Chewbz – Case Study

The UK’s largest retro sweets supplier needed to move from their old Sellerdeck ecommerce platform to Magento and improve SEO & PPC at the same time.

Chewbz launched back in 2008 at a time when the retro sweet market was thriving in the UK. The company had a great brand and a fantastic range of products, however, as time went on the website platform was outgrown and the marketplace became more and more competitive. The features and functionality of the Magento ecommerce platform started to entice the business away from Sellerdeck but external help was needed to build the website and handle a crucial SEO and PPC review.

The Work

Work started with a complete review of the functionality that the current site lacked. Interviews with various stakeholders within the business were conducted and a picture was formed of where the site was lacking. Careful review of competitors websites was also conducted to ensure that the brand was staying ahead of the pack.

We progressed to the design and branding review which saw a whole new website design put together along with important updates to logo and brand guidelines to ensure a consistent identity wherever the brand engaged with it’s audience.

Also important was to review SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) performance to see how well the site was performing in the search rankings. Our work focussed on behind the scenes elements of the old site as well as on-page content. With a new visual appearance agreed and a strategy for improved coding syntax and site structure we could progress to development.

The website was constructed on the Magento platform allowing the company to make use of a large amount of out-of-the-box functionality which has given Magento it’s great reputation. Lots of new front end features were added to improve the experience for the user and improve conversion rates. Every line of code was carefully created to ensure maximum compatibility and logic with search engine algorithms for improved SEO performance.

Once the site had been created and tested the branding and design team moved back to the brand guidelines that had been produced at the start of the project and used these to review all other aspects of the company’s communication strategy.

Facebook and pages were updated to reflect new branding and email templates were created for the promotional mailings that were being sent each month.

The Results

Immediately following the launch of the new site conversion rates increased by 58%. Improved page structure which highlighted the product USPs, allowed simpler gift messaging and also cross promotion of additional purchases helped to drive this conversion rate up and also increase the average basket value. Vast improvements to the checkout process also dramatically reduced drop-off between the addition of a product to the basket and the completion of the order.

The look and feel of the site was also greatly improved and the migration of the new designs across the brand’s Facebook page and promotional emails saw an immediate improvement in interaction and conversion. Weekly engagement in competitions on Facebook increased by more than 100% and click through rates from email blasts increased by almost 50%.

The increased credibility of the consumer focused branding also helped the B2B side of the business to take hold with massive growth in corporate sales.