Toys for a Pound – Kids Toy Generator

Need help finding the perfect toy for someone? We worked with Toys for a Pound to develop a unique tool that creates tailor-made toy suggestions based on the child’s age, gender and personality.

Brief:

The Kids Toy Generator is an intelligent and interactive shopping tool which asks the user about the child they are shopping for. After asking a few quick questions it will rustle up tailor-made toy suggestions based on the child’s age, gender and personality.

The user can create specific results which match a number of criteria at once, meaning they can find the perfect products for their needs.

This was a fun and exciting project designed to provide an engaging user experience whilst driving sales for Toys for a Pound.

Summary

Microsite Design & Development:

The original idea was to create a simple Gravity Forms-based multi-page WordPress website, however, there was a desire to do something somewhat more creative to allow the design and development teams to flex their muscles using JavaScript and CSS3 to create an application full of animations and interactivity that could be white-labelled for future use. To simplify the process of changing content within the application, a simple JSON file is used to control the static text, questions and products allowing for quick updates to the application where necessary. During development, the team realised that the products displayed could be directly tied to the main Shopify website and actually turn the application into a fully-fledged cart system. This led to the end result of a simple and fun to use tool which directly allows users to purchase toys without having to leave the application.

A second phase was undertaken to make the content easier to update due to the fast turnover of stock available. This phase involved creating a custom Laravel based admin system where content could be changed on the fly and outputted to the JSON file. The front end was moved into this system to create a fully-fledged package.

Summary

Tracking Setup & Implementation:

As the tool was set up as a SPA (Single Page Application), the tracking setup wouldn’t follow the usual conventions. Instead, we had to create virtual pageviews within Google Tag Manager to simulate the user experience of clicking through the application.

We then used Tag Manager to create tags to simulate the buyer journey from the website, to the application and back to the website again so we had the full user buyer journey.

Summary

Outreach & Digital PR:

Our PR and outreach team then got creative and pitched out some headline ideas. Using our beloved media contacts, we got coverage from various publications which either reviewed the toy generator directly or wrote about Toys for a Pound as a whole. A few months after the generator went live, The Sun covered their own piece on TFAP without any prompting or contact.

Summary

Supporting Onsite & Offsite Content:

The content team built in a monthly schedule for onsite posts as well as offsite PR as mentioned above. The website now has a colourful catalogue of engaging content.

Paid Social Media Promotion:

Our paid social media specialists planned and launched some successful advertising campaigns which brought traffic to the site via platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Results

This tool was a huge hit with both existing Toys for Pound customers and new site visitors. So much so, page sessions rocketed with over 1,200 sessions in just days of the launch. The first week of the toy generator being live, saw more than 1,500 add to cart clicks, and the bounce rate was little over 18% (meaning over 80% of visitors stayed on the site to visit other pages). It was a huge success and brings a huge chunk of revenue to the Toys for a Pound to this day.

Want to work with us on something amazing?

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