NEW YORK — I and love and you is reaping the benefits of a partnership with Nosto, a commerce platform helping brands develop unique shopping experiences for specific consumer segments. According to the pet food brand, repeat purchases of dog food and cat food are up, and first-time customer purchases have been elevated by 17%, thanks to the e-commerce solution.

Nosto offers real-time customer segmentation to customize e-commerce experiences for pet parents shopping I and love and you’s products online through the company’s website. I and love and you is currently focusing these efforts on three key consumer groups: returning customers, loyal customers and first-time customers.

“We wanted to have a website that engaged people — it needed to strategically target customers by putting the right things in front of them,” said Jeff Spears, vice president of digital commerce at I and love and you. “Our view is that the more we can understand who the shopper is and what’s going to help them convert, the more we can personalize the experience and ensure they find something they love. That’s why we invested in Nosto in the first place and continue to look for opportunities to use it to optimize the experience we’re delivering.”

Returning customers, or those who have made at least one prior purchase, and loyal customers, those who have made at least three prior purchases, are identified by Nosto when they enter I and love and you’s website. From there, the platform uses an algorithm to determine whether that customer is ready to repurchase a product. If so, customers are prompted with a hero image to buy that particular product again, with a link directly to the right product page. Nosto also provides product recommendations based on similar purchasing behaviors.

This strategy resulted in a 44% increase in repeat dog food purchases and a 35% increase in repeat cat food purchases, as well as a 332% increase in “add-to-cart” rate for mobile shoppers. Additionally, I and love and you saw “abandoned cart” rates disappear to zero, attributing this to the fact that customers can now be sure they’re repurchasing the correct product with help from Nosto.

According to I and love and you, segmentation by Nosto has doubled the size of its loyal customers cohort and resulted in a 24% increase in visit value among these customers, which the brand calculates as total sales divided by total visits.

When first-time customers visit the brand’s website, they are presented with best-selling product recommendations. Nosto utilizes browsing behavior to determine these recommendations. After implementing these capabilities, I and love and you reported a 17% increase in new-customer purchases, a 9% increase in best-selling dog food conversions, and 12% growth in best-selling cat food conversions.

Nosto can also optimize home pages to cater to specific anticipated product interests, particularly among dog and cat owners. Customer segments showing a preference for dog food receive a personalized hero image on the home page for dog products, while cat-focused customers are presented with a cat-focused hero image. Pet owners who have purchased both dog and cat products are shown a third hero image depicting both dogs and cats.

As brands seek to fine-tune their e-commerce strategies to stand out in this crowded market place, solutions like Nosto are poised to help pet industry players stay competitive online.

Find more articles about e-commerce in the pet product industry.