We grew revenue by 407% in 3 months

+ 260 %

Revenue from paid media channels

+ 20 %

Increase in Google Ads ROAS YoY

+ 38 %

Google Ads conversion rate YoY

Hyper-Growth For New White Goods Brand

Cookology is a fresh face in the white goods market, specialising in modern, high-end ovens, hob and cooker hood sets, along with fridges, freezers and wine coolers. Based in Suffolk, the Cookology brand was originally born in 2011 to introduce top-quality products directly to consumers without the high prices that come from luxury showrooms and brands that come with a heavy price tag.

Previously, the company sold Cookology products under the household-named online brand The Wright Buy. However, there was an ambition for Cookology wanting to build a stand-alone branded website that stood on its own two feet and appealed directly to consumers (DTC). Seeking a quality web design agency, they looked to Brave to help them achieve this. We did so by carefully managing the challenge of brand positioning and transferring sales and equity over from The Wright Buy website to a new Cookology domain that would be built to the highest standards in look, feel and conversion.

Services Delivered

  • Branding
  • Wireframing, UX/UI Web Design
  • Enterprise WordPress
  • WooCommerce Configuration
  • Orderwise Integration
  • SEO, Social Media & PPC Google Ads

Business Location

  • Suffolk

613 SEO Keywords on page #1 in 90 days!

How did we get page one keyword rankings then? Well, we can’t give the exact science away but fundamentals are key and thinking like Google and then thinking about the users you are trying to write for to magnetise them to your pages. The key was to focus on user intent, update and optimise the content which was to migrate over from old site transfer, get brand mentions and backlinks (good ones) and distribute content. So far, page one keywords are good and growing for such an early stage in this brand’s journey.

Brave's Brief

Choosing Brave meant they knew we could cover everything under one roof, allowing for complete ownership of the project. This meant that the delicate transition of content, SEO equity redistribution and the rebuild of their Google Ads account, one of the main sources of traffic and conversion at the time, could all be managed as one efficient unit. As an agency, we were able to show our experience in UX Design, Development, SEO, PPC and Email Marketing. Planning any eCommerce build, strategy and deployment always throws challenges, but the fundamentals for this project covered areas such as:

Build

To design and develop a best-in-class eCommerce website that elevates the visual appeal of the Cookology brand

Google Ads

To transfer The Wright Buy’s Google ads account to Cookology whilst protecting revenue and the high ROAS target

Awareness

To stand out in a very competitive white goods and appliances niche

Organic Search

To build the organic presence of the new website and carefully transfer the existing equity of The Wright Buy across to the new site

Optimisation

To optimise product and category content for SEO and CRO to encourage high conversion

Email Strategy

To create an effective eCommerce email marketing, funnel and automation strategy

Creating a Brand-First Approach

We believe a strong brand is needlessly limited if it’s not executed to the right level for the audience it’s intended for. Our marketing team began by understanding the audience, products and business like it was their own. The brief was to create something unique, clean, and super modern with a technological look and feel. Something that wasn’t over-complicated so that it could hold its own without even a slogan or strapline. Ultimately, this became the product’s badge and emblem, supported by a muted colour palette to ensure the clean sleek lines of the products would shine through.

Marketing Strategy

By planning the content structure carefully through the use of extensive keyword research, the marketing team could strategise the content early on whilst considering the delivery of campaigns. This allows us to create a pin-point content marketing approach designed to drive the audience down a certain path to purchase.

Additionally, we introduced integrated marketing campaigns which gained results from all key channels including Google Search, Google Shopping, Organic SEO, and Email Marketing via Klaviyo. Kickstarting the website’s visibility across all arms of digital at launch allowed us to quickly scale Cookology to where it needed to be as the main sales driver, taking the place of the old website. The results were astounding and quickly delivered to expectations within 3 months; revenue managed to grow by 407%.

Discovery Phase

Planning any eCommerce build, strategy and deployment is always a challenge, but we use a proven discovery phase approach:

Industry Benchmarking

To understand the market that Cookology is in, plus the competitors within it, we initially conducted an industry benchmark on features, design styles and channels

Stakeholder Interviews

Talking to directly Cookology employees gained an understanding of how Cookology is perceived as a brand and market position

Customer Interviews

Working with different product ranges for different persona groups, we conducted interviews to understand how individual customers saw them

Persona Analysis

After consolidating and analysing the research gathered, we formulated several personas that best described the demographics of Cookology’s target market, steering the look, feel and language of the site

Ideation Session

We conducted an ideation workshop with the client, inviting stakeholders across the board to contribute ideas and selecting the best of them for inclusion in the end product

Customer Journey

Utilising our research on customers’ needs and expectations, we paired them with market trends and competitor analysis to understand the best possible solution for customer journey mapping

Google Search Ads

We wanted to start with the basics by ensuring all searches that included “Cookology” directed users to the new site, and Google Search Ads played a large part in securing branded searches during the transition period. Due to Cookology having a well-established brand name, this search campaign instantly drove a good amount of traffic and conversions to the new site. The conversion data collected within the Google Ads account was used to inform the ROAS bidding strategy, proving to be crucial for the overall success of other campaigns.

Google Shopping Ads

After a full audit and analysis, Google Shopping Ads was identified as the most important channel for Cookology early on with the largest potential for growth. Because customers do not need to be familiar with a brand to click on their shopping link at the top of SERPs, this opened up opportunities for Cookology to attain conversions from new customers.

