German retailer Sport Thieme recently teamed up with Adobe Scene7 to improve the way it manages product inventory and marketing across its ecommerce site.
The challenges:
• Provide a more varied range of product photos with improved quality
• Optimize image production and management
Sport-Thieme has been a successful player in the European sports products market for more than 60 years. The German company reaches out to sports-enthusiasts in 12 European countries via eCommerce websites and also publishes eleven printed catalogues in nine of these. Sport-Thieme’s range of merchandise includes approximately 15,000 products spanning over 100 different types of sport. To create product images and views for the catalogue and website, Sport-Thieme used various stand-alone solutions that were high-maintenance and required a large number of personnel. For this reason, the aim was to operate the Dynamic Imaging, eCatalog and eVideo creation processes via one technology platform.
Improve image production: A challenge for both back- and front-ends
Sport-Thieme required more varied product images for its company website. “We could see that our previous stand-alone solutions for dynamic imaging, zoom, 360-degree rotation and eVideo were reaching the limit of their potential,” explained Frank Wenzel, eCommerce Manager at Sport-Thieme.
“The image production process at this point was very laborious and time-consuming,” he continued. Product managers selected images for the website and their selections then had to be manually created and saved in multiple formats, with an additional photo for the zoom version, by the desktop publishing team. Each of these images had to be manually named in the content management system. Wenzel is convinced that “the entire process required far too many staff members, who could have been better utilized elsewhere in the company.”
Sport-Thieme had two areas to work on at the time. On the one hand, the company was keen to offer its customers an improved purchasing experience, with more varied product images and general online product visualization with interactive zoom and spin enhancements. On the other hand, the back end of the process also required a more efficient image production and management procedure.
Best Practices:
Simple image creation and management with simultaneous product presentation improvements
Following the implementation of Scene 7, Sport-Thieme’s products can now be easily captured and delivered in numerous image formats, including zoom views. The manual procedure for saving the numerous versions of each product photo has been made completely redundant — all of the required formats can be created from just one high-resolution master image, including color and sample views of the product in various resolutions, sizes and formats, and all in high quality.
“By employing the Scene7 platform centrally, we are able to meet both front- and back-end requirements at the same time,” explained Wenzel. The work processes in image production have been optimized and the product presentation on the website has been significantly improved for customers. Last but certainly not least, the purchasing experience has been significantly enhanced thanks to better, more detailed and more varied product images, as well as the use of eVideos.
Upgrade to eCatalog and eVideo
Originally, Sport-Thieme only wanted to streamline the image production process using Adobe Scene7, but the comprehensive rich media solution has also been applied to prepare images, videos and electronic catalogs. “We chose Scene7 because it provides us with an all-in-one solution for images, video and electronic catalogs,” said Wenzel.
Sport-Thieme is already using the Scene7 eCatalog solution on 10 of the 11 country-specific websites. As a web version could be created from existing printed material in a simple and cost-effective manner, Sport-Thieme was able to offer its catalog customers their purchasing experience of choice, boosting the multi-channel approach. Wenzel from Sport-Thieme confirmed that “the catalog solution is working extremely well. The catalog PDFs are generated automatically and link seamlessly with the shop.”
The Scene7 eVideo solution is also showing improvements. “Before we switched to Scene7, the performance of the videos was so poor that we decided to remove them,” revealed Wenzel. However, the use of video is extremely important. We will only remain competitive if we can present our products to our customers in the best possible way. Thanks to Scene7, our videos are back online and I am looking forward to the first tracking results,” said Wenzel excitedly. Sport-Thieme is currently leveraging Scene7 to host and serve 125 videos.
Results
A proven return on investment
After implementing Scene7, Sport-Thieme’s conversion rate increased by 3%. The time required for image creation and management was cut in half, which was accompanied by a reduced time to market for new products. “We now have more options open to us, thanks to the shortened time to market and the increased flexibility surrounding image material use,” explains Frank Wenzel. “Product managers can quickly upload pictures of the product or promote products separately using additional incentives.”
Sport-Thieme’s profit following the introduction of Scene7:
• 3% increase in online conversation rates
• 50% less time spent on image creation and management
You can also view the case study via this link.
