Building successful businesses online.
Zenobia
Spicing Up Your Online Shopping Experience
Scoop:
Cumin, wasabi, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, cloves -- these are just some of the many wonderful spices available to jazz up your cuisine. But how best to choose amongst the incredible variety? Which powder will pack the most punch? Which will best compliment your favorite dish? The overwhelming choice and lack of direction at local markets and grocery stores leaves many customers feeling frustrated.
Enter MySpiceSage.com, a web-only retailer committed to helping customers navigate the rich world of spices. The site sells every imaginable seasoning and flavor, and offers valuable information on all.
MySpiceSage.com is part of the Zenobia Company, a business that has been specializing in gourmet foods for the last 80 years.
Say Ken and Zach Bobker of Zenobia Company:
For quite some time now, our family business, Zenobia, has been a recognized leader in the gourmet food industry. With ECommerce Partners’ help we are now aiming for a similar position in the online food business.
First, ECommerce Partners provided us with custom website programming and search engine marketing services for our existing specialty site for nuts. Now we put ECommerce Partners in charge of our newest venture, MySpiceSage.com, an online emporium for spices. ECommerce Partners provides end-to-end services: from strategy consulting to web design, and from branding and copywriting, to complete ecommerce implementation. They also help us to select and integrate third party solutions. And we count on them to supply continuous analytics and site optimization services.
Of course we had offers from other interactive agencies. But for us, the choice was clear. ECommerce Partners’ Internet expertise and business acumen are unmatched. And their customer service is outstanding. Ken and Zach Bobker of Zenobia Company
Story:
A business veteran, Zenobia recognized the potential of selling gourmet foods over the Internet early on. The company’s first venture in the online space was Nutsonthenet.com, an ebusiness for all things nuts. The results were encouraging, and Zenobia’s management decided to take the next step and open another food specialty ebusiness, this one dedicated to fresh quality spices. The concept was not without risks. Would consumers buy spices without physically tasting and smelling them? Zenobia bet they would, but decided to test the waters first, before proceeding to a comprehensive, custom ecommerce site. To prove the idea’s validity, they opened a basic Yahoo store. The results: Customers loved the new business and purchases soon picked up. Not surprisingly, however, the site soon proved insufficiently equipped to support the endeavor. It was not very user friendly, suffered repeated technical problems, and offered limited functionality. Using it to sell a rich variety of products, as Zenobia was hoping to do, was out of the question. Additional problems included outdated graphics and bland design, no support for dynamic content or campaign changes, and no scalability. In short: the basic site had served its purpose and needed to make way for a professional, comprehensive ecommerce solution. That’s when Zenobia called on ECommerce Partners.
Solution:
ECommerce Partners and Zenobia defined the following four goals for the project: build a successful ebusiness, drive constant, relevant traffic to the site, grow sales, and promote the brand.
With these goals in mind, ECommerce Partners set out to build MySpiceSage.com from scratch. To ensure the site’s systematic progress and lasting success, the agency started, as it usually does, with its proven methodologies ERS (Ecommerce Requirement Specifications), which includes extensive research & strategy, planning, and information architecture, and SDC (SEO Development Component), which covers current and foreseeable search engine requirements.
Then ECommerce Partners proceeded with the ecommerce website design and development, creating a strong brand with a new logo, attractive visuals, and chock full of valuable, search engine friendly content. They maximized the user comfort during the entire shopping experience with sophisticated auto complete tools, advanced search functionalities, flexible product zooms, product reviews, a quick and easy check out process, and much, much more. And they implemented advanced website features, such as unlimited catalogue management, secure shopping carts, product feeds to multiple sites as well as detailed site traffic and sales reports. ECommerce Partners also assisted Zenobia in selecting and incorporating third party solutions, adding, for example, a powerful CMS to support the vast, dynamic variety of spices, and integrating the company’s back-end system.
Success:
The new site has been completed on time and in budget. Recently launched, it is poised to become the number one spice provider on the Internet.
To drive targeted traffic, ECommerce Partners will soon launch comprehensive e-mail and affiliate marketing programs. Continuous SEO and PPC work, as well as landing page testing and optimization will ensure that MySpiceSage.com quickly rises to the top, racking up high traffic, conversion, and customer satisfaction rates.
Services:
To date, ECommerce Partners has provided MySpiceSage.com with the following services:
- Methodology
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- ERS (Ecommerce Requirements Specifications)
- SDC (SEO Development Component)
- Celebros
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- Auto Complete
- Advanced Search
- Cross-Sell
- Ecommerce Development Module for Custom Cart Features
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- Unlimited Catalogue Management
- Secure Shopping Cart
- Promotion & Marketing
- Payment Processing
- Gift Certificate
- Shipping & Fulfillment
- Detailed Site Traffic & Sales Reports
- CRM
- Customer Account Management
- Product Zoom Feature
- Analytics
- Product Feeds to Multiple Sites
- Product Review
- Ongoing
