What percentage of your online revenue is driven by your site’s search function? Is it anywhere near 50%? If attributing half your sales to search sounds crazy, consider the testimony of one of SLI Systems’ customers, King Arthur Flour.
“Search has jumped from 17% of our revenue to almost 50% of our revenue,” said Jeff Wilcox, eCommerce Producer for King Arthur Flour, who cites results from working with SLI in this new 30-second video.
Headquartered in Vermont, King Arthur Flour is the oldest flour company in America and the number-one seller of whole wheat flour in America. Although most would not consider five-pound bags of flour to be the ideal item to purchase online, the company has turned KingArthurFlour.com into an incredibly popular site for bakers – both amateur and professional – to share recipes and purchase baking products.
The wealth of knowledge on King Arthur Flour’s website flows from the company’s commitment to developing a vibrant community around their products’ users. Their Norwich, Vermont headquarters has become a destination for cooks and connoisseurs with its retail store, state-of-the-art bakery, and a Baking Education Center that holds courses for bakers of all levels.
Part of the genius of King Arthur Flour’s success is their ability to combine aspects of their rich community and knowledge base into their eCommerce site. With SLI Systems’ help, King Arthur Flour has made it easy for site users to search from thousands of enticing recipes, then read reviews, shop for ingredients and link to related videos or blogs.
In my first search on the site, I typed “gluten free pie crust” into the search box and found a recipe that’s rated five stars and has been pinned to Pinterest more than 1,000 times. The site offers the kind of start-to-finish help that gives me confidence that I’m not going to screw up the pie; just one simple search, and I have the recipe, the ingredients I can purchase right from their site, cooking tips from the experts, and reviews from 59 people who have tried it. This is the kind of user experience that creates serious fans. And now I’m one of them.
There’s advanced technology that goes in to making the search and user experience this successful – and you can read more about it in a previous blog from King Arthur Flour’s Customer Success Manager at SLI. But what shoppers see is what I found – an easy search that delivered relevant and accurate results, along with valuable content that created confidence in my decision to buy the ingredients. There will be gluten free pumpkin pie at my house for Christmas!
In both baking and business, the secret to success is often in the ingredients. Just as King Arthur Flour’s quality ingredients help ensure their customers’ baking success, the SLI Systems technology that powers their online community and store ensures visitors find and buy exactly what they need.
“SLI has very intuitive tools,” said Wilcox. “They implement new features quite often, so as they become available to us we consider implementing them immediately. We know that it’s easy to do and the results are very good.”
No wonder King Arthur Flour has increased its conversion rates from 3.7% to almost 6%, and has grown its search-based revenue to nearly 50% of its business. They make it seem as easy as pie.
