Success Stories | Bunzl

How VWO Insights helped Bunzl lift conversions with user journey analysis and data-backed hypotheses

Uplift in total sales

Success Stories > Bunzl

Executive Summary

Challenge

Bunzl Retail & Industry lacked visibility into user behavior on their eCommerce website, Verzendverpakkingenshop. They couldn’t tell which content engaged users, where drop-offs occurred, or why visitors hesitated at checkout, making it difficult to prioritize UX improvements or run effective tests.

Result

With VWO Insights, Bunzl Retail & Industry established a structured approach to comprehensive behavior analysis, uncovering usability issues and friction points across the user journey. By bringing all behavior data into one platform, they identified patterns and turned them into clear, evidence-based A/B test hypotheses. This led to impactful redesigns that delivered significant conversion improvements:

Uplift in total sales

9 %

Increase in product page visits

11 %

Increase in click-through to checkout

9.5 %

Business Objective

Bunzl Retail & Industry, based in Arnhem and part of Bunzl Plc, offers total solutions and is a specialist in non-food essentials, packaging, disposables, hygiene products, and logistical solutions for both the food and non-food sectors. Bunzl Retail & Industry optimizes the processes of packaging, storage, shipping, and sales, and works closely with their customers to develop innovative concepts in products and packaging processes. Within Bunzl Retail & Industry, Verzendverpakkingenshop serves as a leading supplier of packaging solutions.

To support this goal, they set up a dedicated web optimization team in 2023, bringing together a UX designer, developer, product owner, conversion specialist, and data expert. The team follows a structured, data-first approach where every test hypothesis is backed by behavioral analysis. This disciplined methodology has been key to achieving consistent and impactful optimization results.

The team chose VWO Insights as their behavior analysis partner based on years of positive experience with the platform, exceptional support quality, and the ability to consolidate all behavioral insights into one place.

Feature Spotlight

Heatmaps

Challenge addressed:
Users quickly left the homepage, and the team needed to understand what they noticed and whether they missed or misunderstood key content.

How was it used:
The heatmap revealed where users were clicking most, highlighting the most engaging sections of the page based on collective user behavior.

Key insight:
The analysis showed heavy interaction in the area just below the main banner, where multiple category blocks were placed. While the high engagement initially seemed like a positive sign, it became clear that users were getting overwhelmed by the number of options. Instead of guiding them toward a clear next step, the section created confusion and stalled progress.

Heatmap report shows high interaction on product category entry points

Heatmap report shows product entry points replaced with customer testimonials

Clickmaps

Challenge addressed:
Despite decent traffic levels, users were exiting the homepage quickly. It lacked clear guidance, and the team had little visibility into which elements captured users’ attention and which were being overlooked.

How was it used:
Clickmaps were used to analyze where users clicked the most and where they didn’t. This allowed the team to evaluate how users were interacting with individual elements like banners, buttons, and navigation links.

Key insight:
User clicks were dispersed across several links and blocks, with no single element commanding enough attention to guide the journey forward.

Scrollmaps

Challenge addressed:
The team wanted to understand how visitors navigated after arriving on the homepage.

How it was used:
Scrollmaps were analyzed to check the visibility of product categories.

Key insight:
The scrollmap clearly showed that the categories below the main banner were still visible above the fold for users.

Funnels

Challenge addressed:
While users were progressing through the checkout process, a noticeable drop-off occurred before reaching the Thank You page. The team needed clarity on where users were exiting and why conversions weren’t improving.

How it was used:
Funnel analysis was initially used to track each step of the user journey, from the initial checkout step to the final confirmation on the Thank You page (Bedankt pagina). After implementing changes based on earlier insights, the team re-analyzed the funnel to evaluate whether those changes improved click-through rates and reduced drop-offs at key stages.

Key insight:
The funnel data showed a significant portion exited before the final confirmation. This pointed to friction in the last stage of the process, potentially due to unclear instructions and missing trust elements. Based on these insights, the team streamlined the checkout experience.

From Insights to Action

Case Point 1: Optimizing the homepage navigation

Behavioral analysis revealed that users were heavily interacting with the area just below the main banner, where multiple product category blocks were placed. Instead of guiding users toward a focused action, this section created visual clutter and decision fatigue. The team realized it was overwhelming visitors and slowing down exploration.

The team hypothesized that replacing the cluttered category section with customer reviews would simplify the experience, build credibility early in the journey, and drive more visitors toward product pages.

This A/B test was run on VWO over an 8-week window to capture stable user behavior trends.

Case Point 2: Adding trust signals to the shopping cart

The team turned their attention to another critical friction point—the shopping cart. Session recordings showed that after adding products, many users paused during checkout, hovered over earlier pages, or navigated back to the homepage. This behavior pointed to purchase hesitation at the final step of the funnel.

Building on the success of homepage reviews, the team hypothesized that embedding customer reviews within the cart could reinforce trust and reduce last-minute hesitation. Customer reviews were strategically placed within the cart interface to reassure users just before purchase.

The A/B test was run using VWO. The results were clear, the cart experiment delivered an uplift in conversions, validating the strategy of placing trust elements at critical moments.

User behavior analysis guided Verzendverpakkingenshop to reshape their homepage and checkout experiences around user confidence and clarity. Small changes, like repositioning social proof, led to substantial gains across the funnel.

Aha! moment

A high engagement zone can unintentionally act as a cognitive bottleneck when too many options compete for attention, overwhelming users instead of guiding them toward a primary action.

Impact

VWO Insights has been invaluable for understanding our customers’ behavior. Instead of guessing, we now make data-driven decisions backed by heatmaps, clickmaps, funnels, and recordings. It helps us identify crucial UX issues and build strong AB test hypotheses. Using VWO Insights, we achieved significant uplifts – such as an 11% increase in product page visits and a 9% increase in sales after implementing customer reviews on the homepage. It’s an essential tool in our conversion optimization process.

Hans Breeuwsma
Conversion Specialist