Hedley & Bennett, Los Angeles-based maker of custom aprons and culinary work wear, was founded in 2009 by former line cook Ellen Bennett. Today, the company that once sold primarily at the Hollywood Farmers Market boasts a 14,000-square-foot factory, and a range of customers representing some 4,000 restaurants worldwide — including celebrity chefs Martha Stewart, Mario Batali, and Alton Brown.
When the burgeoning company came to Corra, it was facing challenges in improving its ecommerce performance. Not only was its website crying out for a better user experience, but it needed to offer visitors relevant product recommendations in order to drive online revenue. Because of the brand’s focus on customizable products, Hedley & Bennett knew that they may soon require new technology solutions, and they were looking for an experienced agency that could support their business as it scales to help with strategic guidance and execution.
As such, it was able to leverage Corra, which offers talents in different disciplines, including conversion rate optimization, Shopify Plus development, UX strategy, and visual strategy. Together, these experts evaluated Hedley & Bennett’s entire ecommerce experience and provided solutions for increasing engagement and conversion.
Though Shopify Plus offers a fully hosted and easy-to-navigate CMS, Hedley & Bennett required a robust but simple-to-use platform that could analyze the unique browsing and buying behavior of each visitor, then build individual profiles to provide insight into their wants, needs, and preferences.
NOSTO
To meet client requests for key features such as product recommendations and pop-ups, Corra introduced the client to Nosto, a market-leading platform that uses machine learning to create personalized shopping experiences at every touch point, across every device. During the integration process, Corra provided specific input that ensured optimal placement and user experience for the product recommendations and pop-ups appearing on Hedley & Bennett’s site. Corra’s dedicated developers were also able to provide highly-converting templates, custom variables, events, and other experience setups in a quick and effective manner. A major goal? Ensuring the recommendations would appear in different areas throughout the site, and for the pop-ups themselves to be unobtrusive, yet effective.
Now, Hedley & Bennett is benefiting from Nosto’s ability to analyze every website interaction, build a deep understanding of visitors, and segment customers in meaningful ways. Using their algorithms, Hedley & Bennett can now deploy new campaigns, and/or modify existing campaigns, scaling across any size product catalog or traffic volume without calling for additional IT resources.
STRATEGY & ENHANCEMENTS
“The customer journey mapping we provided really set the groundwork for what we could improve and test within the upcoming sprints”, said Annie Donnelly, UX Designer at Corra.
“We pinpointed clear action items within these recommendations and determined priority based on effort and impact. For example, we found a high percentage of sessions do not include product views, making it important to surface personalized products to quickly get users into a shopping flow.”
Corra’s comprehensive recommendations were offered after the team analyzed those results, audited site navigation, and reviewed SEO data.
“These recommendations specifically combined UX best practices, analytical findings, and brand goals,” notes Annie. “For example, to increase click-through to product landing pages, we recommended increasing the number of linked titles and promo blocks, which at the time were completely static.”
Online sales increases have been impressive since Hedley & Bennett worked with Corra and Nosto. In the company’s first month of offering product recommendations on its site, online revenue increased by 10 percent. Similarly, revenue jumped 8 percent in the first month pop-ups were enabled. Now, an average 18.7 percent of company sales are attributed to product recommendations and pop-ups.
“When I came on as Hedley and Bennett’s CMO, I knew there was a lot we could be doing better. A lot of aspects of our site were simply broken and impacting our overall performance” Jonathan Levine notes. “Corra immediately identified the right tools to get us where we need to be. Their team was able to come in, validate my gut responses, and create tactical action steps to turn around the performance of our site, all within a short period of time. Corra’s responsiveness to requests has been really impressive, especially considering that the digital marketing space moves very quickly. ”
