Website Optimiser (beta)

Calyx Flowers used Website Optimiser to drive a 14% increase in the number of customers adding items to cart

The Company

Founded in 1988, Calyx Flowers prides itself on offering customers unusual floral designs and exotic varieties. To maximise freshness, Calyx's floral gifts are shipped directly from the world's premier growers. In 2003, The Vermont Teddy Bear Company acquired Calyx Flowers in a strategic effort to expand its gift offerings and to balance its predominately male customer base with Calyx's upscale female customers. Since then, Calyx Flowers has aggressively invested in acquiring customers via web-focused marketing efforts such as CPC advertising and search engine optimisation

Challenge

"Calyx Flowers has historically been dependent on direct mail to acquire and retain customers, and we recognise that we are late to the game of online marketing," says Irene Steiner, VP of Marketing for Calyx Flowers. "Search engine optimisation and CPC advertising represent an enormous opportunity and we called on Google's Website Optimiser tool and EpikOne to help us make the most of it."

The challenge for Calyx Flowers and EpikOne, their agency, was to create a merchandising strategy that would maximise online sales from paid and organic search without alienating traditional visitors to the site: Calyx Flowers' catalog customers.

Strategy

Steiner's team began by setting a baseline on how effectively the existing site converted visitors. This baseline data would help the team monitor whether Calyx Flowers was losing catalogue customers as it gained customers from online channels. The team installed Google Analytics on CalyxFlowers.com and began tracking the percentage of visitors who added items to a shopping cart.

Next, an optimisation plan was created which would test merchandising elements on the site and the special landing pages that Steiner's team had created for online search visitors. Using Website Optimiser, Calyx Flowers measured the conversion effectiveness of calls to action and Order Now buttons, photographs that showed people interacting with flowers, customer testimonials, and copy variations.

"Fortunately, Website Optimiser made it easy to run these tests," says Bill Cronin, E-Commerce Manager for Calyx Flowers. "We had a lot of elements to test and a large number of combinations. The instructions were clear and we were able to easily tag the sites. It was especially easy to create all the different variations we needed within the experiment page sections without visitors seeing any changes. We were able to get each variation looking just the way we wanted before presenting it to our visitors."

Results

Testing with Website Optimiser revealed that the highest converting landing pages were those which showcased customer testimonials and showed images of people interacting with flowers. Visitors who saw these pages initiated a shopping cart at a rate that was 14% higher than visitors who saw other page variations. Says Steiner, "the results couldn't have been more timely. We were just coming up on one of our busiest times: Valentines Day." During the week leading up February 14th the team put the final touches on the winning landing pages and the company realised its most successful Valentine's Day holiday since being acquired by Vermont Teddy Bear.

With the success of Calyx Flowers, Vermont Teddy Bear is now ready to roll out similar optimisation initiatives on VermontTeddyBear.com and PajamaGram.com. "We've learned more than just what works on the Calyx Flowers site," says Steiner. "We've learned a testing approach that is applicable to all our web properties. Website Optimiser provides the empirical results I need to make solid marketing decisions going forward."

About Google Website Optimiser

Google Website Optimiser offers free A/B and multivariate testing that helps you take action to convert visitors to customers. Graphical reports show which content engages your audience and results in the highest conversions. The Website Optimiser is integrated into Google AdWords, but it tests all traffic to your site - including traffic from your AdWords ads, Google search results and any other source of traffic to your site. For more information visit http://services.google.com/en_AU/websiteoptimizer.