Ariat Uses Data to Improve Customer Experience and Drive Results:
Ariat is the leading equestrian footwear and apparel brand in the United States. Their website - Ariat.com - is an ecommerce sales channel, a branding tool, and a medium to feature their channel partners. Its goal is to facilitate the entire buying cycle from awareness to loyalty.
In 2010, Ariat invested heavily in digital by creating a powerful new website. In order to justify the cost and report a return on investment, the new website would require a comprehensive web analytics and reporting program. Beyond just evaluating key performance indicators (KPIs) for e-commerce, such as revenue and conversion rate, Ariat needed to measure the effectiveness of their new merchandising and promotional features, and also the effectiveness of various digital marketing channels.
Ariat reached out to SwellPath to assist in the evaluation of analytics tools and general consultation on the measurement strategies for their new site. SwellPath determined that Google Analytics was the right tool for the job, based on its flexible measurement capabilities and advanced analysis tools. They then created a custom measurement strategy and analytics framework to align the data with Ariat’s business goals. This framework ensured that they could measure the effectiveness of their internal promotional campaigns, shopping tools and product page features, and all digital marketing channels.
SwellPath also introduced Ariat to “micro-conversion” metrics. These are actions that may not be a straightforward goal completion, but rather support the conversion process or have their own inherent value. For Ariat, this included email signups, sharing content with social media buttons, and outbound clicks to channel partners.
Ariat’s new website launch has been a huge success thanks to data-driven improvements made from the very beginning. Being able to measure and optimize the many features of the shopping experience allowed them to identify improvements that decreased cart abandonment by 18% and increased conversion rate by 14%. Acting on these opportunities so soon after launch allowed them to save large amounts of potentially lost revenue, and avoid customer irritation through a simpler checkout experience.
Merchandising promotions on the homepage were also optimized based on insights from custom analytics data. The ecommerce conversion rate for visitors interacting with these promotions rose over 80% from 2011 to 2012. Consistent digital campaign tracking and attribution analysis identified key success factors in email campaigns, social media marketing, and display campaigns. This allowed for optimal budget planning and campaign optimization resulting in a 14% year-over-year increase in the ecommerce conversion rate for those campaigns, and a 17% increase in per-visit value.
Using advanced analytics and measurement tactics with Google Analytics allowed Ariat to quantify the improvements to their website, revealing a fantastic ROI and providing many opportunities for future growth.
Check out the full case study here [PDF]
Posted by the Google Analytics team
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