Halfords Case Study

Halfords is the UK’s leading provider of motoring and cycling products and services. Their purpose is to inspire and support a lifetime of motoring and cycling. They put their customers at the centre of everything they do and use their passion for cycling and motoring to give expert advice and support.

As a brand that cares about its customers, Halfords had already embarked on a personalisation journey prior to working with Webtrends Optimize. When engaging with them, we knew we had to streamline their process and enhance their personalisation programme to provide the best experience for visitors.

Stocking as many products as they do, Halfords have a challenging product discovery process. For example, there are over 500 bikes for customers to choose from, each with a wide range of attributes such as colour, size and lifestyle. With so many products in the category, a solution was needed to help users filter down their product selection.

Personalisation can be based on observed behaviour but can also be powered by directly asking the users questions. Products with a complex purchase journey - whether holidays, building a new computer, or in this case bicycles – can benefit hugely from collecting user requirements. The more people tell you, the more relevant an experience you can offer them.

The Webtrends Optimize team not only built an initial experience but experimented with presentation moving from an embedded on- page experience to a sidebar, mobile-friendly version following its success. These question-based journeys, also known as Guided Selling, asked users a series of clear and well-thought-out questions, and filtered the page in the background so users only see relevant products.

For example, utilising Guided Selling reduced this initial list of bikes from 184 to 32 product choices.

184 bikes are displayed when first coming to the product page.

Users can then answer some questions to refine their search.

Utilising these filters and answering questions has meant 32 results are displayed rather than 184.

We have established through AB testing, that less can often mean more. By reducing the list to the most relevant products, the level of effort required is reduced. Improving both UX and conversion. This is far easier for any user to make sense of rather than having to navigate 184 products, 152 of which were not relevant.

Like many leading retailers, Halfords had access to valuable insights from its digital platforms, including website engagement and customer purchase trends. The challenge was how to make best use of this insight to improve the relevance of the online experience— especially given limited space on key pages like the homepage.

There was a clear opportunity to move beyond generic carousels and banners and instead tailor what each user sees based on their shopping interests—whether that’s motoring, cycling, or outdoor leisure.

To deliver this, Webtrends Optimize worked with Halfords to develop Personalised Entry Page Experiences—targeted, contextual content served at key moments in the customer journey. These experiences were designed using a mix of real-time browsing signals and broader behavioural trends, enabling the site to surface more relevant offers and messages to different customer groups.

For example, someone browsing motoring accessories would be shown different promotions than someone looking at camping gear. This ensured that valuable screen space was used to show the most helpful and timely content.

Personalisation also accounted for seasonal relevance—for instance, showing windscreen wipers in wet weather or de-icer during cold spells. It also enabled more precise targeting of promotions, such as displaying premium tyre offers to motorists rather than to customers browsing children’s bikes.

By focusing on “the right message, at the right time, for the right person,” Halfords created a more relevant and engaging website experience that benefited both users and business outcomes.

Good ideas are only half of the battle. To scale personalisation, the Webtrends Optimize and Halfords teams collaboratively built mechanisms to easily define new experiences, ingest and process large volumes of customer profiles, and target 1000s of profiles with unique and relevant experiences.

Halfords continues to be a great example of a brand who both understands the need to scale personalisation to millions of users and has the tenacity along with the Webtrends Optimize platform and team to deliver on these aspirations.