How Williams Sonoma boosted traffic and revenue with Bloomreach SEO

Williams Sonoma, Inc. offers more than 15,000 products on five different websites, all with their own seasonal purchasing patterns and merchandising needs. As one of the company’s top five customer acquisition channels, organic search is among the larger marketing programs at Williams Sonoma.

“We view improvements to organic search as a continual process,” says Jessica Boland, Online Marketing Manger at Williams Sonoma. “We work closely with our technical teams to make our content easier for consumers to find. In addition, we are always looking for new ways to bring more people to our sites.”

CASE STUDY

Company Profilewilliams-sonoma.com Williams Sonoma, Inc. is the premier specialty retailer of home furnishings and gourmet cookware in the United States offering high quality, stylish products for every room in the house.

ApplicationBloomreach SEO

Impact

• Incremental site visits and revenue generated from organic search

• Increased product exposure

“Consumers describe the products in which they are interested in a myriad of ways. By helping them discover our most relevant products when they search, Bloomreach improves the visibility of our brands and gives us incremental selling opportunities.”

Angela Caltagirone VP, Online Marketing, Williams Sonoma, Inc.

Seeing the Opportunity in Organic Search

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Williams Sonoma recognized that Bloomreach’s platform would create new opportunities for its businesses. “We know a lot about how people describe our products and services and how they look for them online,” Boland continues. “But we saw that Bloomreach SEO could help us identify new ways that potential customers express their needs and interests - ways that are hard to anticipate - and make our content more discoverable for them.”

“We have been surprised with the variety in the phrases that consumers use to find our products,” comments Holland Dauterive, SEO Specialist at Williams Sonoma. “It’s really eye-opening to see some of the uncommon, long tail phrases that people create to describe a specific item that they want.” Williams Sonoma saw Bloomreach SEO as a valuable complement to its existing natural search programs.

“Bloomreach allows us to expand our reach in a scalable way – a way that we weren’t able to easily do ourselves,” Boland remarks.

A Scalable Solution

Smooth Implementation

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The process of integrating Bloomreach SEO into the five Williams Sonoma sites was smooth. Over time, the Bloomreach team worked closely with Williams Sonoma to build upon the deployment’s early successes. According to Dauterive, “The Bloomreach team has been fantastic. We have a lot of new ideas, and they have been great about implementing the changes necessary to make those ideas work.”

For example, the Williams Sonoma marketing team creates product descriptions that often use stylized terms reflective of the company’s brand. Consumers may use a different set of terms when they are describing their needs. “We call it ‘cutlery’ on site, but a consumer may be searching for ‘knives’,” Boland says. In order to make these products more discoverable for consumers, Boland’s team partnered with Bloomreach to incorporate top user reviews into the Bloomreach “related products” widget placed on the product and category pages of williams-sonoma.com. Now, these products are exposed not only to searchers using phrases found in formal product descriptions, but also to searchers using the vocabulary that Williams Sonoma customers use in their reviews.

“Bloomreach SEO makes it easier for our consumers to discover these products in a lot of different ways ... As a result, it gave our content more exposure.”

Holland DauteriveSEO Specialist, Williams Sonoma Inc.

knives

About BloomreachBloomreach brings businesses the first open and intelligent Digital Experience Platform (DXP) which combines applications in CMS, Site Search, Digital Merchandisng and SEO. Bloomreach software helps enterprises accelerate the path to conversion, increase revenue, and

build customer loyalty.

Learn more:bloomreach.com

Increased Product Discoverability

On potterybarn.com, the impact of Bloomreach was particularly noticeable within the first thirty days. “The site offers a wide range of items, including home furnishings available with a number of different finishes and color combinations,” Dauterive explains. “Bloomreach SEO makes it easier for our consumers to discover these products in a lot of different ways – for example, ‘brown media cabinet,’ ‘walnut media cabinet,’ ‘mahogany media cabinet,’ or ‘espresso media cabinet.’ As a result, it gave our content more exposure.”

Incremental Visits Drive New Revenue

Williams Sonoma has seen incremental visits and revenue across all of the five sites that have implemented Bloomreach SEO. Conversion rates have been consistent with other marketing channels.

“The Bloomreach team has been fantastic. We have a lot of new ideas, and they have been great about implementing the changes necessary to make those ideas work.”

Holland DauteriveSEO Specialist, Williams Sonoma Inc.