Building successful businesses online.
David’s Cookies
Sweet ROI for Cookie Ebusiness
Scoop:
Everyone knows David’s Cookies, the purveyor of the finest chocolate chunk cookies, brownies, and cheese cakes. Few, however, are familiar with the details of how the former franchise company evolved into the uncontested cookie king, online.
David’s Cookies initially maintained hundreds of cookie shops in the US and around the world. Gradually however, the company switched its business model from store-based to catalogue-based and web-only retail. Today David’s Cookies is the leading provider of freshly-baked cookies and other gourmet desserts on the Internet.
Says Harris Beber, Director of Ecommerce of David’s Cookies
When we came to ECommerce Partners in the late 1990s, we wanted to build our ecommerce solution gradually, improving and tweaking the catalogue site we had in place, at the time, to minimize costs and maximize ROI. ECommerce Partners immediately understood what we wanted to accomplish and developed a customized plan to meet our needs. They have been working with us ever since to achieve all our ebusiness goals rapidly, creatively, and cost-effectively. Harris Beber, Director of Ecommerce of David’s Cookies
Story:
In the 1980s, operating costs started to skyrocket and forced many David’s Cookies franchisees to close shop. The brand was eventually purchased by a New Jersey-based dessert company and integrated into the wholesale food service and co-branding industries. With the advent of the Internet, the idea of selling the delicious cookies directly to consumers reemerged. The first online venture proved disappointing, though. A simple product catalogue site without ecommerce functionality, it registered little traffic and even less conversions. Considerable performance and handling problems hampered the user experience. Still, the executives at David’s Cookies were convinced that online was the way to go and turned to ECommerce Partners for help.
Solution:
To accommodate David’s Cookies wish for a gradual evolution, ECommerce Partners proceeded in several stages. First, a homepage banner management system was implemented in the existing framework to allow for frequent updates and promotions, such as holiday specials. Next, a powerful affiliate marketing campaign was launched to unleash additional revenue streams. In the course of this campaign, publishers received frequently updated creative content in time for major promotions around holidays and other events. Then, advanced SEO was added to the picture. Finally, ECommerce Partners created an effective shipping system to ensure cost effectiveness and maximum customer satisfaction. Today, David’s Cookies sets the standard for advanced online retailing with an attractive site, clearly organized home and product pages, a streamlined navigation and a rapid, secure checkout process. Strong marketing and SEO/PPC campaigns drive ample, relevant traffic to the site.
Success:
The results at David’s Cookies speak for themselves. In less than 2 years, traffic jumped by 400%, and sales by 300%. Increased search engine visibility, more traffic, stronger branding, smoother ecommerce capabilities, and improved customer service have all combined to boost individual ticket sizes and overall sales. Strong multi-channel sales have also significantly raised online revenues. As David’s Cookies continues to excel on the web, ECommerce Partners stays by the manufacturer’s side offering multiple online services, including hosting, support and maintenance, as well as advanced, custom cart feature development.
Services:
To date, ECommerce Partners has provided David’s Cookies with the following services:
- ECommerce Development Module for Custom Cart Features
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- Unlimited Catalogue Management
- Secure Shopping Cart
- Payment Processing
- Shipping & Fulfillment
- CRM
- Customer Account Management
- Analytics
- Product Feeds to Multiple Sites
- Search Engine Methodology
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- Keyword Effectiveness Research
- Ongoing
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- Hosting
- Custom Development
