HP and Go Instore, say their partnership to deliver an immersive in-store experience to online shoppers is delivering great results in Curry’s PC World stores in the UK.

In its own words, Go Instore provides “immersive omnichannel retail experiences for personalised eCommerce”. Here’s how it works in practice. Online shoppers browsing HP product web pages are presented with a call-to-action to click on a button to be connected with a HP product expert working in-store at Curry’s PC World. If they accept the invitation, a live-two way conversation is initiated, in which the shopper can get any questions they have answered by the HP expert.

In addition, the shopper can also see what the HP expert in store is seeing as the expert is equipped with a smartphone, streaming a live video feed of whatever he or she points it at. So the expert might offer the shopper a close up of a laptop or printer, or demonstrate how to set a device up.

The service is also configured to prioritise the location of the customer’s nearest HP in-store expert, so that the customer could potentially start a conversation online and finish it in store, with the same product expert.

The companies say that since the service was deployed last summer, Curry’s PC World has seen an increase in HP product purchases; an increase in average order value; and conversion rate increases of up to 4.5x. In addition, customer satisfaction scores have peaked at 4.7 out of 5.

“We understand the power of our HP in-store sales experts in building trust and brand loyalty; we wanted to deliver the same sensory experience to online shoppers” said Brian Chavrimootoo, EMEA trade marketing manager at HP. “The Go Instore deployment with Currys PC World has delivered impressive results. Customers quickly embraced the initiative and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with over-indexed customer satisfaction metrics. Sales, conversion rates and average order value increases have all exceeded expectations.”

Since going live, the retailer has seen a steady increase in the number of HP live video engagements. “Working with Go Instore, we handled a record number of online interactions for HP products,” said Simon Swanborough, senior project manager – connected channels at Currys PC World. “Across the stores that are active with the Go Instore service, store experts spent an average of 34 per cent of their time engaging with online shoppers, with our Bristol store in particular, spending 70 per cent of their available free time in a call. The success with HP has resulted in switching on the partnership to cover a greater proportion of the country.”

In addition to the HP/Curry’s PC World partnership, Go Intore is also working with MADE, The Perfume Shop, Le Coq Sportif and MediaMarktSaturn Retail Group.