Casio Visitors Convert 3x More with Yext's Commerce Solutions

In 1946, Tadao Kashio established a small-scale operation to produce mechanical components. He brought his brother on board to scale the business and expand into the burgeoning electronics market, a decision that would prove fruitful and ultimately transform the company into what it is today: a global behemoth synonymous with watches, calculators, and other digital devices.

"As a brand, we have always tried to introduce creative and original products," says Hironori Ishizuki, Executive Officer of the Digital Division. "However, it's not always enough for people to choose Casio based solely on our product catalog. In order to differentiate ourselves and maintain a strong market presence, we have to put our customers at the heart of everything we do."

Casio has hundreds of SKUs, ranging from hybrid grand pianos to signature watches like the G-SHOCK. The diversity of Casio's catalog presents a unique challenge for executives like Ishizuki, who want to promote the full range of products on the website while still delivering an enjoyable experience to visitors. To address this and improve the overall UX, Ishizuki decided to reevaluate Casio's keyword-based site search.

"Keyword-based search has its limitations. If a user searches on your website and gets an irrelevant set of results, it's a bad experience that negatively impacts that person's perception of your brand," says Ishizuki. "We knew that we needed something new to transform our website into a modern, intuitive shopping experience. It needed to be fun to visit, fun to browse through, and fun to buy with."

Ishizuki came across Yext while evaluating new search vendors and was immediately drawn to the company's natural language-based commerce solutions. To make the decision an even easier one, Yext offered an out-of-the-box integration with Adobe Experience Manager, Casio's chosen CMS for product data. "I was very impressed when I first saw Yext in action," says Ishizuki. "How well search engines can respond to people's needs and wants is a very important requirement for websites. I truly believe that great search like Yext is indispensable in this day and age."

After launching Yext, Ishizuki began to explore available functionality that would further enhance the user experience. "Many people come to our website looking to discover something new, rather than just finding a specific product or piece of information," says Ishizuki. "We've introduced hardcoded prompts like 'watches that go well with suits,' which have converted very well. We believe that customers will be more satisfied if we not only offer products, but also lifestyle and usage suggestions throughout the website."

Casio includes support-related content within the same search interface so website visitors can independently resolve common issues without burdening the company's call centers. Between products, FAQs, and instruction manuals, users now have access to an incredibly robust search experience that delivers direct, relevant answers to just about every question. "The results have exceeded my expectations," says Ishizuki. "We have been working with our Yext account team to improve the clickthrough rate in search results and have gotten to around 40%, which is a remarkable improvement over our previous search vendor."

Ishizuki's success with Yext in Japan has inspired Casio to launch Yext on regional websites throughout APAC, EMEA, and the U.S. Yext's ability to support complex search functionality in over a dozen languages means that Casio can consolidate its eCommerce efforts under one roof — something that Ishizuki sees as a huge efficiency gain. "Until now, our site search was localized on regional websites with different providers, which was very fragmented and inefficient," says Ishizuki. "We're in the process of switching to Yext for search on all of our global web properties, which will be incredibly beneficial for a multitude of reasons."

Since switching to Yext from another site search vendor, Casio has seen visitors who search convert at a rate 3x that of users who don't search at all. Casio has also found that those who use Yext-powered search spend significantly more and have an average order value (AOV) 6% higher than those who rely on traditional click-based navigation — a meaningful change since AOV and conversion rates typically have an inverse relationship.

"Although only 7% of website visitors use Yext, the search experience already accounts for 25% of eCommerce sales," says Ishizuki. "When our team started using Yext, I honestly didn't think that the search experience would contribute to a higher purchase rate or that those who bought via search would account for a quarter of our total purchase volume. We will continue to improve the experience, but I've been incredibly pleased with the success we've seen with Yext thus far."