Sales, conversions and orders blossom at Nature Hills after site redesign

Online retailer Nature Hills relaunched its web site in March, merging its two technology systems into one. It also took steps to boost search engine rankings and added a gardening community where visitors can chat and share pictures.

One month later, the site has experienced a 10.8% increase in sales, a 7.8% rise in average order size and a 6% increase in conversions.

In addition to boosting its bottom line, the changes have helped Nature Hills offer better customer service, achieve higher search engine rankings and speed order fulfillment, says Shawn Schulze, vice president of e-commerce for Nature Hills.

The web-only retailer, which has about 120,000 customers and $2 million to $4 million in annual sales, had been using a combination of in-house technology and software from an outside vendor to manage its online business. The third-party software handled fulfillment and customer service inquiries while Nature Hills’ own system took care of front-end operations such as receiving customer orders and inventory. As part of the relaunch, Nature Hills combined the two systems into one, using hosted e-commerce software from dashCommerce.

Schulze says having data in a central location has streamlined its business. “We merged everything. Customer service reps are now able to view customer order status and history of customer service notes in one spot,” Schulze says. “We are now logging into the same area and everything can be done in a few steps. Before, everything was a lengthy process.”

The new software system connects directly with UPS to speed order fulfillment. Nature Hills has customized the dashCommerce software to generate inventory staging reports and packing slips that contain bar codes and adhesive bar codes. Adhesive barcodes are affixed to packages, Nature Hills scans the barcode and uses dashCommerce to send fulfillment information to UPS and generate shipping labels. Fulfillment can be completed in a few steps, Schulze says.

Easier fulfillment also makes it easier for Nature Hills to offer a wider variety of products from more suppliers, Schulze says. “It gives us the ability to add more suppliers to the mix and they can fulfill orders just as easy as us,” Schulze says. Nature Hills works with about 15-20 suppliers and is in the process of adding more, he adds.

As part of the redesign, Nature Hills also cleaned up its site, shortening page titles and URLs and adding metatags-hidden code behind web pages that search engines use for their rankings. This, along with a new online gardening community where users can share photos, chat and read blog posts by gardening experts, has helped boost search rankings, Schulze says.

The new site took six months and two full-time developers to launch, but Schulze says it’s worth it. “The initial results for our first full month utilizing our new system have been encouraging,” he says.