Product Strategy: How to Improve PDP Conversion at Avios

Leveraging my extensive e-commerce experience, I recently collaborated with IAG Loyalty as a strategy consultant, supporting the product leadership team in addressing and resolving conversion drop-offs on the Avios web shopping portal.

Here is a quick summary:

Scenario: Over the last six months, we’ve seen a 15% drop in the conversion rate on shopping portal PDP, especially among mobile users aged 28 to 43 in the UK. This has led to a significant decrease in customers’ spending with Avios partners and a loss of revenue.

Recommendations: My proposed solution focuses on improving mobile UX, boosting engagement with affiliate links, and enhancing user trust. We have a phased product launch plan starting in November to reverse this trend and increase click-through conversions by 15% over six months.

To break down the issue further, the 15% decline in conversion rates has been gradual over the past six months vs last year due to lower affiliate link clicks. So we can rule out one time bug. seasonal trends or acquisition challenges. Our target audience—millennia aged 28-43—has seen a noticeable drop in engagement on mobile. There are several internal and external factors could contribute to this. Internally, the mobile experience may be suffering from slow load times, complex navigation, and text-heavy content that is not mobile-friendly or users move to mobile app after seeing the app banner on mobile site. Externally, new competitor offerings in the UK market could draw users away. Addressing these will be key to regaining user trust and improving our conversion rate.

To validate these assumptions and define a clear product goal, firstly, I define the target segment as UK female online shoppers, age 28 to 43, who are top 10% of earners and frequent travelers.

Then, I searched for UK loyalty program-related surveys and conducted 3 customer interviews. The results shows that: 92% of consumers are turning to loyalty programs for everyday spending, but many prefer instant cashback over Avios points. Younger generation like millennials are becoming less loyal to a single airline than the elders.

Through customer interviews, we’ve learned that users find it difficult to accumulate enough Avios for valuable rewards, and they often forget to use loyalty sites for smaller purchases. 

So the product goal is to better communicate the unique value of Avios and reduce friction during the shopping process in order to improve PDP conversion rates.

Now, having the competitive pressure from cashback sites in mind, I use a customer journey map to examine at which stage through the shopping journey did the user move from Avios to other reward sites. Let’s take a look at Nicole, a 30 year-old CRM manager, a travel lover, and a regular online shopper in UK. Last month, her 4-year-old laptop is becoming really slow and difficult to use. So she started to search for new new laptop online, compare prices and check user reviews. Since her preferred laptop is a bit pricey, she start looking for discount codes and Avios points she could get for this purchase. However, our mobile site presents challenges such as comparing all the brands’ Avios rates for this laptop, using voucher along with Avios and link safety for lesser known retailers, which drives her away to cashback site and place an order there.

From Nicole’s customer journey, we can see that the poor navigation and unclear value proposition and affiliate information at consideration phase led to distrusts and bounces on PDP.

As a next step,I compare Avios mobile PDP with competitors like TopCashback and Virgin Red to understand the current market position.

We see that our mobile responsiveness and user trust elements lag behind. TopCashback, for example, offers instant savings and a highly optimized mobile experience, which is attractive to users looking for immediate monetary rewards. Virgin Red provides a smoother mobile experience, particularly appealing to frequent travelers. To stay competitive, Avios needs to focus on improving mobile functionality, enhancing the value proposition of Avios points, and rebuilding trust with users.

After reviewing customer needs and competitor’s offering, I defined a product mission that aligns with IAG Loyalty’s overall company mission. That is, to rebuild the PDP to help mobile web users earn Avios points easily, quickly and securely through  personalised shopping journey.

My strategy is focused on 4 areas to lock users in the shopping portal: first, send tailored notifications like your recently viewed brands to trigger users to come to the website; second, encouraging users to click affiliate links through clear value propositions, time-limited offers and social proofs; third, providing immediate rewards through gamification elements like goal setting and progress bar. Lastly, making users want to invest more time on the site by displaying personalised content using user browsing/search/save to wishlist history.

By making the experience seamless, we aim to drive conversions and boost user engagement.

To achieve this, I’ve identified a range of high-priority solutions with a focus on the ‘Action’ strategy to increase click-through on PDP by 15% in 6 months.

The top priority is to implement a sticky call-to-action button on mobile PDPs so that users can easily interact with affiliate links.

Priority 2 and 3 is where we update content formatting, adding a how-to guide which further improve the navigation and content richness as well as streamline the experience between mobile web and app.

Next, we can build a Similar retailer recommendation to allow user to compare the avios rates easily and quickly and select the best offer

Incorporate time-limited promotion countdowns would also create a sense of urgency to prompt conversions

For priority 6. to help user understand the value of Avios points vs cashback quickly, we can also add an dynamic message banner to display the “total points you could earn on an order” using average order value.

Priority 7 is where we could consider integrating trustpilot reviews and ratings to build trust on affiliate link clicks especially for lesser known retailers

Finally, for users who moves between devices like ipad and iphone, we can enable easy switching between app and mobile web using deeplinking, allowing users to pick up where they left off easily to reduce frictions and churns.

Each solution has been scored based on user reach, potential impact on business goal, confidence in success, and the effort required, allowing us to prioritize those that will have the greatest effect.

In terms of product launch timeline, in November 2024, we’ll roll out the sticky CTA, content updates, and how-to guides. Then, we’ll introduce features like similar retailers and promotion countdown in January 2025, and a dynamic point indicator by February. Following that, I suggest we put a check to review the changes on conversion rates and react to any changing market trends or business needs where needed. Otherwise, we can move on to tech discovery for bigger projects like Trustpilot integration and seamless app & web transition and run experimentations to validate the business value.

Our goal is to gradually enhance the mobile PDP experience, monitor success metrics like click rates and conversion rates throughout each phase and iterate quickly, ensuring that we meet our goal of a 15% increase in conversion rates within six months.

In conclusion, by addressing mobile UX issues and improving user engagement, I believe we can reverse the drop in conversions and drive increased customer spending with Avios partners.