Using Shoptimised’s product feed management service, we added key product USPs and submitted the correct Google product category to aid CTR and visibility within Google Shopping listings. From here, we identified that, despite there being product reviews on other platforms, Cookology did not have product reviews showing on the Google Shopping listings. To rectify this, we adapted the product feed to include the correct product identifiers that Google needs to match up product reviews of the product. We then worked with Reviews.io to get product reviews submitted to Google to allow these reviews to be shown on Google Shopping Ads. This had a positive impact on the Google Shopping campaigns increasing CTR by 32% and lowering average CPC by 17%.

Equity Transfer & Results Increase

1000 +

Keyword rankings by month four

+ 20 %

Organic sales Month on Month since launch

8 %

Conversion Rate via Email Automation Flows

Email Marketing Strategy

Cookology had a large existing database of emails without prior engagement data, meaning we went through a warm-up process for the database on Klaviyo which allowed us to gather engagement data on the profiles to then create an engaged segment for future campaigns. We also set up several automation flows with optimised eCommerce best-practice designs. Automation flows are powerful for allowing us to send personalised emails to customers based on their website activity, helping keep customers engaged and driving additional revenue. These automation flow emails received a 52% average open rate and a place-order rate of 8%.

eCommerce SEO Strategy

To ensure that the Cookology website can perform to the best of its potential, we carried out Core SEO optimisation from launch to ensure that every page follows SEO best practice guidelines.

Another key SEO objective was to focus on category and product content optimisation, as this helps improve the chances of a user pushing through to a sale. By providing the right level of information for a user, you can build a level of trust with them. Through the optimisation of this content, we helped to boost and solidify page rankings for a variety of keywords whilst also helping to increase the organic revenue month-on-month.

Orderwise Integration

OrderWise integrates with eCommerce stores to maximise revenue, improve efficiency and eliminate product waste. We’ve been building integrations for over two decades due to the development team and processes we have refined. We’ve perfected what it takes to get an integration built right due to the fact we take the time at the very start of all integrations to workshop and understand the current system challenges or manual processes. With Cookology, once we understood the efficiencies needed and their individual requirements we managed the entire development process and delivered a seamless integration solution.

User Flow

Not only do our design team understand how important user flow is; our SEO, CRO and Ad team understand that there’s a strong correlation between how a user finds content and products and conversion. Before we could begin brainstorming ways to satisfy the user’s journey, we had to research how they interact with and feel when purchasing a product which is essentially a considered purchase. After conducting tests that review heatmaps and video recordings of their existing site, we discovered many flaws in how a typical purchaser was trying to find the information they wanted, and then how they would end up comparing quickly and checking out.

With consideration for colour targeting, furniture styling, value-added propositions, typography, images, grids, animations and more, a seamless user flow needed to be created. We had to be empathetic to the audience so we could plan the design aesthetic overlay needed to engage with the user’s purchasing pattern. Rounds of discussions crystalise that on other competitors’ websites, users could and would lose interest in the brand and what it had to offer when viewing the website’s appearance as well. In the end, we ditched design flair for functionality, striking a clear balance of being able to create something that communicated rather than decorated.

Flexible eCommerce Management

Every client wants as much flexibility as possible when managing their website, and Cookology needed their new platform to let them self-manage content, uploads, offers, product management, messaging and product front-end management. They wanted a solution that could handle extreme customisation, and our bespoke WooCommerce build allowed for just this level of in-house customisation so that as an agency, we could focus our future support on feature requests, security and enhancements. Cookology welcomed the broad range of functionality that WooCommerce offers to enable them to focus on what they do best: managing their shop in real-time.

UX Design Interaction

We wanted to pay close attention to user experience and ensure there was just enough interaction finesse without overcooking the effects. We adhered to a standard set of eCommerce UX design principles for the customer shopping flow to ensure we could capitalise on the simplicity and speed at which products could be selected, as well as the presentation of products that could be displayed with as little distraction as possible.

Full Site-Wide Page Designs

With an enterprise level of design and build, we were afforded the time and budget to run the entire screen solution process. This meant every single page could be structured, critiqued and optimised at the UX design stage, allowing for a seamless customer journey across all product collection ranges. The templates cover everything from strategic category-specific landing pages to a fully bespoke account area that allows customers to link up their purchases for warranties and receive advice from an in-depth help centre. To ensure the design worked effectively, we stress-tested the product pages across some of the most complicated of products to ensure an easy purchasing journey for all.

User experience was at the top of the client’s list of priorities, which is why we recommended a clean design to allow for many micro-interactions to bring the site to life whilst still allowing the sleek product range to be the hero and centre stage.

The Results

Since we have been working with Cookology, we have exceeded our targets and changed our ways of working, promoting agility in account management, pushing for a continuous test-and-learn approach, and striving for innovation.

As a result of the new strategy implemented, our efforts achieved:

  • Successfully Transferring 100% of Google ads revenue with no drop in overall revenue
  • Exceeding Google Ads ROAS targets of 10x
  • Ranking for over 1000 keywords by month 4
  • Organic revenue increasing by 20% MoM since launch
  • High-converting email automation flows of up 11%

Post-Launch Website Activity

A few months after launching the new site, we continue with content creation, keyword conversion tracking and CRO with a strong emphasis on analysing content performance. We’re also closely monitoring goals and events and testing small changes as we go along to ensure the conversion is at its optimum. Custom dashboards and reports are now in full swing, highlighting all the KPIs agreed upon and targets provided by the client.

Whilst running a technical support retainer which covers additional feature requests, security and fixes, we also have an extensive marketing activity plan which tops up SEO, PPC and Social ads. This includes enhancements such as super content articles, additional advertising channels, link building, guest blogs, micro-influencers, user research and testing and more.

Cookology now has a stranglehold on the market share, and only continues to grow.

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