Case Study: Optimising Conversion for a Market-Leading Automotive E-Commerce Platform
Client: European market leader in tow bars and vehicle accessories
Duration: 6 months
Role: Interim Product Manager / Project Lead
Market Focus: Finland
Background
The client is a prominent European e-commerce company specialising in tow bars and other vehicle accessories. Customers can enter their vehicle details online, such as licence plate or chassis number, to find the correct tow bar, and conveniently book installation at a local garage. While the business held strong positions in several European markets, the Finnish entity was underperforming.
Value Rebels was engaged to assess the Finnish market, identify underlying issues, and develop a strategy to improve local performance.
“We were really struggling in Finland. The numbers just didn’t make sense compared to our other markets. Customers weren’t converting, and our support team was overwhelmed with pre-sale questions we didn’t see anywhere else.” - Fake quote
The engagement focused on diagnosing and resolving specific issues affecting digital performance in the Finnish market. Key goals included:
Market understanding: To provide the leadership team with a clear understanding of the Finnish market’s trends and development and why it was underperforming compared to other markets.
Conversion rate improvement: To increase the percentage of visitors completing purchases online, particularly for tow bars, the company’s flagship product.
Customer journey simplification: To reduce friction and confusion across the digital funnel, especially around product fitment and installation booking.
Support call reduction: To decrease the volume of calls received by the Finnish customer service team, particularly those stemming from unclear product information or order process uncertainty.
Approach
Value Rebels applied a pragmatic, insight led approach to improving product performance in the Finnish market. Key areas of work included:
Market research and trend analysis: Value Rebels analysed Finnish automotive news and official vehicle sales data to uncover market specific trends. A clear shift towards electric vehicles, which typically have limited towing capacity, combined with rising inflation, economic uncertainty, and a noticeable decline in new vehicle sales provided valuable context for slowing demand. These insights helped explain the Finnish markets underperformance compared to previous years.
Customer support data analysis: Value Rebels reviewed qualitative and quantitative input from the Finnish customer service team, identifying recurring pain points and pre purchase questions that were not sufficiently addressed on the website.
Website journey redesign: Working closely with the client’s external development agency, the number of steps in the customer journey was reduced from six to three. This simplification focused on removing redundant pages, reducing cognitive load, and improving the flow between vehicle entry, product selection, and installation booking.
UX and content enhancements: Informed by user behaviour and call analysis, additional contextual guidance were added into customer journey funnel. This included explanation about the differences between tow bars, calendar improvements for a more intuitive installation time selection, and price clarity, which was particularly important for first time tow bar buyers.
Cross team collaboration: Value Rebels facilitated alignment across multiple stakeholders, including:
Leadership in Germany
Local leadership in Finland and the Finnish sales and customer service team
The external UX/UI design team and development agency
Results
Although the client had limited quantitative tracking in place at the outset, the impact of the engagement was clear through both observation and qualitative feedback:
Strategic market insight: Value Rebels analysis helped reframe how the business approached localised challenges in Finland, setting a precedent for how other regions could be reviewed and optimised in the future.
Improved conversion funnel: The simplified checkout process and enhanced information architecture resulted in a smoother user journey. Leadership observed an increase in online order volumes, particularly for complex products such as tow bars with installation.
Reduction in support queries: By proactively addressing common customer questions within the product pages and checkout flow, the number of inbound calls, particularly around compatibility and booking, was noticeably reduced, freeing up support capacity.
Enhanced stakeholder confidence: Internal feedback from both the German headquarters and the Finnish team highlighted high satisfaction with the pace, quality, and clarity of the improvements made.
“After the changes from Value Rebels, the Finnish site felt like a completely different experience smooth, clear, and much more aligned with what customers actually needed. We saw a real shift in online performance and fewer calls to support almost immediately.” - Fake quote
Value Rebels insights
This project revealed several broader learnings relevant to any multi-market e-commerce operation:
Support teams are a goldmine of product insight: Analysing customer service logs provided fast, actionable feedback on gaps in the digital journey.
Small changes, big impact: Reducing the number of steps in the checkout journey had a disproportionately large effect on both conversion and perceived ease of use.
Operational simplicity drives customer confidence: Many customers abandoned the process due to a lack of clear, timely information, not because of price or product. You need to answer the question at the time when the customer expects the answer to be there.