My Role — Project Lead
Strategy, art direction, test planning, user-centered design, implementation, and copy guidance
Our Challenge
Unknown. Our metric for success? User engagement which translates into ROAS (return on ad spend).
Designing in some Elegance
When handling a complex case such as this, our success is determined by establishing a clear understanding of our users. Who are they, what do they buy, where do they buy, and what do they respond to? After all, users are the ones spending their money. They will not spend more if they are not happy.
Fortunately a base is easily established because Philips has done a lot of their own user studies. However, this does not mean it can be readily applied to their Amazon counterparts. We gathered other insights by going beyond the purchase into their presence on Amazon itself. They searched other mid-to-high-end products, overlapped with segments such as Amazon fashion, gifted ‘expensive’ items, and shopped for self-improvement.
We did not stop there either. We gathered metrics on a wide variety of Philips’ ad experiences such as CTR, Purchase, and Drop-off. Analyzing them showed areas for improvement, and were useful as benchmarks for success. Our findings indicated conversion rates were affected by clutter, product recognition, copy length and phrasing. In the process we also noticed Philips brand representation was wildly inconsistent.
From here I proceeded to define a better ad experience by paring everything down to bare essentials. Elegant imagery of products in use which fit into the user’s aspirational mindset, relevant human messaging instead of clinical touch-points, focused journeys which aligned to our user’s purchase stage, removal of duplicate brand names, single product display, and a recognizable brand pattern.
To verify our suggestions, we A/B tested each separately at no cost to our Client. Metrics showed each moved the needle in the right direction. With these results, we launched an end-of-the-year campaign for Diamond Clean toothbrushes which combined our learnings.
Results
Were more than we could have ever expected them to be. We saw a 400% ROAS increase YoY, which came with $2 million in earned Client revenue. These were new historical highs! That same quarter Philips committed an extra $1.3 million in incremental Amazon Advertising revenue. To scale this, we developed internal best practices and templates. Helping ensure all team members could benefit from our research.
The Team
Copywriter: Saint Christopher Monterroso
Sales: Kendra Hum
Campaign Manager: Stacey Singh
Examples of ads we assessed and the prior state of Philips advertising on Amazon.com
Design discovery
Deep diving into the soul of the brand — This is their brand guidelines
Examples of the A/B tests run
New design system, guidelines, and simplification examples
Templates created — Logos for websites and banner masters
Part of the internal wiki we created
The following are more examples of the internal Philips guidelines in practice
Example of the design system applied to seasonal campaigns — Page performed at 4x ROAS
Example of design system applied to a larger scale “awareness/consideration” page
Example of design system applied to a 3-page larger scale “awareness/consideration” page