1. EXTEND ONLINE SALES TO AMAZON.COM – When I first started working with The Kirby Company, they had an e-commerce site that was doing well was not satisfying the entire after marketing channel. Extending sales on Amazon.com would boost our accessibility online considering amazon.com is the largest online merchant in the world. The project started by identifying the price point and making sure our price model among Kirby’s independent distributors, wholesalers and e-commerce sales would not create issues. At the same time we needed to remain competitive on Amazon where many third party sellers were already operating. Fearful of taking business from our current customers, an analysis was done to identify a perfect price point that did not harm wholesalers sales. We identified the appropriate margin and finalized pricing. I trained warehouse and customer service representatives to receive orders from Amazon.com and ship with the allotted time frame. After the first 6 months sales totaled over $150,000!
2. USE PAY-PER-CLICK ADS TO BOOST E-COMMERCE SALES ON KIRBY.COM – Launching an e-commerce site for a company that has sold door-to-door for over 100 years starts with educating the customer base. While our products were already online by various customers, ordering through Kirby.com GUARANTEED products purchased online would be genuine (something Kirby has struggled with for many years). In order to direct the maximum amount of consumers to our e-commerce site required not only being at the top of search engines but also featuring links in the paid section of search results. Spending roughly $650-700 per month equated to on average $2,200 ADDITIONAL sales funneled through the e-commerce site. That is an ROI of 238%!
3. OPTIMIZE KIRBY.COM THROUGH MODERN SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES TO INCREASE TRAFFIC ON KIRBY.COM – Putting items on Kirby.com was a giant leap for The Kirby Company although any web developer know simply putting items for sale online does not equate to online sales. Using Google Adwords and the Keyword Tool, I identified the highest keywords for each item and came up with a strategy to target the top 3 related keywords. These keywords were peppered in on alt tags, headers, urls and product descriptions. Having a rich product description was one of the most compelling changes that really boosted our SEO. Having worked for the manufacturer of Kirby Carpet Shampoo before working at The Kirby Company gave me intimate product knowledge allowing me to easily wordsmith accurate product descriptions while hammering home the target keywords.