Driving Return on Content

Data & Analytics Case Study

North Highland helped both a Fortune 50 retailer and international hotel conglomerate differentiate in an increasingly competitive e-commerce landscape by applying its proprietary Digital Content Optimization solution to isolate the specific mix of digital content—including text, images, and videos—needed to maximize purchase conversion. North Highland helped instill ongoing content optimization capabilities which drove substantial revenue growth.

Client Situation

A major U.S. retailer and an international hotel conglomerate lacked a consistent standard for digital content to guide their suppliers and franchisees.

Due to having multiple content sources with little to no strategic direction, the companies were in the habit of presenting content, including text descriptions, pictures, and videos, that varied widely and did not adhere to any set standard. Further complicating the challenge were large disparities in existing assets by product category or hotel type, the shopper's location, and type of device used to view company web pages.

Our Approach

North Highland brought its Digital Content Optimization solution to these clients, applying machine learning to identify the precise mix of digital assets needed to drive conversion. North Highland embedded its analytics team with each client to define an actionable and repeatable process used to identify the effects of digital content variations. This approach also enabled the companies to establish KPIs to measure the success of its content.

The client teams responsible for executing the processes were on the business side, requiring the identification of a solution that fully harnessed the power of analytics, but that was also intuitive and accessible for business users. The solution also needed to rapidly demonstrate results to justify further investment.

To achieve these goals, North Highland built processes for data collection, analysis, advanced modeling to predict page performance, and templates for consistent reporting to key stakeholders. For the hotel company specifically, image recognition machine learning techniques were used to identify specific objects in the images as well as quality metrics of the hotel page images. This further enriched the data set used in modeling, and empowered the development of a more impactful standard for digital content.

North Highland also trained the companies’ business teams to operationalize and maintain the machine learning processes so they can examine data themselves, make incremental adjustments, and determine the optimal content mix for each product category in the future.

Value Delivered

North Highland empowered the retail company’s business analysts to gain insights into the variation in content on its product pages and determine the most effective combination of digital assets to reach end customers. Today, the client continues to use North Highland’s proprietary methodology to create consistent standards across its product categories. The company realized more than 100x ROI from increased purchase conversion in the first year following implementation of North Highland’s recommendations.

Using North Highland’s comprehensive model, the hotel company discovered a $27 million revenue opportunity for one of its brands. North Highland also delivered a prioritized list of hotel pages with the most revenue opportunity and a dashboard enabling the client to view insights from its image galleries. North Highland is currently expanding its analysis to the conglomerate’s other hotel brands and digital properties.

North Highland delivered a machine learning model for a large U.S. retailer that drove an additional $150 million in incremental revenue through digital content standardization and optimization processes on its product information pages.