Kiddicare doubles sales with reviews software

Baby goods retailer Kiddicare has doubled sales after introducing new navigation features to its website.

Since January last year, the site has featured tag cloud-based product reviews - allowing shoppers to browse and select products based on a number of criteria including the item's best uses - and user profiles.

The system uses reviews tools from Power Reviews, which are integrated with the retailer's Endeca software, giving users the ability to search for an item based on 'hard' characteristics - prices, brand name - as well as softer attributes, such as whether reviewers consider it be lightweight or durable.

Kiddicare has used Endeca for several years and currently uses its site search, navigation and merchandising capabilities.

Scott Weavers-Wright, partner at Kiddicare, told silicon.com the system took around two weeks to implement the technology.

"The biggest problem was the usability, how we design those pages and how we design the navigation for those pages, it wasn't the technical bits that were a problem at all," he said.

According to Weavers-Wright, the new system has had an "amazing effect" on sales, repeat business and conversion rates for new users.

Since the social navigation features have been introduced, 31,000 product reviews have been added and sales have increased by 55 per cent, with around 80 per cent of the business coming from new customers.

Kiddicare is now looking at adding a new feature allowing users to navigate by person type - for example, a father of twins can find products reviews from other parents of twins. The functionality is expected to go live in around six weeks.