Jelly
Belly Candy Company, with locations in Wisconsin and California, is a
manufacturer of sweet treats including jelly beans, gourmet chocolate treats,
and gummi candy (Jelly Belly 2015). The
company also offers events and corporate gifts for a wide range of events
including weddings, birthdays, and baby showers. Jelly Belly products are offered through distributors,
gourmet shops, specialty stores, and customers can purchase products in bulk
from the Jelly Belly Web site (Bloomberg Business, n.d.)
New manager means new Web
site
In
2007, with the hiring of new E-Commerce Marketing Manager Jason Marrone, the
company’s Web site (which had once been state of the art) received a make
over. According to Marrone the site was
using third-party software for search that wasn’t installed on their servers
and the site was not using faceted or guided search. Additionally, the overall navigation and site
design needed a complete overhaul (as cited in Smith, 2009).
The
goal for the new site included user-friendly navigation, personalization
features that would enhance the customer experience, build the Jelly Belly brand,
and drive more sales. The new site would
incorporate advance search solutions, site-search reporting features,
user-generated SEO, product recommendation, personalized email alerts, customer
reviews, and a simplified checkout process (Smith, 2009).
Success
The
new site has been very successful for Jelly Belly. They’ve reported site traffic volume increases
of 35%, which Marrone attributes “to better search-engine rankings and greater
visibility on the major search engines, resulting from the optimized static
pages and keyword-dense content from more than 1,000 customer reviews now on
the site” (as cited in Smith, 2009). In
addition, the company saw a 33% increase in on-site conversions and a 10%
increase in average order size (Smith, 2009).
Jelly
Belly is using visitor data in a number of ways including:
·
Analyzing keyword searches and past purchases to create product
recommendations
·
Developing search-engine friendly pages based on commonly searched terms
·
Using user activity data to develop new products (Smith, 2009)
One
very unique change to the Jelly Belly site is that you can browse products
based on “non-traditional” characteristics.
Categories such as flavor, color, and container type can be utilized to
help viewers select a candy that meets their needs. According to Smith (2009) this has lead to
fewer drop-offs and abandoned carts, which means more conversions and sales.
Security
is always a concern for online retailers.
If customers don’t trust a company with their credit card information,
it becomes more difficult for them to make purchases. Jelly Belly did A/B testing to better
determine how much customers trusted their site. After the tests were complete, Jelly Belly
added a McAfee certificate to the site.
Jelly Belly realized that their brand alone was not strong enough to make
customers comfortable with online purchasing.
When
I was viewing the site I did notice a few more aspects that I thought helped
drive sales for Jelly Belly. When
viewing the shopping cart, Jelly Belly provided a line under the estimated
total that informed the customer how far away from free shipping they
were. This is a small tactic that
encourages users to increase the dollar amount spent per purchase. As with other e-retailers like Amazon, Jelly
Belly also offers recommendations based on what you’ve placed in your
cart. That display makes it easy for
people who are very close to free shipping to quickly select an item to
finalize the sale.
Importance of mobile
With
a new Web site up and running, customers will be looking for content that is
viewable on a mobile device. Marrone
realized the need to optimize their mobile site after seeing that mobile users
had low conversation rates. Marrone
worked with Branding Brand to optimize the newly designed site for mobile.
Now
when customers view the site they are automatically redirected to the mobile
site and can begin shopping, call for help, view recipes, and browse
products. Marrone said, “Our two primary
goals with the mobile site were to provide as consistent a mobile experience as
we could and not increasing our administrative workload, or at least minimizing
the workload.” Marrone also said that since the launch they’ve seen an increase
in the average order value from mobile devices (as cited in Finocchiaro,
2010).
Additional recommendations
I
would be interested to see in-page analytics for the navigation on the Jelly
Belly site. When viewing the site, I
found locating their company information and “non Jelly Belly” candy very
difficult. However, at the top of their
site one of the main navigation buttons is “Athletes We Sponsor.” It would be interesting to analyze in-page
analytics to see if that was, indeed, the best primary navigational structure.
Additionally,
I would be curious to see if the structure of the primary navigation was
enhancing or detracting for customers viewing their web page. On mouse-over, a drop-down menu is displayed
that utilizes a large portion of the home page real estate. If a user wants to minimize that menu they
must click to close it. The drop-down
also pushes the primary content further down the page. I would recommend A/B testing in order to
evaluate the effectiveness of the drop-down menu.
I
would also recommend more social and dynamic widgets on the home page. The new site was built with user-generated
content and engagement in mind, but the home page is relatively static. Social media feeds, fan-submitted recipes, or
other content could be added in order to encourage visitors to spend more time
interacting with the site.
I
think it would also be important for Jelly Belly to evaluate the purchase
funnel that customers use. I enjoy that
I can explore products based on taste, color, packaging, and holidays; however
it’s a little difficult to navigate between products that are designed for
consumers and products that are designed for bulk purchase.
It
would be advantageous for Jelly Belly to analyze bulk purchases separately from
other purchases and discover the needs of individuals as opposed to those who
order in bulk. Jelly Belly may find a higher cart abandonment rate because
customers are unaware that they are about to order 24, 1-oz. packages instead
of 1, 16oz or 24oz package. These two
demographic groups will have different purchasing tendencies, navigational
needs, and interests in company information.
If the customer is a retail store they may be interested in the company
background information and the athletes they sponsor. If the customer is an individual, they may be
more concerned with shopping by flavor and unique gift packages.
The
Jelly Belly Web site experience would be further enhanced if the company were
to individually analyze the browsing and purchase behaviors of these groups to
create more targeted shopping experiences.
References:
Bloomberg Business (n.d.)
Company Overviwe of Jelly Belly Candy Company, Inc. Bloomberg Business. Retrieved February 28, 2015 from http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=4304700
Finocchiaro, P. (2010,
August 12) Jelly Belly ups conversion, bounce rates with smartphone shoppers. Mobile Commerce Daily. Retrieved from http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/jelly-belly-converts-more-smartphone-shoppers-with-mobile-optimized-site
Smith, K. (2009, July
28). Marketing Case Study: How a User-Focused Website Boosted Sales at Jelly
Belly. MarketingProfs: Marketing
Resources and Strategies for Marketing Professionals. Retrieved February
28, 2015, from http://www.marketingprofs.com
