Anyone who's ever owned pets knows how tough it can be to get them to do what you want.
Likewise, online marketers occasionally have a hard time helping customers find the products they're looking for on their sites. SitStay.com learned a few new tricks when it relaunched its dog-supply site in November.
A main reason for the revisions — facilitated by systems from fulfillment/order-management firm OrderMotion — was to provide shoppers more targeted navigation choices, as well as things like wish lists and one-click checkouts.
“The site looks entirely different,” says Kent Krueger, vice president of Lincoln, NE-based SitStay. “New navigation on the left side of the home page allows us to offer very category-oriented options. When shopping for dog supplies, our particular customer is very interested in all-natural treats and food. For example, some don't want any grain in their food, so now we can offer them a separate no-grain category.”
SitStay has a file of about 120,000 customers. The target audience is primarily female and upper-middle class. “These are people who are serious about their dogs, but not the froufrou crowd,” Krueger says. “They're people who go to dog parks and consider the dog a family member, but they don't necessarily dress them up in shoes.”
About 50% to 60% of the customers make repeat purchases from SitStay, which prides itself on its healthy focus. “If we won't give it to our [own] dogs, we're not going to sell it,” he says.
The company got started 11 years ago almost by accident. Krueger and his wife Darcie ran a Belgian shepherd message board and Web site, and the store evolved from that venture.
“My wife says it was a hobby that got way out of control,” Krueger jokes, noting that his previous background was in computer science. Darcie worked in retail but had never run a direct marketing business.
“Much of what we do is common sense and based on how we like to be treated,” he says.
A typical order runs $60. The most popular products are bully sticks, dog chews that some customers refer to as “puppy pacifiers.” Up until a few months ago the best seller was the Macho Stix, made from bull penis. “Customers were buying 50 at a time,” says Krueger. “But the manufacturer couldn't get it anymore because it was being used overseas as a human consumable.” Another supplier of a similar product has been found.
The site is promoted through magazine ads and online advertising, such as affiliates, search, and an ad on the American Kennel Club Web site.
SitStay has an e-mail newsletter which goes out twice a month and gets a 45% open rate. Content includes articles on dog training by Darcie, new product information and “Ramblings of a Dog Lover,” Kent's own ruminations on his pets.
“Our biggest hurdle has always been getting people to find out about us,” says Krueger. “We created the newsletter within the first month of deciding this would become a business, because we knew we had to bring people back to us.”
Other features to increase the length of site visits include the “Pooch Café” comic strip, which SitStay ran before it was nationally syndicated, and polls on fun topics, such as asking whether people would rather give up their significant other or their dog first (no surprise — 65% said the dog would not be the first to go).
SitStay began working with OrderMotion a little over a year ago after spending more than three years looking for a new order-management system. The site had outgrown its previous vendor, and wanted to make it possible for outside systems to communicate with the internal order system. It took about six months to get SitStay's inventory into the new system. During testing, the old and new systems were run simultaneously.
“The two most fearful things we've done in the history of the company were switching the order-management system and revamping the Web site, and both have gone smoothly,” Krueger says.
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