Personalization Audit: Gymshark

Gymshark has deftly gone from guppy to ecommerce hammerhead in just 10 short years. Today they're the subject of our latest Personalization Audit.

If you're new to our LimeSpot Personalization Audit series, we're taking a deep dive into some of the top Shopify brands out there to see what they're doing when it comes to personalization - and where they might be missing the mark.

Gymshark personalization strategy audit

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Famously founded by a teenager in 2012, Gymshark has evolved from a true 'garage business' into a $150M+ business over the past decade. This activewear brand is one of Shopify's top success stories.

A few notes about the Gymshark shopping experience. Unlike some of the other brands we've looked at - check out our Fashion Nova and ModCloth audits - Gymshark has a relatively slim product catalog, with just under 200 products around the time of publishing this blog. A slimmer product catalog doesn't mean less effort when it comes to personalization, however.

With any activewear brand, there are a few primary shopping patterns to consider. The first of course, is by activity - different gear works better for different types of sports or training. For brands that cater to both men and women, particularly if they started with one gender first, speaking to these two different audiences can be another balancing act.

Another key aspect for any activewear browsing is discovering matching sets. Almost all activewear belongs to a collection, whether it's by color, fabric, or use (e.g. cold weather vs. warm weather training). Activewear brands tend to start in one of these areas and expand a micro collection from there. For example, a bright orange color might be applied to a long-sleeved top, sports bra, tank top, shorts, bike shorts, and full-length leggings.

With those things in mind, let's see how Gymshark did during our personalization audit.

What GymShark got right

• Add to cart cross-selling: Gymshark sells many of their products in coordinating colors, so it only makes sense you'd want to shop them as a set. While there are on-page cross-sells, the real showstopper comes when you add an item to the cart. Recommended cross-sell items are also displayed, with the ability to quick-add an item straight into the cart, or favorite it for a future purchase. The cross-sell suggestions show up no matter what product page you're on as well, if you click to preview your cart. One suggestion: Both the on-page and pop-up cross-sell recommendations featured an item that was already in the cart; setting logic to avoid this would keep this box from becoming redundant.  
  
  

Areas for GymShark to enhance

• Bundles: Gymshark's recommendations appear relatively low on product detail pages, below everything else. Some product hero images do have an anchor link CTA 'Wear it with' that drops you down to the recommendations section, but a sample experience of browsing a sports bra didn't actually bring up matching bottoms - it pulled up other sports bras instead. Some other pages had more relevant coordinating items, but the experience was inconsistent. Key takeway? Gymshark should add in on-page bundles higher up on the page to clearly drive people to the exact matching pieces they need for a head to toe styled activewear look.
• Tabbed recommendation boxes: The recommendation boxes on Gymshark are tabbed, which gives shoppers more than one way to explore recommended products. But more often than not, shoppers will miss the tab and focus just on what's made available to them. Gymshark should A/B test whether stacking their recommendation blocks drives better results.

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Missed personalization opportunities for

GymShark

• Home page and navigation personalization: Given Gymshark has two core products lines geared toward men and women, they could look at what collections a customer is showing interest in and tailor the experience accordingly. For example, if a customer is only browsing women's gear, on their next visit, the home page hero image could feature the women's collection; a block of recommended products from the women's line could be featured, and even the navigation order could be rearranged to put either men or women first. Discover more about how to segment your customers here.
• Collections: There's a few things Gymshark could do with their collections. First, they could change the product sort order based on the specific products a customer has shown interest, whether it's by browsing a product detail page or adding a product to cart. Secondly, they could also reorganize collections based on specific activities a customer has shown interest in, rather than relying on filters for customers to do it themselves. The default sort order for some collections makes sense - i.e. by showcasing items in the same color in a row - but in others the order feels more haphazard.
• Cart page and checkout cross-sells: Compared to the Ajax slideout cart, the actual cart and checkout pages on Gymshark's site are disappointments. There is no cross-selling done whatsoever. At the very least, Gymshark could highlight recently viewed products to give shoppers one last chance to bump up their order size.
  
  

Conclusion

GymShark does decently well at guiding customers to finding 'like' products through their on-page recommendations and 'add to cart' pop ups. But they're missing a few easy wins to take the experience further, like adding cross-sells to the cart and checkout pages.

If GymShark really wanted to move the needle on their personalization approach, they could tap into some of the key segments noted above - like activity or gender - and refresh their home page or landing page experience to shorten the time to value (and purchasing) for returning shoppers.

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