Shoe Carnival sees e-commerce success

Footwear retailer Shoe Carnival is reporting increased e-commerce conversions and revenue following deployment of an AI-powered data platform.

The retailer offers its customers daily promotions and hundreds of new product releases each month, and was previously using a legacy management system that led to long lead times. Shoe Carnival is now utilizing Amplience’s full-stack Commerce Experience Platform, which combines an API-first, integrated content management system (CMS) and digital asset management (DAM) with automated media and experience delivery services. 

Through its work with Amplience and its discovery platform partner Algolia, Shoe Carnival is now operating at scale, responding quickly and staying ahead of the competition. Specific benefits of its technology rollout include:

• An improved customer experience and increase in revenue.
• An increase of 6% in landing page conversions.
• Faster creation and execution of merchandising campaigns.
• Last-minute campaigns can be launched almost instantly, across all channels.
• Merchandising productivity has doubled.
• Content or navigation changes on the site can be addressed by the merchandising team directly, eliminating the need for developer time.
• Twice as many content and search rule changes can be made in half the time it took previously.

“Partnering with Amplience has transformed our online experience by empowering users with the tools necessary to make impactful changes that drive real results, in real-time,” said Courtney Grisham, director of e-commerce at Shoe Carnival. “In order to match our customers’ expectations, we need to make changes fast, and Amplience gives us the power to do just that.”

Shoe Carnival now stores over one million assets in Amplience’s Content Hub, which allows them to search and locate assets almost instantly. For search capabilities, Shoe Carnival leverages the Algolia AI Search & Discovery platform to eliminate all the manual work that goes into re-ranking, returning tailored search results to customers with natural language processing and using automation to simplify workflows. 

In late August 2023, Shoe Carnival partnered with the cloud-based CommerceHub e-commerce platform in an effort to make it easier to find, onboard and effectively merchandise new products from qualified brands.

“With retail moving faster than ever, it was essential for Shoe Carnival to execute their content and campaigns quickly, and to set new promotions live daily,” said Rob Walter, chief revenue officer at Amplience. “Amplience’s Commerce Experience Platform and Algolia’s Search & Discovery Platform has facilitated speed and agility in internal workflows, removing the need for developer input and allowing merchandising and marketing teams to be reactive to business changes and customer demands. We look forward to continuing to support Shoe Carnival’s needs into the future!”

As of June 24, 2022, Evansville, Ind.-based Shoe Carnival Inc. operated 395 stores in 35 states and Puerto Rico under its Shoe Carnival and Shoe Station banners.