How Brooks Running EMEA increased checkout conversion by +4.2% with Exatom

About Brooks Running EMEA

Brooks Running is an American sports equipment company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It designs and markets high-performance shoes, clothing and accessories for runners, and its gear is used by runners in more than 50 countries. In 2022 Brooks Running had a turnover of €1.2B.

The EMEA team works from the historic Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam. It manages 13 localised ecommerce websites that run on one central platform and carry the brand across Europe. In 2021 the team overhauled its entire ecommerce architecture and launched a brand-new UI. With the new platform live, the next job was to find the friction that was still left in it.

The challenge

Brooks aims to remove every possible bit of friction from its online journeys, so runners get the best possible experience and easy access to its products. After the relaunch, three journeys needed attention: the checkout, account registration and the product configurators.

The team’s existing analytics did not show enough of where and why runners dropped out of the forms and the checkout. What happened inside the forms, field by field, stayed out of sight.

Runners were abandoning the checkout, and the tools the team had could not show where or why.

• No field-level data. Their existing analytics had no field-by-field view, and no view of resubmits and failed submits.
• Details that UX research missed. Small faults, such as a numeric field opening the wrong keyboard on mobile, slipped past the team’s own UX research.
• Friction nobody suspected. Some friction points sat in places where the team did not realise there was a problem at all.
• Bugs that surfaced late. Without alerts on form completion, bugs and issues came to light later than they needed to.

The objective was to find out where and why runners dropped out of the checkout, account registration and product configurators, and to remove that friction market by market.

The solution

In 2022 Brooks Running EMEA implemented Exatom on the websites of its four core European markets. That made it possible to analyse and optimise the experience for each market separately, and to benchmark the markets against each other.

The first phase used form analytics to find the technical and UX friction points. The improvements that came out of it were then scaled to all EMEA markets. In 2023 the focus moved to rolling Exatom out across all European markets, so the team could repeat what had worked and find further growth opportunities.

Brooks was also an early adopter of Smart Nudges, then called Smart Tooltips. These are short, contextual messages that guide runners past a known friction point without a developer having to change the page. Every nudge campaign was set up in the Exatom platform as an A/B test against a control group, so each one had to prove itself before it stayed.

How Exatom helps Brooks Running EMEA

Finding the technical faults hidden in the checkout fields

The first question was simple: which fields cause trouble, and why? Form analytics measured every field separately, per market and per device.

The first phase surfaced five types of friction:

• Incomplete field validations
• Incorrect HTML input types on some fields
• Missing autofill settings
• Friction in specific browsers
• General UX friction points

The team named one example itself: making sure numeric fields show the correct keyboard on mobile. These insights led to significant improvements, which were then scaled to all EMEA markets.

Seeing the exact moment runners dropped out

Knowing which field loses runners is half the answer. The team also needed to see what happened there. The drop-off visualisation showed resubmits and failed submits, something their existing analytics never showed.

Session replay filled in the rest. From a friction point in the data, the team could jump straight to the moment runners dropped out and see why, instead of guessing from a percentage.

Guiding runners past friction with Smart Nudges

Not every fix needs a development sprint. With Smart Nudges, Brooks placed contextual guidance next to the fields where runners struggled, including fields where the team had not realised there was friction until the data showed it.

The password field in account registration is one example. A Smart Nudge on that field was A/B tested against a control group and then rolled out to more markets. The error rate on the password field fell by 44%.

The nudges did more than guide runners. The results of each campaign also became a source of information for the development team.

Fixing what the development team could not prioritise yet

Some friction is technical and too small to win a place in a release. Autofixes handled those cases: rules that correct input on numeric, address and phone fields, live without a release cycle and without developer time.

In Germany, a postcode Autofix went live in January 2023 and cut the errors on that field by 50%.

Catching bugs before they cost conversions

A form can break without anyone noticing until the numbers drop. Webform monitoring sends automated alerts when form completion rates change, so the team hears about a problem while it is still fresh.

Those alerts helped Brooks identify bugs and issues faster than it could before, which meant fewer lost conversions.

The results

Checkout conversion at Brooks Running EMEA rose by +4.2%.

• +4.2% checkout conversion rate, driven by fixing the validation, input type and autofill faults that form analytics surfaced, and by nudging runners past the friction points that remained.
• 44% fewer errors on the password field, after a Smart Nudge on that field proved itself in an A/B test and was rolled out.
• A strong return on investment, from additional revenue and from lower customer service costs, because fewer deliveries went wrong in markets where address services are less precise.
• Faster bug detection, because automated alerts on form completion rates flagged bugs and issues sooner than before, which meant fewer lost conversions.

The numbers changed how the teams work together. The results built trust between teams in both the data and the recommendations. Redesigns are now tested in advance, and ideas are validated with Exatom’s insights. Data-driven decisions based on those insights became a fixed part of the global checkout process, and many of the friction points the team addressed might have gone unnoticed without them.

By zeroing into specific fields we can ensure that our forms are optimized down to minor details missed in our UX research process. The drop-off visualization offers insights we didn’t have before in regards to the resubmits and fails. Coupled with the session replay function of the platform allows us to quickly access the exact moment these users drop off and understand the why.

On top of the deeper analysis that we have unlocked, the automated alerts on form completion rates have helped us identify bugs and issues faster than we could have done so previously. Resulting in fewer loss conversions.

Jesse Lee
Data Analyst, eCommerce and Digital Marketing, Brooks Running EMEA

What’s next

The team keeps working on continuous improvement, and the collaboration has grown beyond the checkout. The same approach, finding the friction first and then fixing or nudging it, now also covers the Shoe Finder, the Brooks Run Club loyalty sign-up, product pages and the cart.

For teams with a checkout like this, there are logical next steps. Industry benchmarking puts each market’s checkout next to other retailers, not only next to the other Brooks markets. Eureka, Exatom’s AI CRO assistant, can turn the field data into a prioritised list of fixes. Other retailers took a similar route: INNO used one Smart Nudge on its final checkout step, and Bruna went through its checkout field by field. To see what this looks like on your own checkout, book a demo or compare the plans on the pricing page.