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Nike Gets Next-Generation Advice On How To Improve Its Digital Experience

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Global consumer brand Nike made a bold move this year to up its digital game. It allowed college students from around the world to analyze its digital data and look for ways to improve its website and customer engagement.

Nike agreed to be the corporate partner for this year’s Adobe ADBE Analytics Challenge, a 15-year-old competition that gives student teams access to data from the corporate partner’s digital sites that lets them evaluate things like bounce rates, return visits, buyers vs. browsers.

The winners were announced today, with students from the Indian Institute of Technology beating out teams from five other universities. This was the first time the competition has been held virtually, due to the pandemic.

The list of the previous corporate partners shows how the competition has grown in stature over the years, along with the corporate view of the value of letting eager young eyes pore over your data.

The first corporate partners in the early years, when the competition was limited to students at Brigham Young University, were Hobbytron.com, Costumecraze.com, and Backcountryoutlet.com.

Over the past four years the corporate partners have become bigger brands with more at stake in getting their digital experience right, but landing Nike is the biggest coup thus far for the challenge organizers. Major League Baseball, T-Mobile, MGM, and Sony Playstation were the previous four partners.

Nike, in a statement released by Adobe, said they welcomed the chance to get input from the generation of consumers “who grew up in a digital-first world.”

“The students brought a fresh perspective to the digital experience that Nike NKE provides,” Emily White, Vice President, Data and Analytics at Nike, said in a statement.

This is the first time that universities outside of the United States have been invited to participate. Adobe said they received thousands of applications from around the world, a record number for the competition.

Because the teams are given proprietary corporate data to analyze, their full presentations and recommendations are not made public, but Adobe released the highlights of the recommendations of the winning team from India.

The Indian Institute of Technology team (team name the Alphas) had suggestions for how Nike could redesign its website, improve engagement on social media, and focus better on likely buyers.

The details of their presentation shared by Adobe contain some good Gen-Z advice.

Redesign: The team analyzed bounce rates, and looked at where users left the site, and recommended a “Journey Tour” feature for first time users that replicates the experience of walking into a physical store. It would provide a digital snapshot view of how to navigate the website and locate help, and a chat bot would mimic a store associate.

Social: Analysis of how different customer groups interacted with Nike online showed that high engagement rates, reflected in frequent repeat visits, led to more purchases, and that users who had a login account on the site were more engaged. The team recommended creating a “social hub” as a networking site that would incentivize users to create an account in order to receive benefits like participating in marathons and other events, or earn discounts or early access to new releases.

Focus: The team analyzed data on frequent buyers, and likely-to-buy consumers, who placed orders on their first visits. They merged that data with marketing spend and demographics to quantify the impact of increasing investments in paid media, promoting more women’s products, and driving more engagement in regions such as Southeast Asia.

The members of the winning Alphas team from the Indian Institute of Technology were Pooja Patwari, Parth Hetamsaria, and Jahnvi Sharma.

They beat out the other finalist teams, from University of California (Los Angeles), University of Utah, Fashion Institute of Technology, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and National University of Singapore.

The winning team received $35,000, with another $25,000 divided among the other finalists.

The final presentations were judged by Emily White of Nike; Daniel Vredenberg, Lead Product Manager, Digital Product, Nike; Anurag Singvi, senior director of customer analytics, Flipkart; Sylvester Obafunwa, director of omnichannel analytics, Academy Sports and Outdoors; and Hila Dahan, Co-founder and COO, 33 Sticks.

You could argue that, based on its most recent earnings report, Nike doesn’t need help on the digital side. Digital sales for the first quarter, which ended August 31, were up 82%, and digital sales make up at least 30% of the Nike’s typical quarterly sales, Nike has made investing in its website, apps, and direct-to-consumer e-commerce a priority in recent years.

Kudos to them for being willing to get digital advice from some of the best minds of the generation they will be depending on to drive future sales.

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