Background

From the VWO ConvEx’24 interviews, Chris Gibbins sat down with Annette Rowson, Analytics and Experimentation Lead at Primark, to explore the brand’s expansion into digital.

Primark is a well-known fashion retailer with a long-standing focus on in-store experiences. Historically digital-light, the brand has been taking steps into digital as customer behaviours evolve.

A major milestone in this shift has been the launch and expansion of Click & Collect, allowing Primark to explore digital value without moving to full ecommerce.

The Opportunity

As Primark expanded its digital presence, the business needed to build experimentation capabilities from the ground up. This included establishing a data-driven culture, aligning stakeholders across teams, and ensuring that digital decisions were led by real customer insight rather than assumptions.

There was also a need to embed experimentation into product delivery, rather than treating it as a separate or optional activity.

The Approach

Creative CX has supported Primark on its digital experimentation journey, helping to embed a problem-first prioritisation approach supported by regular Opportunity Discovery Research.

This shift ensured experimentation focused on solving genuine customer problems, rather than testing isolated ideas. Experimentation specialists were embedded directly into product squads, making experimentation part of everyday decision-making and aligning teams around shared goals and metrics.

Primark also invested heavily in cultural change, introducing initiatives such as open data and insights sessions, cross-functional ideation workshops, and large-scale experimentation days, in collaboration with CCX, that brought teams together around real customer research.

The Impact

Primark has successfully scaled its Click & Collect proposition and significantly increased experimentation maturity across its business. Testing velocity has grown to nearly eight tests per month, including the introduction of server-side experimentation.

More importantly, experimentation is now recognised as a core capability within product teams, supported by strong collaboration, clearer prioritisation, and a shared understanding of customer problems. This foundation is enabling Primark to continue evolving its digital offering with confidence and a customer-focused approach.