Conversion and Google Analytics case study: Databazaar

When Databazaar, an Internet 100 retail, came to LunaMetrics, they already had Google Analytics, but didn't have yet have goals, filters and profiles. And they were dying to figure out how they could increase their (already awesome) conversion rate.

LunaMetrics worked with the Databazaar IT team to configure the company's Google Analytics, and followed that with a strong analysis of the data.

The analysis showed that one medium was doing fabulously. However, creation of various profiles, segmented by medium, revealed that the drop off rate through the shopping cart was nearly identical. So the cart itself was not broken — the challenge was to get the customer coming from other media to put something into the cart.

Based on the results of the GA analysis, we used Google Website Optimizer to test various ways of giving Databazaar's various customers the option of choosing different products. The "winner" had a conversion rate that is at least 43% better than the old version.

"With LunaMetrics," said CEO Oney Seal, "We not only figured out what we were doing right (and doing wrong), but we were able to improve our site based on their analysis."

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Case Study: RedZone Robotics

RedZone Robotics, established in 1989, is a robotic sewer inspection company that was spun off from technology developed at Carnegie-Mellon University. Originally, RedZone developed "use and dispose" robots for hazardous environments (example: a robot to work at Chernobyl.) When CEO Eric Close bought the company in 2003, he changed the focus to be on reusable robots that can inspect municipal sewer lines and thereby decrease the cost of pipe maintenance.

RedZone came to LunaMetrics in 2006 with two SEO problems. Like most companies, they wanted to come up higher in the search engines. But their second problem was a unique one: They tended to rank for terms that reflected their old, hazardous environment strategy, but needed to rank for their sewer pipe strategy.

Here at LunaMetrics, we started with our general SEO strategy (keywords, tags, onpage content, links, links, links and links.) We quickly added to that finer targeting of keywords to meet the needs of this special industry, and creation of a lot more content. Once we started to work with RedZone on a monthly educational newsletter, we had another opportunity to create content on a regular schedule.

Twelve months after starting our SEO work with RedZone, we find that the searches which result in an organic click to RedZone are up by 182%. Most of our important keywords are on page one of Google. And best of all, RedZone is showing up for keywords related to their current business, and not to the technology that got them started fifteen years ago.

"At RedZone, we knew search engine optimization and targeted keyword search are two of the most effective ways to starting a new or re-invigorated marketing and sales campaign... but we had no idea how to start one ourselves," wrote CEO Eric Close. "Initially, our goal was to ensure our marketing budgets translated quickly into new leads and sales. Robbin and her team were very effective in guiding our online strategy to accomplish that goal. Following our good results with our initial SEO and ad work, Lunametrics and RedZone are implementing next phase of our online presence to further drive sales and brand recognition. Lunametrics was instrumental in developing and implementing a highly effective nimble online sales and marketing campaign that translated into important results for RedZone."

Google Analytics case study: Sigaba

When secure data in motion provider Sigaba came to LunaMetrics, they had a unique Google Analytics request: they needed multi-dimensional correlation. "No problem" we told Lyall Vanatta, SVP of Marketing for Sigaba. "You're the fifth GA consultant we've called about this, and the others said that they didn’t have the knowledge to solve our issues" pointed out Vanatta. But this was a problem that LunaMetrics had already investigated and solved for another customer and we knew we could meet the challenge for Sigaba. Specifically, Sigaba was looking to correlate many kinds of data from different kinds of reports to create a unique report for themselves.

To create the correlation within Google Analytics, we used cascading custom advanced filters. Each piece of information that needed to be tied to another was concatenated with the filters, and the final filter dropped everything into a report that gave yet more information. We showed Sigaba how to do the download, and they were able to get the correlation they needed on a weekly basis.

Many months later, Sigaba’s webmaster Marc Haggard wrote us again — their cascading custom advanced filters had broken. We saw the problem, but it wasn't a trivial one to fix. But we rolled up our sleeves, and soon, Sigaba had their multi-dimensional correlation in place again. "I can't say how much I appreciate you pursuing this issue and making it work correctly," Marc wrote to us.

Conversion Case Study: StairSupplies

StairSupplies is an interesting website — it sells parts for individual do-it-yourselfers and contractors to make their own stairs. From handrails to newels to risers to treads — they have the parts that visitors need.

After StairSupplies finished their new .php site, they asked LunaMetrics to help them increase their conversion rate. Although we knew the site really well, we didn't start with suggestions. Instead, we conducted five user tests with individuals who weren't customers, but who met the target demographic.

We learned that visitors were having a hard time understanding that the site sold parts for them build their own staircases. Instead, visitors perceived that the company did all the stairway construction for them. So we began to rewrite parts of the site to make that more clear, and prepared to do multivariate testing using Google's Website Optimizer. However, we encountered web "real estate" problems -- there wasn't enough space, especially on the home page, to do everything we wanted. In order to make everything fit, we created a number of variations where the live chat "salesman" was missing.

In the winning variation, the chat "salesman" was gone, and the site included the new copy to indicate that it sells stair parts. The second best variation had the old copy, but still didn't include the salesman. (We can speculate that people didn't like the salesman "selling" at them.) Ultimately, StairSupplies' online conversion rate increased by 144%, and average order size increased by 18%.

"I never was a believer of tweaks to the homepage until we did this work with LunaMetrics," said StairSupplies CEO Len Morris.