on social media were directed to the online store. It was important that
the page displayed to the customer, or the landing page, had content that was relevant to the person who
clicked on the advertisement. Once they landed on the page, they would begin to browse and explore other
Kurt Wagner, “Facebook Users Said No to Tracking. Now Advertisers Are Panicking,” Bloomberg, July 14, 2021,
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-14/facebook-fb-advertisers-impacted-by-apple-aapl-privacy-ios-14changes.
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products. Suta’s online store provided an intuitive navigation experience for customers accessing products
and information that they needed to make a purchase decision. Suta was able to enhance a customer’s search
experience with the help of specialized marketing technology (MarTech) tools such as SearchTap and a
visual merchandizing tool.
SearchTap: SearchTap was a website search engine focused on enhancing customers’ search experience on
e-commerce platforms with minimal information technology (IT) involvement and investment. It provided
features such as search-as-you-type, location-based results, and smart filters that allowed customers to
browse effectively. SearchTap helped increase the number of product pages that a consumer visited, as it
enhanced the relevance of the search results in the online store. 18
Visual Merchandizing Tool: As Suta’s product portfolio grew across categories, one of the challenges that
the Suta team faced was that of finalizing the best product on a listing page. They had to closely watch the
top products listed on the home page lest they be out of stock and lead to lower conversions. The visual
merchandizing tool helped create listing pages that featured the most preferred products or those that a
customer was most likely to purchase. Additional features included recommendations at each step of the
customer journey, strategic pinning of the “hero products” (bestsellers), demoting products when their life
cycle was ending, and sequencing of dynamic promotion of products based on certain rules, for example
recently launched products.
With these tools, Suta’s e-commerce platform could prioritize products based on colour, pattern, inventory,
conversion rate, and other features, and highlight new arrivals or bestsellers. The display was dynamic
whenever products matched the sequence and could be a fit for the visiting customer’s preferences.
Step D: Providing the Right Information—Enabling Customer Decision-Making
To Suta’s marketing team, it was evident that the design of the product pages was extremely important.
Customers needed to be provided with all the relevant information to make a decision. Suta product pages
had information related to each product, including the fabric used, weave, colour, and a size chart,
supplemented by vibrant images and, in some cases, videos. Sujata and Taniya were proud of their products,
hence the product pages also included descriptions of how the products were made and the stories associated
with them. The team made sure that the product pricing, inclusive of taxes, was available upfront. However,
the delivery date and returns-related details were not available on the product page. This information was
provided to customers when they placed an order. The page also displayed items frequently bought together,
recently viewed items, and a recommendation section titled “You may also like.” All these elements on
each product page, they found, were critical in nudging and helping the customer arrive at a decision. GA
provided a Shopping Behaviour Analysis dashboard, which helped analyze the journey of customers (see
Student Spreadsheet, Ivey product no. W33290, worksheet entitled Example of Shopping Behaviour
Analysis in Google Analytics).
Cart Abandonment: Taniya and Sujata realized early on that a key problem facing all e-commerce firms was
a phenomenon called “cart abandonment.” Customers may like certain products, decide to buy them, and click
the “Add to Cart” button to place the products in the cart at the online store. This signals a high intent of
purchase. As indicated in Exhibit 8, in 2019, customers added products to cart in 6.2 per cent of all product
browsing sessions. However, customers were likely to abandon the cart after placing products in it without
completing the transaction. In 2019, around 75 per cent of the users who added to cart, proceeded to checkout,
18
“Main Page,” SearchTap, accessed December 16, 2021, https://www.searchtap.io/.
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and 25 per cent abandoned their carts. In order to nudge customers toward a sale, Suta sent emails to customers
who were at different stages of their journey. The marketing team would create various email templates for
reminding customers about abandoned carts, promoting the launch of new collections, and others. Suta used
an app called Klaviyo on the Shopify platform to run email marketing campaigns.19
Step E: Making It Easy for Customers to Complete the Transaction—Streamlining Checkout
From the add-to-cart page, customers moved on to the checkout page and provided information related to
the delivery of their order—they were prompted to register (if new to Suta) or log in (if registered earlier).
Requesting customers to provide these details at the time of checking out was a choice the Suta team had
made about four years previously. Most online stores prompted customers to register while they were
browsing products, which helped stores collect customer profile data considerably ahead in their journey.
However, team Suta quickly realized that such a process interrupted customer exploration of product pages,
prompting them to leave the website. Hence, registration and log-in prompts were moved to the checkout
stage, once the customer had decided on the products they wanted to buy.
The checkout stage provided important delivery-related information to customers, like the approximate
delivery date. In the online world, where customers purchased products without touching or feeling them,
the delivery date was an important piece of information that impacted their purchase decisions. Suta
promised delivery within five to seven days. Next, customers proceeded to the payment page, where they
could choose from multiple payment options thanks to Suta’s partnership with one of the top payment
gateway providers. Suta implemented strong monitoring for an error-free payment experience to avoid cart
abandonment just before the transaction was completed.
Suta Back-End and Customer Post-Purchase Experience: After the order was placed, the product was packed
in a perfumed cloth bag before being layered in packaging, as per the specification of the logistics partner.
Customers received regular email and mobile messages that helped them track the package. When the packa
