Delray Watch Supply carefully observes how consumers shop its site for used luxury watches and has tailored its site design—and even its YouTube videos—to give potential customers what most interests them.

Consumers most want the ability to shop by brand, says co-founder John Pietrasz, who is also director of the retailer’s board. Using technology from Lucky Orange LLC, Delray Watch records each shopper session and finds that most visitors are looking for particular brands. DelrayWatch.com typically shows watches from popular brands like Rolex and Omega prominently on its homepage and allows visitors to filter by brand on shopping pages.

John Pietrasz, co-founder, Delray Watch Supply

Second, many visitors are watch collectors who want to see what Delray Watch has added to its stock, so “New Arrivals” also are featured on the homepage. “Almost all our customers want to see what’s newest,” Pietrasz says.

In addition to using customer data to prioritize what’s on the site, Delray Watch also uses that data to develop ideas for an important marketing channel: YouTube. Co-founder Federico Iossa, who formerly worked for such luxury watch brands as Piaget and Tourneau, has attracted 69,000 subscribers to his “Federico Talks Watches” channel on YouTube, which accounts for half of first-time visitors to DelrayWatch.com.

Better-quality web traffic

Iossa creates YouTube videos to address areas that appear to interest Delray Watch customers based on their site-browsing behavior, Pietrasz says. For example, knowing that the typical sale on DelrayWatch.com is a watch in the range of $3,000 to $5,000 and that customers are always looking for good value, Iossa has created YouTube videos with titles like “Three Great Watches Under $3000” and “5 Great Watches Under $2000.”

The option to filter by brand appears prominently on DelrayWatch.com shopping pages.

Many Delray Watch shoppers are nearing retirement or have already stopped working, Pietrasz says, and many are looking for watches to suit a more casual lifestyle. That led Iossa to create several YouTube videos about sports watches.

By tailoring the YouTube videos to the demonstrated interests of Delray Watch visitors, Pietrasz says the website is getting better-quality traffic from consumers interested in what the site offers and the price points of many of the watches featured on the site. That helps improve conversion rate, Pietrasz says.

“I love the fact DelrayWatch.com is taking action on the back of data,” says Ian Rhodes, founder of U.K.-based consulting firm Ecommerce Growth Company. “Rather than using data to report, they’re using it to drive customer insight. When 99 out of 100 visits do not lead to a purchase, it’s critical that we understand why.”

Rhodes notes that tools such as Lucky Orange and Hotjar are useful because they record such metrics as dwell time and how visitors scroll up and down pages. That provides a retail with insight that goes beyond just seeing what visitors click on, the kind of data provided by the widely used Google Analytics.

“This analysis, as is the case for Delray, gives you a learning tool for the popularity of brands, categories and products,” Rhodes says. “You can build a picture and begin filling in the gaps of what may be missing on your customer’s journey. As the case here, Delray is creating content around the areas they see their customers showing greater interest [whether a purchase is made or not].”

Federico Iossa, co-founder of Delray Watch Supply and “Federico Talks Watches” YouTube personality

There are other conversion-boosting features on the website, such as the company’s phone number on every page—typically several places on each page. Pietrasz says his sales team is adept at closing sales when they can get a customer on the phone.

Additionally, shoppers who abandon a shopping cart receive a follow-up email offering to answer any questions about the watch and reiterating the online retailer’s guarantee of free shipping on every order. For every 50 retargeting emails, two or three lead to a sale, Pietrasz says.

Delray Watch also uses a retargeting service from digital marketing technology vendor Criteo to show consumers ads for watches they viewed on DelrayWatch.com as those shoppers move about the web.

The online retailer has sold $2.7 million online in the past 12 months, Pietrasz says, and he projects 2019 ecommerce revenue will total at least $3.4 million.

Conversion rate trends upward

Overall, the conversion rate on DelrayWatch.com has trended upwards from 0.0003% during its first full month of operation in September 2017 to 0.13% today. Pietrasz says his team ensured that the retailer’s mobile site has all the features computer users can see. But the watch retailer found that the conversion rate on mobile is slightly higher, at 0.17%. Nearly 70% of the web traffic comes from mobile devices.

That conversion rate may appear low, as the median conversion rate is 2.5% for North America’s leading online retailers, those ranked in Internet Retailer 2019 Top 1000 retailers. But it’s not far below that of two other online retailers of used watches with average sales in the thousands of dollars: WatchBox and and Bob’s Watches both have conversion rates under 0.5%, according to Internet Retailer estimates.

WatchBox and Bob’s Watches are two of the four online sellers of previously owned premium watches ranked in the Top 1000. The other two are Jomashop and Crown & Caliber LLC, whose conversion rates are above 1% but generate an average sale of under $1,000, according to Internet Retailer Top 1000 data available at Top500Guide.com.

The Delray Watch videos on YouTube feel authentic, and the website’s design makes it feel “very approachable, you don’t feel like you’re on a $40,000 watch site,” says marketing consultant Bryan Eisenberg, co-author of the book “Be Like Amazon: Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It.” He says the site appears to cater to consumers just beginning to collect watches “and they do a very good job of cultivating that community.”

At the same time, Delray Watch could do a lot more to improve conversion, Eisenberg says. For example, putting videos on product detail pages could help shoppers better visualize the product, which can increase sales of watches that cost thousands of dollars.

He also sees the opportunity to create more of a community among customers, and a stronger connection with the Delray Watch brand. For example, Delray Watch posts watches on Instagram and invites viewers to guess the brand. Eisenberg suggests the retailer could add that element to its website and encourage visitors to tell their stories of watches they own of that brand. A question-and-answer feature that lets visitors ask questions that other consumers answer is another possibility, he says.

“There’s so much more they can do to foster that sense of community,” Eisenberg says. “[Delray is] just scratching the surface.”

One ‘freak’ fraud

Besides boosting sales, an online retailer of expensive items also needs to protect against fraud. Pietrasz says Delray Watch has shipped 1,500 online orders and has only been victimized by one successful fraud.

“That was a freak case where we did take a minor loss,” Pietrasz says. He says the person who committed the fraud had taken control of all aspects of a consumer’s identity, including being able to respond to phone calls to the legitimate consumer’s number and to pick up a package at his condo building.

While an exception in the experience of Delray Watch, that successful theft illustrates the danger retailers face from criminals becoming increasingly adept at taking over the mobile phone accounts of legitimate customers. That allows the bad guys to respond, for example, to a text message from an online retailer requesting authentication. Mobile account takeovers in the U.S. increased nearly 79% to 679,000 in 2018 from 380,000 in 2017, according to payments consulting firm Javelin Strategy & Research.

Delray Watch uses Signifyd to screen transactions for fraud and insures shipments through Parcel Pro. Pietrasz says Delray Watch absorbs the cost of insurance, which averages about 0.03% of the purchase price.