Case Studies

Simplicity Rocks!

Sometimes the right solution is so simple that people often
overlook it. An invaluable lesson we learnt while working for
ALLGIGS, one of our clients.

ALLGIGS is a UK-based website that sells tickets for gigs and
concerts. A lot of people frequented the website to read articles, news updates and get tour information. But for some reason, the website’s ticket sales were stagnating.

When we looked deeper inthebox we realized that while people were visiting ALLGIGS to gather information about upcoming gigs and shows they were not booking tickets on the website. In other words, the website had good traffic but a rather modest conversion rate. The reason was obvious but not an easy one to believe.

The ALLGIGS website was designed to give information and not to promote sales. Which we thought was very dangerous for the future of the company.

We further crosschecked our conclusion with Google Analytics, which pointed that 70% of website traffic came from the UK and 25% came from Europe. And since the website sold tickets for the UK & Europe tour only it was clear the target group was visiting the website but not purchasing the concert tickets

Our solution to ALLGIGS was to make the website more user-friendly not only to access information but also to buy tickets online. The first change we suggested was that the website shift its purchase button to the right (as we readers tend to focus more on the right-hand side). We also advised them to standardize the format of each web page and make sure that the key action buttons and links were are more clearly visible to browsers.

These minor changes made a huge difference to the business of ALLGIGS and within a few weeks.
www.allgigs.co.uk

Hot innovations for winter

While looking at a difficult prospect we often say that - it’s like selling ice to an Eskimo. One of our clients expected us to do almost that.

Londis, a newspoint in Kingston sold many things along with
newspapers and periodicals. A part of the revenue came from milkshakes.

In the winter season the business lost out on this revenue
flow as no one really had milkshakes in freezing cold weather. Our client wanted to change that.

So how do you sell cold milkshakes in the winter?
As always we started to look for solutions inthebox of the Londis
business. We realized that most products in the confectionary
category sold on impulse. And the unchangeable fact is that
milkshakes are just not desirable in winter. What’s more,
the established brands like McDonald’s and Baskin & Robins
were at a very close proximity and were serving the same milkshake

for the same price thus making it much more difficult for a small shop like Londis.

So instead of trying to sell milkshakes what we had to do was make the milkshakes more desirable. The answer was innovation.

We got Londis to customize their milkshakes during winter. Anyone could come and make their own milkshake by picking chocolate bars and candies from the confectionary counter. We even had innovative marketing material next to the chocolate bar counter saying – add 99p and get a milkshake. The competition – McDonald’s and Baskin & Robbins each retailed milkshake but neither allowed people to make their own shake. Needless to say, the idea was loved by the people and brought in huge profits for the client without requiring him to bring any major change to his existing business model.

“They did sell ice to eskimos!”– Mr. Patel (Londis)

The art of change

They say the only thing that is constant is change. No business
model is immune to changes. Sometimes changes are sudden.and
sometimes permanent. Sometimes they are both. Webbs Art gallery was facing a similar change in its business environment.

Webbs Art Gallery is an art gallery that specializes in West Country landscape and seascape painting. They represent more than 175 well-established and exclusive artists from England.

A couple of years back their business faced a major blow because of recession which also affected most businesses in Europe.
But art businesses faced the biggest blow of all. With uncertainty in the air, people were saving up and were generally in no mood to purchase art. Thanks to the sudden change in the economy, Webbs, which relied on its rich and wealthy neighborhood also started losing business.

The situation looked grim. In such testing times how do you
make people buy something that is not a necessity?

The answer was clear – you can’t. So we went ahead and did the next best thing, we gave away for free!

Try the art, before you buy the art. People were allowed to pick up art just the way they shopped other things – try it, if you don’t like it return it within 14 days and get 100 per cent refund. This meant people didn’t stop coming and picking art anymore and the strategy ensured that the gallery maintained the footfall.

There was another thing that the Webbs’ box pointed
out - most art kept by the gallery was by homegrown talent. A fact that gave Webbs a major advantage over its competition was most people in England preferred purchasing things made in the country and by their own people. Hence, we decided to promote even the art that the gallery showcased as - British Paintings by British artists. The campaign worked and Webbs Art gallery saw stability and growth in the business even in times of change.
http://www.thewebbsgallery.co.uk/

Help change

It is not always in the best interest of a business to adapt to changes. Sometimes businesses need to be ready for the change well in advance if they have to survive and continue to compete in the market.

As was the case with one of our clients called Community Home
Care Provider (CHCP). CHCP provides care coordinators to old and disabled people’s homes. With contracts from the local authorities from thousands of homes they were assured of their business until the government announced the possible change in policy with regards to providing care to old age homes. As per the new law (yet to be enacted) the local authorities in the future would not be able to give out accounts. As per the new rule the old and disabled would be paid directly into their account by the government and they would have the option to choose the care provider themselves.

In other words, CHCP’s business had changed from being B2B to B2C. And it found itself competing in the market for each and every client they had.

In the words of one of the managers of CHCP - it was like starting from scratch.

We looked at these new developments as an opportunity to not only retain the business but also attract new business
by making a certain consumer-friendly changes. First, we created a new website that allowed friends and
family of old / disabled people to personalize the services. What the member had to do was fill a simple form defining the services they need. The form would let the care coordinator know what the client needed even before the initial meeting.

We even streamlined services and directed our communication towards the consumers. We let people know CHCP’s passion for helping the old and disabled. People responded to the change and

fell in love with the improvements. Thus, in-the-box thinking helped CHCP get ready for the change even before the change came knocking on its doorsteps.

“Working with Nishant was inspiring. Nishant had the ability
to understand our business and our passion and to speedily identify our business solutions.”
– Charmiane Perera (Senior Business Partner, CHCP, Community Care; Managing Director, Professional Carer – Care Training & Recruitment)
http://www.chcp.org.uk/

One great job!

Eurobrussels is a one of the biggest online recruitment website in UK. It faced a unique problem. The recruiters on the website were going for free advert postings. So while the website had a huge clientele, most of them were not spending any money.

As we looked in the box we realized that there wasn’t much difference between the space and importance allotted to free advert postings and high visibility job postings on the website; an important reason why most clients went for free adverts instead. Further research pointed out that though Eurobrussels were the business leaders their website looked primitive when compared to the competition.

The task was to make a clear distinction between free advert postings and high visibility job postings. Making the high visibility postings a lot more swanky, attention grabbing and lucrative for that the clients. Basically, if the person is spending more with Eurobrussels he needs to get more value for it.

Firstly, we redesigned the website and made it look more advanced without losing any of their traditional features such as top jobs box, highlighted jobs, etc. this was essential as we had to make sure that the regular users didn’t get lost.

Next we de-cluttered the website and gave space and highlighted the biggest or important) clients. The high visibility job postings were given an added feature called ‘preview’. The preview feature allowed the users to see a visual image of different jobs while they were choosing and also allowed them to compare the benefits and disadvantages of various job postings. What’s more, we highlighted the interesting features such as success stories and demographics to the website where people could read it. Thus making the complete website look a lot more advanced and up market.

Within few months of making these changes we saw the difference. There was increased traffic on the website, high visibility recruiters and an improved corporate credibility.

“Inthebox has done several consultancy projects for us involving improving the marketing of our websites. The team has a great eye for design, and also great skill at distilling the core messages we need to get across to customers. Inthebox understands business problems swiftly and is able to offer fresh insight and ideas”– Richard Foster (Director, Eurobrussels)
http://www.eurobrussels.com/