Decathlon Gets Customers Inspired and Geared-up for Adventure with Stories!

Founded in 1976 with the goal of making high-quality sports and outdoor equipment accessible and affordable, Decathlon is currently the world’s largest sporting goods retailer. Customers across 60 countries can purchase Decathlon’s 10 signature brands in nearly 1,700 stores worldwide, or online via their app and website. As a fully integrated business, Decathlon manages everything from product design and development to distribution and logistics, ensuring that prices remain low for customers without compromising on quality. 

Challenge #1: Creating More In-App Engagement Opportunities

Engagement is everything in the world of eCommerce, and Decathlon wanted to deliver a customer-centric experience within their app by giving users plenty of opportunities to explore their brand and products. Decathlon had already observed a connection between longer session durations and higher conversion rates and wanted to give shoppers reasons to spend more time in-app, encouraging them to interact with and explore more of what Decathlon has to offer. 

Challenge #2: Streamlining Product Discovery and Navigation with Limited Space

Helping online shoppers easily navigate extensive product catalogs is a common challenge for eCommerce brands, especially since users are reluctant to scroll and in-app space is limited. Decathlon was looking for a solution that would allow them to showcase the most relevant products to their users for a streamlined discovery process. 

The marketing team also wanted to be able to help users at the consideration stage make decisions between similar products (such as hiking backpacks or yoga mats) without running into barriers like option paralysis or decision fatigue. 

Challenge #3: Increasing Consumer Confidence for Higher Conversion Rates

Part of Decathlon’s brand mission is to make sporting and outdoor recreation more accessible to a wider audience, mainly by providing quality goods at an affordable price point. But another aspect of fulfilling this mission is customer education, so that even a shopper who is entirely new to a sport or is getting ready for their first camping trip can feel like they have the right equipment to meet their needs. 

While social media provided a way for Decathlon to share their video library and promote their blog, the marketing team wanted a way to create a stronger connection between content engagement and product conversion.  With an integrated content platform and shopping experience, Decathlon could create a frictionless path from discovery to education, and straight on to conversion. 

And then they found Storyly! 

Solution #1: Stories Offer Best-in-Class Customer Engagement

As the digital landscape’s first and most captivating mobile-native content format, Stories are the ideal vehicle for creating engagement opportunities within Decathlon’s app. Storyly gives the Decathlon marketing team the ability to create and publish full-screen, interactive, personalizable Stories that keep users coming back to the app more frequently and exploring for longer when they do.

Solution #2 Reducing cart abandonment with personalized Stories 

Storyly brings the magic of personalization to the Decathlon team! They create interactive gift guides that are tailored to each user's unique interests, sport-specific product roundups, and quick access to promotions and top-selling items. When users open the app, they'll be greeted with personalized Stories that make it easy to find exactly what they're looking for and complete their purchases seamlessly. Additionally, personalized cart abandonment Stories help increase conversion rates for Decathlon by reminding users who have left items in their cart.

Solution #3: Stories Provide Education and Inspiration, Driving Conversion

By publishing content directly to their app in the form of Stories, the marketing team at Decathlon is able to get shoppers inspired for their next great adventure and direct them to the perfect gear they’ll need to make it a reality. Whether it’s a tent setup demo, a trail bike unboxing, or a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the design process, Stories not only entertain Decathlon’s in-app audience, but provide their customers with the information they need to feel good about their purchasing decisions. 

While online retail is bigger than ever across the globe, shoppers still care about the benefits of in-store shopping, especially when making first-time purchasing decisions. With Storyly, Decathlon can orchestrate an omnichannel strategy that helps give their app users the information they need to arrive at a decision. Stories help fill in the gaps for online shoppers in the look and feel of a product and how it performs in action, giving them more of the value of the in-person shopping experience with all the convenience of mobile retail. Especially in markets where customers prefer to judge a product in a brick-and-mortar store, Stories help drive conversion by improving product understanding and customer confidence. 

Results

Since integrating Storyly, Decathlon has seen an exciting increase in user engagement, product discovery, and conversion. The marketing team has been thrilled with the 31% CTR their Stories have achieved. When specific products are featured in Story content, the marketing team can track the increase in product page views and conversions, showing that Stories are driving traffic to targeted products and directly improving conversion rates. In fact, nearly 1% of Decathlon’s revenue can be tracked to user interaction with Stories! 

What’s Next?

The team at Decathlon has big plans for Stories as part of their future marketing strategies. After seeing promising results with personalization, Decathlon plans to utilize Storyly’s integration capabilities to deliver hyper-relevant content and product recommendations on an individual level for their users. They’re also interested in helping in-person shoppers reap the benefits of their online platform with in-store portals like QR codes that guide customers to social proof or in-depth product information. We’re excited to see Decathlon reach their goals with Storyly!

Want to help your customers get to “yes” faster like Decathlon? Book a call today!