Beter Bed has gone through considerable development. In times when online shopping was the norm, beds were still often bought in physical stores. Brabant sobriety did not stop the company from investing in CRO. Fortunately, because it paid off. Where in the beginning the web team did a few dozen tests a year, it has now grown into an organization with a complete validation culture. For the past 2 years, Beter Bed has been on stage as a nominee for the Experimentation Culture Awards and in 2022 the company took a DDMA Dutch CRO Award to take home.

It's not for nothing that well-known marketing organizations look at Beter Bed with wide eyes. What began with dozens of experiments on an annual basis grew into validation culture in which online tests are validated offline. The online insights have become the source of offline testing and directly impact Beter Bed's offline revenue growth. In this article, we discuss Jaap van den Broek, UX/CRO expert at Beter Bed. 

Online Dialogue has been working with the Netherlands“ best-known sleep expert since 2014. Jaap already told about this in an earlier interview : "In the early years of our cooperation, we shared ideas together and Online Dialogue took care of the realization of the tests, from design to final conclusion. We were working on influencing conversion rates and gradually started to broaden this. In recent years, we started doing more and more ourselves. Increasingly, with the knowledge of Online Dialogue, we built up the expertise on our side. Right now it's a nice mix of hiring of expertise of Online Dialogue where we do most of the executive tasks ourselves."

Source for strategic choices

Jaap van den Broek has been working at the sleep retailer from Uden since 2015. As a UX/CRO specialist, he focuses on devising and executing online A/B tests and customer research, such as usability research and customer satisfaction. In doing so, he makes an impact on the organization, in sales and in gaining customer insights. “I really enjoy making a difference. In our experimentation program, we validate traditional practices and test new initiatives. In doing so, we are a resource for strategic choices being made in the organization. The tests we perform have a much greater impact than in ‘traditional CRO,’ if you can even call it that. By experimenting, we learn a lot about visitor behavior on our Web site. We see connections between different tests, which helps us recognize themes that we can zoom in on further. With that, the impact of our tests and their results is becoming bigger and more important.”

The prerequisites for a successful CRO program at Beter Bed

According to Jaap, the key ingredients for a successful CRO program are curiosity, belief and guts. “The conditions for CRO success are: (1) Management involvement, (2) Better cooperation between different departments, (3) CRO is not a sprint, but a thoughtful process and way of working. Organizations must dare to let go of old ways of working that have always been thought to be the right ones. Often these are choices that are not substantiated by data, but a high degree of gut feeling. Documenting and making results public is essential to build support and further expand the CRO program.”

Creating a successful CRO program was not without controversy. “Beter Bed has gone through quite a few developments. There are a few changes behind this. First, Beter Bed's ambition to grow online. In order to realize this ambition, the e-commerce team is undergoing a professionalization process. The team is growing, with room for specialists in many online areas. This has enabled us to take on more experiments. We have grown from a few dozen experiments on an annual basis to about 150 experiments per year. This has created a huge archive of customer insights, allowing us to make increasingly qualitative adjustments to our online activities. In addition to deploying tests on the website, we are also using them more often and organization-wide. This enables us to gain more insights and achieve better results based on data. We are also currently running tests within our CRM strategy and in our physical stores.”

Validation culture at Beter Bed

The professionalization drive paid off and eventually led to a DDMA Dutch CRO Award in 2022. But it didn't stop there. The next step is to create a validation culture. Since when has Beter Bed had a culture of validation? And what has changed from before? “The validation culture is growing within Beter Bed. We have this well underway online and we are also taking steps in this area offline. In order to maintain and strengthen our position as market leader, we increasingly work on the basis of data. We now have the expertise and resources to be able to validate. That is incredibly valuable. A great example is that we validate an online test series, with some convincing winning tests, offline as well. In our stores, that is. It's very cool to see online insights become the source of offline testing.”

Continued sharing of insights and results creates a sense of opportunity. Beter Bed management recognizes the CRO results achieved by the team and embraces what can be felt throughout the organization. “The results speak for themselves. And because we have years of insights, we see clear directions where we can make an impact.”

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Key learnings for a culture of validation

Beter Bed is a traditional retailer that has been successful in the world of sleep products for years. It is not always easy to break old habits. By gathering evidence and being persistent in convincing colleagues, the oil slick keeps expanding. What are the key learnings?

“Because we've been experimenting for several years, this has already been pretty much embraced within the E-commerce team. There are still gains to be made in the rest of the organization, but by sharing test results and making opportunities to submit test ideas available, the internal reach is increasing. More and more colleagues believe in our approach, which is why we are getting more and more hands on experiments. I therefore offer the following advice: 

• Document your ideas, elaborations and results. Share these with your organization.
• Surround yourself with ambassadors: seek out like-minded people and people who share your beliefs. Even if you have evidence, it will not be taken for truth in all cases.
• Get more insights. Keep testing and try to scale up the number of tests. This creates evidence that no one can ignore.”

Future vision of CRO at Beter Bed

In the coming years, Beter Bed is determined to reduce the difference in customer experience between the website and the stores. The online channels are a valuable source of insights, which can inspire offline experiments. Many more offline and omnichannel experiments will be conducted in the coming years. “It is not said that the online insights match the offline insights, but we can improve and align our activities. In my dream, we continue continuous testing as an omnichannel approach, also towards the offline channels and the physical stores. The combination of online and offline information and experience is hugely important. My ultimate goal is to realize a seamless experience across channels as best as possible.”

As a booster and idea generator, Jaap will continue to ensure that the culture of experimentation continues to spread within the organization. Online Dialogue assists him and his team in realizing future plans. Want to know more about our collaboration? Feel free to contact.