Blue Nile Goes Responsive, Pop-Up to Sell More Bling

If you get married, you're taking part in an ancient tradition that's been around for more than 4,000 years, historians say.

If you're buying the bling that goes with it these days, you could be using a technologically sophisticated, of-the-moment process that just joined the love-struck party in 2013, says online jewelry retailer Blue Nile.

Seattle-based Blue Nile, a low-overhead business known for undercutting traditional bricks-and-mortar jewelry stores founded in 1999, knew it needed to update its digital shopping experience. Executives at the retailer had noticed a trend among the target Millennial audience: Most of these men, between 25 and 35 years old, were browsing Blue Nile on their mobile phones, iPads and other gadgets.

But the Blue Nile website had been designed primarily with the PC- or laptop-shopper in mind. Trying to navigate on any other device meant a "suboptimal experience," says Jon Sainsbury, Blue Nile's VP and head of strategy.

"That young customer was migrating to tablets and mobile devices," Sainsbury says. "We needed to be device-agnostic, and we needed to give people a simple, consistent brand experience across platforms. And our site, basically, was due for a facelift."

Image: Image: Blue Nile

Executives did just that, deciding to use a responsive design that would allow users to view the website on any size screen and any platform. They briefly considered an adaptive design framework, but ultimately didn't think it met the company's needs and didn't position it to deal deftly with new developments in the tech world, such as the iPad Mini and next-generation Samsung phones.

A responsive design also could prove to be a leg up in the global market, since Blue Nile ships to more than 40 countries.

The website redesign figured prominently into a partnership for an experimental pop-up shop in Nordstrom. The program, which launched in November, put a Blue Nile display case of 75 styles of engagement rings and 40 wedding bands in the high-end downtown Seattle store near its Wedding Suite bridal boutique. Shoppers can look, but not buy, the jewelry on display; a Blue Nile consultant, armed with an iPad, can lead prospects through the process.

"This deal would've been tough without the redesign," Sainsbury said. "The site renders beautifully on the tablet."

Blue Nile browsing on an iPhone. Image: Blue Nile

If the "bricks and clicks" program goes well during its six-month test this holiday, it could later roll out to 17 other Nordstrom stores around the country.

Blue Nile executives wouldn't disclose the cost of the holiday campaign and website revamp, but said its timing couldn't have been better. Independent research from holiday 2012 found that 80% of online shoppers in the U.S. were browsing on multiple devices, Sainsbury says, with more expected to join this year.

Blue Nile's own studies further proved the point: A year ago, 35% of its shoppers arrived at the site on mobile devices; by mid-2013, that number had jumped to 45%, and the recent Thanksgiving and Black Friday period saw 60% of the marketer's traffic come from mobile.

Blue Nile wanted not only to take advantage of that trend, but specifically to capture upscale, tech-savvy potential buyers who were considering popping the question.

With the revamped site ready for action, Blue Nile launched a mobile ad campaign on Google to drive traffic to the site from those online shoppers who were searching for fine jewelry. (Blue Nile's assortment contains everything from under-$100 gifts like a sterling silver sweetheart locket to $25,000 diamond solitaires and blue sapphire cocktail rings).

Engagement rings make up the lion's share of Blue Nile's business — nearly 70% of sales volume annually — and Christmas is a key selling period for that life-changing bauble. Blue Nile was now ready to try to draw in its target young buyers and give them a digital experience that could carry over from the laptop to an Android to a Samsung Galaxy and to use unique features like Blue Nile's build-your-own ring app on all those platforms for the first time.

Consumers think hard about such a purchase, Blue Nile's metrics have found — it takes consumers two to four weeks to go from looky-loo to buyer, after having studied hundreds of pages of content and upwards of 50 to 100 diamonds.

Blue Nile's interactive gift guide also got an overhaul with a mobile-first design. It's no longer paginated, but has an infinite scroll that has caused a "fantastic lift" in the number of consumers who spend time there, Sainsbury says.

The work quickly started paying off. The percentage of tablet traffic that viewed a product detail page increased from 30% to 40%, and the percentage of smartphone users who entered the diamond search page increased from 25% to 30%. About 50% of click-throughs from Google are coming from mobile devices this holiday season, the company says.

