This Auto Parts eCommerce Site is a Fortune 1000 Company and the nation's largest auto parts recycler with more than 300 facilities in five countries. With the country's largest and best-organized inventory of used auto parts, it offers direct sales of their parts online through their eCommerce store.
The Business Need
This large company had the best inventory of recycled auto parts in the country. However, they did not have a significant online presence.
Despite having created an eCommerce website with all its inventory online, the company was not seeing success and their paid advertising efforts returned little ROI. They knew there was great potential to sell recycled parts online, as online resellers like eBay and affiliates sold its parts online very successfully but took a significant piece of the profit.
Challenges
The eCommerce store had several challenges:
- Analytics Configuration: No proper visibility into what was happening on the eCommerce site.
- Look & Feel: The site did not have a polished and professional appearance expected of a Fortune 1000 company.
- User Experience: The site did not present, organize and sell parts the way their customer wanted to find & buy them.
- Inventory Data: Much of the inventory that was being sought online was not identified. They had it but did not know to highlight it.
Before
Solution
After considering a redesign of the website, company management decided that an aggressive continuous improvement program would be more cost-effective and provide more immediate results. The decision was made to get the website onto the Iterate Program with Conversion Team*.
During the 10-month continuous improvement program, the website implemented 250 conversion optimization recommendations through 6 incremental & strategic revisions of the website.
- The look & feel was updated. This kept all the existing pages & layout.
- The primary paths through the site were optimized from the user's perspective.
- The product pages were revised and optimized.
- The cart & checkout experience was optimized.
- Popular inventory was identified and made easier to locate.
Results
After 10 months of conversion rate optimization:
Conversion Rate Increases 129%
The main objective of getting on a conversion rate optimization program was achieved, with the conversion rate increasing dramatically, even as advertising campaigns started sending increasing amounts of less qualified traffic from new paid search campaigns, display advertising, and social media.
Organic Traffic Increased by 289%
While there was no active SEO program at work driving traffic to the site, all S.C.O.P.E. recommendations are SEO-friendly and improving the site resulted in many incoming links which boosted search engine rankings.
Homepage Bounce Rate Reduced to 15.62%
The number of people who arrived at the homepage, only to leave without going further (bounce) was reduced to 15.62%, about half of its previous amount. This outstanding success reflects the homepage strategy employed by the Conversion Team Revenue Engineers who designed its functional layout to orient first, then meet the needs of all site visitors.
The average Bounce Rate for automotive retail sites of this size was 53% during this period according to Google Analytics. The overall website bounce rate was 21%.
Cost Per Acquisition Reduced 48%
The cost of acquiring a new online sale was reduced by almost half, even as advertising was ramped up over the same period of time.
After
Customer Feedback Rating Increases
The site's feedback tool allows site visitors to rate their experience with the website using a 5-star rating system. Following the first revision of the site, the feedback tool was placed on the site and earned an average rating of 3 out of 5. Within one revision, the site rating increased to 4.2 out of 5, earning a top ranking among sites that implement the feedback tool.
*Conversion Team did business as Brotaich LLC during this case study period.
