July 16, 2019 |
How a bank helped JAX Tyres revitalise its website for modern-day customers
Heatmapping, eye tracking and customer insights formed the foundation for a website revamp at this leading Australian tyre retailer
In the very traditional world of tyre retailing, JAX Tyres is something of a standout from the crowd.
Originally founded in 1949, the company has grown to more than 80 franchised stores across Australia, selling a wide variety of tyres and services, and has plans to lift that number to 120 in the next four years. JAX Tyres was also one of the first traditional tyre retailers to publish its pricing online, and to allow customers to purchase on a website.
However, when the time came to perform the latest refresh of its online presence, JAX Tyres received assistance from a somewhat unexpected party – its bank – with the company invited to utilise the Commonwealth Bank’s Innovation Lab for its website development testing.
The invitation came about through a relationship established between the bank and JAX Tyres former CEO, Jeff Board, who was nominated for the 2015 EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award, which CBA sponsored.
According to JAX Tyres chief sales and marketing officer, April Harwood, working with the CBA Innovation Lab gave her team access to tools to help them better understand Web user behaviour, such as eye tracking and heat mapping. Over six sessions, the group was able to solicit significant insights from site users, which were then incorporated into the rebuild.
“It gave us an opportunity to engage with a customer in the way they would be when they are on our website,” Harwood tells CMO. “We were able to look at the whole customer experience and identify where they were getting lost with our website.”
Harwood says purchasing tyres involves a different sales process from many other forms of retailing, as it is both technical and emotional, and there is a particular emphasis on safety.
“It is not like a t-shirt when you are buying often and know what size you are,” Harwood says. “With tyres, you have to have confidence you have purchased something that is the correct legal fitment for your car.
“Customers aren’t experts in selecting tyres, so by using the Commonwealth Bank’s Lab, we were able to follow that customer journey and see where they were starting to lose confidence, or getting lost with our website. We took those insights and redid our integration and relaunched our website in April this year.”
Effortless experience
The site itself was rebuilt from scratch. One of the key changes was to enable customers to select products, not just by tyre size and vehicle make, but also by entering their vehicle’s registration.
“On our new website, you just punch your registration in, because everyone knows that without too much difficulty, and we have built the technology behind that to perfectly map the tyres to the registration,” Harwood says.
The decision to rebuild the site has paid immediate dividends for JAX Tyres.
“This month we have had a couple of record trading days on our website,” Harwood says. “Every few weeks, the growth is continuing since we launched this new platform and it is thanks to the research we did in the lab.”
Harwood says the future for JAX Tyres revolves around building a single view of the customer across online and offline channels.
“We really want to understand the customer of the future and deliver the results to them that are in line with their interests and the type of customer they are,” Harwood says.