Blue Nile more than doubled the number of customers using its education section via smartphone. Sainsbury says that section, filled with breakdowns of diamond lingo and other information, is an essential step in the buying process.

And consumers aren't just dipping their toe in the water, they're sealing the deal. They have made several orders for rings, necklaces, pendants and other bling — in the five and six figures — from their tablets and mobile phones this season.

"We've been very pleased with the site's ability to get further down the purchase funnel," Sainsbury says. "We're encouraged by what we're seeing."

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Has Chipotle Mastered the Branded Video?

In 2010, Chipotle ran an ad campaign about Chipotle ad campaigns. The premise was that Chipotle's ad agency was telling the company to put its complaints about factory farming on the back burner and instead focus on its big burritos.
Like much of Chipotle's marketing, the campaign allowed the brand to have it both ways: The company would be seen as a rebel, while shoehorning in a conventional product pitch for those big burritos. A year later, with approximately $800 million in revenue, Chipotle dropped the product pitch altogether with "Back to the Start," a video that featured a farmer who rejects the increasingly industrialized nature of his profession.
At the time of this writing, "Back to the Start" has logged more than 8 million views — quite a feat for what is essentially a treatise on modern agriculture. While the subject matter doubtlessly resounded for many, the unique execution was also part of the video's draw. The ad, created by CAA Marketing, combined an inspired pairing of artist and song (Willie Nelson and Coldplay's "The Scientist," respectively) with stylized CGI that rendered humans and pigs as spherical objects with skinny, dangling limbs.

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Is Your Website a One-Hit Wonder?

Few businesses strive for a website that's the equivalent of a one-hit wonder.
If visitors are coming to your site and engaging — possibly even converting — and then leaving, never to return again, you're probably wondering why this happens (and if it matters, particularly if overall pageviews or conversion numbers are solid).

Why Marketers Need to Master Page Flow

We're talking to marketers as a part of our Metrics That Matter series, and asking them about the importance of visitor retention as well as the extent they pay attention to recency and frequency of visits. Below are a few suggestions for analyzing this particular metric, as well as insight into why it's worth taking a look at these traffic trends.

Not All Visitors Are Created Equal

As we've touched on in earlier articles in this series, not all visitors who come to your site hold the same value for your business or your bottom line. Perhaps a one-time visitor heard about an article on your site from a friend, and wants to casually peruse (but with no intention of purchasing your product or signing up for your newsletter). On the other hand, perhaps an ad campaign is resonating particularly well with targeted Facebook users — and it's resulting in more high-value traffic and return visitors for your blog.
Jon Gibs, vice president of analytics at Huge, points out that, for some businesses, levels of return visitation may actually be more important than the number of raw visitors.

"If you assume there is a cost to acquire any given customer, having a high level of return visitation allows you to amortize your acquisition cost across multiple visits,

"If you assume there is a cost to acquire any given customer, having a high level of return visitation allows you to amortize your acquisition cost across multiple visits, or more specifically, the revenue that any given user drives," says Gibs. The amount of emphasis to place on this metric (as well as how you'll interpret it) varies from business to business. For a mobile app, for example, frequency of use is hugely important, and a good indicator of the app's overall success. As Cezary Pietrzak, former head of marketing at Appboy says: "In mobile, the equivalent [to visitor frequency and recency] is number of sessions and sessions in last X days. These are good benchmarks for engagement and retention, or the lifeblood of the app. Installs these days mean nothing. Building a successful business means you have a steady flow of users who engage with your app on a regular basis."
But a low rate of visit per visitor isn't necessarily devastating news for certain types of businesses — the metric is relative. A quarterly publication may see a spike in web traffic after publishing its latest issue; meanwhile, a daily deals site may wince at traffic that recurs only four times a year. Discounting one-time visitors isn't black and white, either; perhaps the visitor who just wanted to check out your site's content once might pass the word along to friends who actually will purchase or convert.
Navneet Virk, vice president of optimization at Roundarch Isobar, points out the differences between a banking site, which may have significantly high numbers of visits per visitor (since users are continuously checking their balances), and a retail site, where purchase may be a one-time occurrence. For a luxury retail brand, a high rate of conversion may be more indicative of effective marketing than the percentage of repeat visitors (who may simply be deciding whether or not to buy — or showing all their friends the $1,200 jacket they wish they could afford).
The trick is to tailor your metrics analysis efforts to your specific business, needs and objectives. Serena Satyasai, global marketing lead at CloudFlare, Inc. suggests that the definition of "active users" should be applied to an individual company's goals.

