Verpakkingen XL: How they used product recommendations to see a 117% increase in average order size

Industry: Business and Industrial

Products used: Recommendations

Founded: Netherlands

Challenges:

1. Managing a rapidly expanding group of product categories.
2. Issues due to the increased complexity of interlinking their product assortments.
3. Ensuring customers were actually engaged and therefore returned to their webstore.

Results:‍

1. 117% increase in average order value
2. 30% increase in average basket size

In this customer story, learn how VerpakkingenXL, a Dutch webshop specializing in shipping materials, utilized Clerk’s Recommendations within their webshop. By doing so, they have increased their average basket size by 35% and their average order value by a whopping 117%. 

Introduction to VerpakkingenXL

VerpakkingenXL is a Dutch e-commerce store specializing in packaging supplies for businesses, offices, and warehouses. As part of the Specishops group, VerpakkingenXL is known for its product specialization, customer-friendly approach, and their competitive pricing: the trifecta for any e-commerce store.  

By focusing on specific product categories, they can offer their extensive product knowledge while maintaining affordable prices.

The company was founded by Jerone Boeve, who initially started his career with a focus on home fitness equipment but diversified into other product groups over the last decade. 

Struggling to find suitable packaging for his own products, Jerone launched VerpakkingenXL to meet this demand because if he needed the service, then others did too. Today, the company is known for offering everything a business may need, from packaging materials to office supplies and more.

Before Clerk: A rapidly expanding product catalog that became unmanageable

Before using Clerk’s platform, VerpakkingenXL faced several challenges, especially as their product range grew from just boxes and shipping material to products for the entire office. 

The team found challenges in several areas:

1. The rapid expansion of their product categories: 

With 40-50 new products added to the store each week, it became difficult to manage and recommend relevant products to their customers. Not only that but as the product base was expanding, even keeping track of which items were most relevant for specific customer needs became a challenge.

2. Increased complexity of interlinking product assortments: 

As their inventory grew to over 1,000 SKUs, manually handling product recommendations and anticipating customer needs became overwhelming and a full-time job in itself. 

VerpakkingenXL realized they needed an intelligent and dynamic solution to help customers discover products that complemented their purchases while streamlining their internal processes.

3. Customer engagement and retention: 

VerpakkingenXL wanted to keep customers on their site for longer sessions and help them find products more easily. They needed a way to extend the customer journey by offering relevant upsells and cross-sells, which would help them become a ‘one-stop shop’ for all business packaging and office needs.

In order to retain their customers and garner brand loyalty, personalized recommendations were needed. Especially as 71% of consumers expect personalization and up to 76% of consumers get frustrated when a website lacks this key element.

Related Blog: Discover how Partywinkel optimized their product recommendations to see a 35% increase in average basket size

The Solution: Personalized recommendations in one efficient tool

Once VerpakkingenXL decided to address their growing pains, they implemented Clerk’s Recommendations. Our tool allowed them to achieve that seamless and personalized shopping experience they were after, automatically suggesting relevant products based on customer behavior and preferences.

The powerful features that VerpakkingenXL benefitted from include:

1. A cookieless personalization tool

Clerk’s AI platform is completely cookieless, meaning the personalized shopping experience works entirely within privacy compliance and ensures sensitive data is kept safe.

2. An all-in-one platform

Clerk’s recommendation tool integrates effortlessly into VerpakkingenXL’s website, enhancing their customer engagement with product recommendations on the homepage, product pages, and the shopping cart. And the best part about Clerk is that our unique suite of products work in conjunction to create a fully-rounded e-commerce personalization and automation experience.

3. Works from day one

Clerk’s technology works out-of-the-box, meaning it requires no learning period, and results can be measured from day one.

4. Driven by the power of AI

Clerk’s AI-driven software functions just like an in-store employee, using its insightful and intuitive data to correctly predict the products customers want to purchase.

The Results

Since implementing Clerk, VerpakkingenXL has noted several key benefits,

1. A more prolonged customer journey: 

Due to the addition of recommendation sliders on various product pages, customers are now encouraged to stay longer on the website. By showing related products like office supplies and everyday consumables, such as toilet paper or coffee, VerpakkingenXL keeps customers engaged and ensures they discover products they might not have thought of purchasing initially.

2. Proper scalable growth for businesses and offices: 

As VerpakkingenXL continues to rapidly expand its product offerings, Clerk’s software has proven to be invaluable to their mission. Recommendations are helping the company handle a growing product base, making it easier to actually manage and sell new items without manual intervention.

The company is on a mission to become a one-stop shop for all warehouses and offices. They now not only sell specific items straight to consumers, but also to B2B customers, helping them with all their office and packaging needs.

3. Efficient merchandising on high profit-margin products and branding benefits: 

VerpakkingenXL can now highlight specific products manually, such as popular warehouse supplies, while also letting the machine-learning AI handle the bulk of product recommendations. This means that they can showcase popular and high-margin products, as well as their own home-brand items, which usually have a much larger profit margin. 

Not only that, but they can also incentivize their customers with their own-branded products. For example, customers are offered free VerpakkingenXL branded products like Stanley knives when they spend over €100, which helps to increase brand visibility so they can stay top of mind for their customers. 

4. Improved cross-selling of products at the checkout: 

VerpakkingenXL also noted the added benefit of cross-selling. This ability to cross-sell products like office supplies alongside packaging materials has generated additional revenue streams for the company. 

By offering products that customers didn’t initially plan to buy, such as office paper or snacks like Haribo, VerpakkingenXL has increased average transaction sizes. By taking this approach, they are selling in a similar way to supermarkets, pushing items at the checkout to encourage customers to purchase more. 

5. Seamless international collaboration with other Clerk customers: 

One key thing we loved was hearing that VerpakkingenXL has also benefited from being in contact with some of Clerk’s customers in Italy. They have shared insights and strategies for their different markets, which has been a valuable resource for each of these companies as they concurrently expand into new markets and industries.

Jerone Boeve, Founder of VerpakkingenXL, commented that “Clerk helps us become the one-stop shop for all our customers. It’s been essential for handling our rapidly growing product catalog and making sure our customers find everything they need, even products they didn’t realize they wanted. It’s a game-changer for us.”

Related: Learn how Sportsfood unlocked customer experiences to see a 33% increase in their average cart value. 

Conclusion

A big thank you to VerpakkingenXL for the collaboration and partnership. We are proud to have been part of their tech stack and see how they have transformed their online store into an incredibly efficient and customer-friendly space. We are excited to follow their continued growth as they become the go-to supplier for packaging and office materials in the Netherlands. 

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