Vermont Teddy Bear Co. increased traffic and improved target marketing for its three e-commerce sites using new site search technology that connects shoppers with products they’re most likely to purchase. Vermont Teddy Bear operates VermontTeddyBear.com, PajamaGram.com and CalyxFlowers.com.
Vermont Teddy Bear decided to deploy Learning Search hosted site search and Site Champion user-generated search engine optimization offerings from SLI Systems Inc. because its previous text-based search solution was not producing results useful to its customers, says Bill Cronin, e-commerce manager.
For instance, a search for roses’ wasn’t picking up the numerous items with roses on the Calyx Flowers site, and our customers were complaining about the disconnects, Cronin says. From the moment we started working with SLI, our traffic increased while customer complaints decreased. The metrics SLI provides allow us to tailor our sites to customer needs by redesigning navigation and providing URLs for the searches that are most popular.
By using SLI’s Learning Search tool, Vermont Teddy Bear was able to learn from past site search activity to determine the top search terms entered on a site. Using that information, the retailer was able to more effectively display its merchandise and create pages and URLs to better guide shoppers, he says.
For example, Vermont Teddy Bear found that when shoppers on its Pajama Gram site searched for the term personalized,’ the results displayed too many products for them to easily navigate. As a result, the retailer developed URL promotions and added a gallery of personalized pajama options, designated by gender, which allowed customers to narrow down their selection in just a few clicks.
Using SLI, Vermont Teddy Bear also was able to determine what types of merchandise should be offered on its site, Cronin says.
We found that on our Vermont Teddy Bear site, four of the top five searches were related to bear outfits, he says. Until we had the SLI search data in hand, we didn’t know that there was such a large market for those types of products. We added a number of new bear outfits to our product line and used SLI to help guide visitors to those outfits, resulting in a noticeable increase in sales.
Vermont Teddy Bear is No. 177 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.