Our Clients
Gym Company is one of the UK's premier online Gym equipment companies.
They are a multi-channel, vertically integrated organisation, manufacturing many of their retailed lines as well as selling to other retailers too. They carry all the leading brands across the entire fitness equipment sector including PowerPlate and Life Fitness. Their product portfolio includes all types of gym machines ranging from high-end treadmills and the latest elliptical crosstrainers to the smallest of accessories such as Yoga mats and the latest must-have's in functional-but-funky footwear, Fit Flops
Prior to May 2008 when the new Lost Ferret designed site was launched Gym Company had an existing e-commerce site that was 'working', in so much as it was generating some orders, converting 0.3% of site visitors into buyers. The disappointing performance of the site disappointed the owners whose expectations of sales via the Internet were much higher than their site was providing. They were typical of a significant number of businesses who paid little attention to user statistics and how to improve the online shopping experience and so were delighted when approached by Lost Ferret who's sales team had singled out a number of poor sites to which they felt they could make a significant difference.
In 2007 Lost Ferret were given the go-ahead to redesign the Gym Company website, with the main brief being to increase sales, with a focus on the vital statistic of conversion rate, while enhancing the company image through high-quality design.
Lost Ferret were chosen after highlighting several weaknesses in the old website, and after introducing the concept of Conversion Testing - a process that would evolve a new site in accordance with user preferences. The ability to provide a completely one-stop-shop service incorporating design, build, and marketing was also highly valued.
The big attraction here was that the Lost Ferret system incorporated an analytics suite to rival Google Analytics and an optimisation tool too, which, as a managed service, would be turned into real money by the Lost Ferret team using A/B and multivariate conversion testing techniques.
Having spotted a gap in the market for a web development company that acted on web stats on behalf of it's clients, Lost Ferret's service-based approach appealed to Gym Company who were quick to grasp the potential value in testing site variables.
While Gym Company had very strong ideas and branding guidelines they were quick to realise that each design decision they made was an assumption that they knew what their site users would want or was simply a personal preference.
When it was suggested that each page design and copy could actually be costing them many thousands of pounds Gym Company were sold on the concept of Conversion Testing in order to hone their site to the most effective it could be - with the stats to prove it.
Lost Ferret first studied the existing site to find the flaws and reasons for the poor 0.3% conversion rate -
- Poor, un-persuasive design
- Poor filtering and navigation
- Poor checkout process
- No opportunity for user interaction.
So, the redesign took place, and, in line with assertions from Jacob Neilsen the important business metrics took an immediate hike, more than doubling instantly and after a relatively short 'bedding in' period and a few tweaks the figures hiked dramatically once more:
- Checkout completion rate increased fourfold, from an 80% abandonment rate to an 80% completion rate.
- Basket abandonment rate under 15%
- The overall site bounce rate dropped by 20%
- Conversion rate has increased by 2000%, peaking at 6.5%.
The Lost Ferret team proactively seeks insight into day-to-day occurrences and analyse findings on:
- Feedback from customer services staff
- Competitor analysis
- Marketing campaigns
- Customer surveys
The results help to formulate hypotheses, on which A/B or Multivariate tests are based, improving landing pages and allowing the site to evolve in accordance with the dynamic operating environment.
The Lost Ferret team now have the ability to focus on a single product and undertake detailed analysis.
One such exercise to ascertain a reason for slow sales for found that if someone added the product in question to their basket there was only a 33% chance they'd buy it - a vastly different figure to the sub 15% basket abandonment rate site average.
Lost Ferret looked at the data and the path to conversion in accordance with 'psychographics' and ran an A/B test. Now nearly 80% buy.
There was no brief to undertake SEO per se in the early days due to organisational constraints, but Lost Ferret's extremely search-engine-friendly CMS has seen them gain natural listings for lines and products they previously had none for.
SEO is being phased in, but in the early days it was decided to opt for the flexibility the Pay per Click advertising allowed.
The Lost Ferret team have reviewed existing PPC campaigns for certain lines and discovered some not converting well - even with the new site. Having gained feedback from Gym Company management and discovering high selling price in relation to competitors with Gym Company not willing to lower them, it was decided to drop the campaign along with the product, as it wasn't a stock item.
With the Lost Ferret team's help the company now run all their campaigns with similarly streamlined precision, and have become vastly more profitable as a result of being able to gain this kind of insight.
The new system allows both parties to gain a more accurate sales record, even being able to track and log orders placed via the phone using a unique basket code which is entered into Aurora by customer services staff who are then able to see exactly what's in the basket. They then place the order as the customer.
The major benefit of the relationship is that both parties are able to concentrate on what they do best - Gym Company don't have to sacrifice valuable business time and tune in to a whole new world of complex analytics and time consuming testing and conversion optimisation - unlike companies who are simply given a tool to do the job themselves. Similarly, Lost Ferret don't have to bury their heads in Gym Company's sales spreadsheets. Both parties bounce ideas back and forth with a common aim - to improve profitability - and are doing so very successfully.
Now that's a match made in heaven.