Obs and Obs Bygg, leading names in Norway's retail scene, are renowned for their wide range of products and strong customer focus. As they expanded online, recreating the in-store experience became essential. They worked in phases, first integrating offline with online data and unlocking strong product recommendations.
With strong results in hand, they move on to fine-tune customer experiences in search by leveraging product intelligence and Voyado's strong merchandiser tools. Unlocking personalized online shopping journeys, seamlessly blending digital and physical retail, and achieving impressive outcomes.
Obs and Obs Bygg are prominent retail chains and part of Coop Norway, a cooperative retail company.
Obs is your go-to hypermarket, providing everything from fresh groceries and electronics to clothing, all under one roof. It’s designed to make your shopping trips quick, easy, and enjoyable. Obs Bygg, on the other hand, is your trusted partner for all things home improvement, offering building materials and tools for both DIY projects and professional renovations.
Both chains prioritize value, quality, and customer service, reflecting Coop Norway’s commitment to reinvesting profits for member benefits and community engagement. Together, they ensure reliable and comprehensive retail solutions for Norwegian consumers.
Øyvind Moen, eCommerce Product Manager at Coop
Obs and Obs Bygg faced a familiar but significant challenge: how to replicate the highly effective in-store experience in a digital setting. In physical stores, trained staff excelled at understanding customer needs, making relevant recommendations, and driving upsell opportunities.
“With over 30,000 unique items, manually curating product recommendations was time-consuming and often ineffective. Online suggestions felt random, even with purchase history data,”
— Øyvind Moen, eCommerce Product Manager at Coop
The disparity resulted in fewer items being added to online carts compared to in-store purchases.
To close this gap, the team turned to Voyado Elevate with the hypothesis that combining offline transaction data with real-time online behavior could improve recommendation relevance.
The integration of offline data into Voyado Elevate has delivered impressive results for both businesses.
“For Obs, we saw a 25 % increase in add-to-cart revenue share, jumping from 2.12% to 2,7%. Obs Bygg experienced an even more dramatic increase of 33%, with add-to-cart revenue share rising from 1.66% to 2,2%. These results are even more impressive considering that they are solely based on better input to the recommendation engine.” says Øyvind.
Øyvind Moen, eCommerce Product Manager at Coop
With the great results from the offline sales initiative, Coop soon wanted to further fine-tune the online shopping experience for Obs and Obs Bygg. The goal was twofold: Improve the search experience by leveraging product intelligence and empower the internal merchandiser teams.
By introducing Voyado’s product intelligence into the generation of search results and product listings, they could ensure that the most relevant product was always shown to each shopper across all pages in their online stores.
As the engine learned concepts and relationships between products in categories such as DIY, building materials, electronics, and tools, shopping experiences improved significantly for shoppers.
In addition, the introduction of editorial merchandising tools had a profound operational impact on eCommerce in Coop. Enabling the team with tools built to instantly make editorial changes to meet launch or campaign needs, with no coding required.
The change enabled Obs and Obs Bygg to move work in-house from external agencies and the PIM team into the merchandising team themselves, significantly cutting the lead time for making changes to the site.
“We were able to cut the time to market on change significantly, but the real impact is the removal of frustration and shift of ownership. No more waiting for a requested change to be implemented. Now the merchandisers are empowered to do their job.”
— Øyvind Moen
This shift enabled faster campaign launches and real-time adjustments—making the business more agile and responsive to customer needs.
Thanks to the introduction of Voyado’s search, recommendations, and merchandising engine, Coop eCommerce have seen notable increases in performance:
Øyvind Moen, eCommerce Product Manager at Coop
When choosing a provider for this journey Obs and Obs Bygg wanted a trusted partner that could be there every step of the way. And the Voyado team has been there throughout the process, providing hands-on support, retail expertise and strategic advice, sharing a deep understanding of Obs and Obs Bygg’s goals.
“It’s been incredibly rewarding to work alongside the team at Obs and Obs Bygg. They’ve had a clear vision from day one, and our role has been to support and guide them in bringing it to life, step by step. Watching their growth and the results they’ve achieved is a great reminder of what’s possible when you combine great tech with a strong, collaborative team.”
— Martin Svensson, Customer Success Manager at Voyado
By combining offline insights, editorial flexibility, and intelligent automation through Voyado Elevate, Obs and Obs Bygg have created a cohesive shopping journey that mirrors their in-store excellence.
The results are not just in the numbers—they’re visible in the speed of execution, the quality of recommendations, and a more empowered eCommerce team.
We love all things customer and product data, and would love to chat about your brand’s individual challenges, and how our solutions can help.
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