The Vitamin Shoppe®, a subsidiary of Franchise Group Inc. (NASDAQ: FRG), is a global, omnichannel specialty retailer and wellness lifestyle company with the mission of providing customers with the most trusted products, guidance, and services to support them on their journeys of lifelong wellness.
Story Behind the Brand
11
%
increase in add-to-cart rate on category pages
5.69
%
increase in search revenue per visitor (RPV)
2
%
increase in RPV for shoppers who started on category pages
Challenge
The Vitamin Shoppe saw its best revenue data in its search performance summaries. For example, a consumer knows exactly what type of protein to purchase, searches for the product directly on The Vitamin Shoppe’s website, and completes the purchase process. If that same customer had walked into one of The Vitamin Shoppe’s over 715 locations, the purchase process likely would have been similar, with the consumer finding the product and checking out without the need of an abundance of assistance from a Health Enthusiast, The Vitamin Shoppe’s in-store representative.
On the flip side, The Vitamin Shoppe had the most room for growth in its category performance metrics. Customers who are not sure of the exact product they want often land on this page and are browsing products to see which ones fit their specific needs. Rather than searching for “gold standard whey protein” like the original consumer might, this customer might browse the “protein and fitness” page to see which products jump out as being the best fit.
Had this customer been shopping in person, a Health Enthusiast likely would have provided assistance by learning more about the customer’s personal story and recommending a relevant product. Prior to implementing Bloomreach, The Vitamin Shoppe did not have an intuitive digital platform it was confident could fill in for the Health Enthusiast.
“What the team and I were really looking for with Bloomreach was improvement with our category pages,” Pircz said. “Our search customers tend to have a strong intent. They know what they want because they have either made their purchase before or done their research. The customer who was learning and browsing, that was the biggest opportunity for us.”
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Solution
After having an overwhelmingly positive experience with the SEO module of Bloomreach Discovery in 2018, American-based retailer The Vitamin Shoppe has expanded its use of — and its victories with — the Bloomreach Commerce Experience Cloud.
Bloomreach Discovery, specifically the SEO module, helped drive incremental organic search traffic by filling content gaps in existing category pages, which led to an improvement in the quality and quantity of website traffic.
The overwhelmingly positive results with SEO prompted The Vitamin Shoppe to implement Bloomreach Search and Merchandising when it faced a search challenge: optimizing category pages to convert more site visitors who are learning and browsing for products. Overall, the vitamin and supplements brand wanted to match the personalized in-store shopping experience customers get with superior online search and product discovery.
Bloomreach Search and Merchandising allows companies to deliver accurate search results to improve conversion using AI-powered technology that works in tandem with merchandisers to help them be more impactful and data-driven. Customizable algorithms allow businesses to prioritize what is important to them and match specific company needs and goals.
For The Vitamin Shoppe, a winning search experience meant tailoring Bloomreach-built algorithms to serve its broad target audience with diverse wellness goals.
The technical integration with Bloomreach was easy and seamless. Bloomreach offers enough tools and services to be that one consistent ‘brain’ behind the website operation. Bloomreach can help the customer journey be flawless across the entire web experience.
Tamara Pircz
Vice President, Digital Commerce, The Vitamin Shoppe
Results
The Vitamin Shoppe chose to implement Bloomreach Discovery with the specific goal of improving important metrics related to its category pages. That goal was accomplished in a major way.
The Vitamin Shoppe saw an 11% increase in add-to-cart rate on category pages and a 2% increase in revenue per visitor (RPV) for users who started their journey in category pages. On search pages, The Vitamin Shoppe experienced a 7.73% increase in search add-to-cart rate, a 6.51% increase in search average order value (AOV), and a 5.69% increase in RPV. These numbers were compiled in a comparison of two-week periods before and after implementing Bloomreach Discovery.
All of those wins have led to increased revenue for The Vitamin Shoppe, and more happy customers on the path to achieving their wellness goals.
“The implementation gave us results even better than I anticipated,” Pircz said. “It went exactly the way that we were hoping it would go. We saw improvements in all of the areas that we were hoping to see. People were able to find what they wanted more often and were able to better understand what they were seeing.”
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