Seasalt Case Study

The Brand

Seasalt is committed to helping inspire people of all ages and shapes to dress with creativity and confidence. Since 1981, Seasalt has grown to be the largest employer in Cornwall with over 70 stores in the UK and now has a global reach.

Covid has accelerated the digital transformation at Seasalt. The brand has seen rapid digital adoption from existing customers, and has acquired new digital customers. Seasalt recently replatformed to Magento 2 on all three websites – UK, Ireland and Rest of World and launched with Athos Comerce’s Discovery Suite including Smart Search and Smart Category Merchandising in mid-July 2021.

The Challenge

Seasalt truly believes in being customer-led. With Athos, they’ve also learned not to over merchandise and to let the AI work.

Recently, during a sale period, the team fully merchandised all products within sale to be in a specific order, based on stock level and other more aesthetic factors. The data showed that customers were not browsing the category that way, and were using filters straight away.

When it comes to layout of category pages, we need to be customer led. Whilst it’s important that our pages look the best they can and we are able to show the key products in our collections and categories, it’s much more important for us to show the most relevant products and content to our customers. The website’s responsibility is to drive sales through the web and provide a good customer experience. With Athos, we’ve been able to find that balance between commercial, merchandising and conversion.

Jana Lindner

Senior Digital Trade Manager, Seasalt

Now, the Seasalt merchandising team knows that they don’t have to merchandise every product on a category page, they do the first few rows, and then let the machine do the rest.

Athos enables us to optimize the small things on the site that make a big difference. We use data to figure out points of friction, and smooth those out for customers. We need to use AI technologies such as Athos because we want to do as much as we can in-house and uphold that Seasalt personal touch in the digital experience. But also make it scale. We’ve found that using AI increases AOV, on site customer experience, CLV, and even helps us with driving more efficient advertising due to increased relevance.

Tim Ryan

Director of Digital at Seasalt

The Solution

Time bound campaigns

Seasalt is able to plan campaigns in advance, and schedule start and end dates. The team has set up clever rules to allow for flash sales, highlight new collections, and keep category pages merchandised in line with email and other marketing campaigns. The same strategy is used site-wide to unify the search and category journeys.

Category merchandising with AI

Seasalt found that no matter how intricately they merchandised category pages, shoppers will simply use filters and refine their own way anyway. So, to balance curation and automation, the Seasalt team pins 16 products to the top in order to visually curate the top 4 rows to align with marketing campaigns, then lets the AI merchandise the rest, saving a lot of time, and showing customers only what they want to see.

Automates boosting and demotion of products

Rule based merchandising allows Seasalt to create layers of control, but within the layers it allows the AI to work its magic. For example, Seasalt has a boosting rule to prioritize clothing from the newest collection, but the order of that clothing will be dependent on the AI.

Smart Search and Smart Category Merchandising contains the tools the fashion retailer needs to balance curated collections with automated, personalized customer experience.

The Results

Conversion rate increased 16% site-wide
20% increase in conversion rate from search
22% increase in average order value
8% increase in session value from search

Partner with Athos Commerce to transform your ecommerce store. With proven tools and expertise in search and merchandising, we empower businesses to achieve measurable growth. Contact us today to start optimizing your store for success.