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%.

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%.

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.

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.