Frequency and Recency Help Establish Trends

Keeping track of your return visitors and noting their behavior — if and when they convert or purchase, for example — can be a helpful indicator that something you're doing on the marketing front is working (or not).
One of the initial steps in the analytical process should be breaking your website traffic into different groups or cohorts, based upon their behavior on your site.

"First time visitor, second time visitor, loyal visitor — each visitor is not the same, and determining their frequency of visits/purchases is the simplest way of segmenting your audience,"

"First time visitor, second time visitor, loyal visitor — each visitor is not the same, and determining their frequency of visits/purchases is the simplest way of segmenting your audience," says Hugo Smoter, director of marketing for Spreadshirt. Once you've completed this grouping process, you can experiment with different tactics (email marketing, mobile ads, etc.) to appeal to each segment on an individual basis. "If you’ve found that people only buy from you after two or five or 10 visits, you need to be paying attention to how you’re attracting people back," says Tyler Young, principal consultant for Conversion Insights. He adds, however, that — once again — this analysis depends upon the company and its goals. "I've worked with companies in which 90% of sales happen the first day a person visits," he says.

 Why Traffic Is Digital Marketing's Foundational Metric

Blogs, online dating sites, news sites and service-based platforms may want to pay closer attention to the metric. If users are signing up and then jumping ship shortly thereafter, it may be time to address the efficacy of your site, content or marketing campaigns.
Kellee Khalil, founder and CEO of wedding-planning website Loverly, says that the company monitors visitor retention closely. "We know that once a user creates a free account and bundles images (i.e. creates and saves a digital folder like gowns or shoes), upon her second bundle, she is hooked and becomes a 'power user.' She visits many more times a day and really engages with our content to actively plan her wedding," says Khalil.

Page Views Don't Necessarily Equate Sales

While visitor traffic is important information from a marketing, targeting and messaging perspective, it's important to note that this data may not automatically correlate with increased leads or sales, says Jason Squardo, executive vice president of optimization at ZOG Digital. He suggests that attribution modeling and tools such as tagged advertisements or unique landing pages may help identify visitors who are not only engaged, but also more likely to buy.
Christopher Penn, vice president of marketing technology at SHIFT Communications, suggests that companies focus on the big picture. "As a marketer, you don't really care what the proportion of new to returning visitors is. You care that both audiences are growing. You want more new visitors, and you want more returning visitors. It's much better to measure each separately rather than the blend or mix of both," says Penn.

Content Is Key

There's a reason that content marketing — both as a buzzword and in practice — is on the rise. If your visitors are confused, unimpressed or bored, it's unlikely that you'll remain on their radar.
To encourage visitor retention — as well as entice new visitors — a solid content strategy is a must.

"Getting people to an online destination is hard enough, and getting them to return is even harder. That's where the content comes in,"

"Getting people to an online destination is hard enough, and getting them to return is even harder. That's where the content comes in," says Rob Longert, co-founder at an independent PR and strategy firm. "To get people to come back, the content has to be engaging, fresh and compelling on a regular basis." Longert says that leveraging fans and followers on social channels is another way to engage with your brand or product's pre-existing audience, as well as encourage visitor retention. In addition, a successful content strategy can build strong brand affinity and loyalty, says Stephanie Fried, VPof digital insights and marketing for Discovery Communications. "Ideally, we want to create a habit of visitation among our users so that visiting our sites is part of their regular routine," she says.
Thoughtful, high-quality content is one way to reign in visitors and keep them coming back. Alexis Anderson, director of marketing and partnerships for PureWow, stresses the importance of quality edit: "You can't fake good content. No marketing trick in the world can make up for subpar content, especially in front of a very discerning reader."
How does your business measure visitor retention? Is it an important metric for your site? Tell us in the comments.

 

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