Revenue climbed 76% soon after Gloves-Online.com relaunched its web site in August. The updated site includes a more robust search function to help consumers find the more than 3,000 SKUs the site offers.
Revenue climbed 76%, orders increased 58% and international business tripled the month after Gloves-Online.com relaunched its web site in August, says Joe McGarry, founder and president of the online retailer. The updated site includes a more robust search function to help consumers quickly find the more than 3,000 SKUs the site offers.
Users can now navigate to items on Gloves-Online in several ways—by choosing from a list of style categories, clicking on pictures on the home page or entering copy in a search box, McGarry says.
“It was becoming problematic for visitors to navigate as our glove line grew,” McGarry says. “We have consumer gloves, industrial gloves and more. And then, within those groups, we have everything from gardening gloves to heat-resistant gloves.”
McGarrey says the new search technology better recognizes less common and partial search terms. For example, McGarry says industrial workers will often type in “pigskin” because they are looking for gloves that will dry soft after getting wet, unlike cow skin. Or, they will type in a popular brand name, such as G-tek. The old search engine required more specific terms to produce accurate results.
Gloves-Online is now the first natural search result when a consumer types “gloves” into Google or Yahoo search engines, McGarry says. While McGarry says his site was always relatively high on the list—usually in the top 10 listings—the changes helped push it to number one. “We have a real depth in our product line, McGarry says. “We don’t offer just one type of glove. And, we’ve been around awhile, so that helped our ranking. But going to number one happened pretty quickly after the changes.” Gloves-Online used to pay for search engine ads such as Google Adwords, McGarry adds, but now he says he no longer needs to.
Gloves-Online used web design firm Servelink.com to help with the search upgrades. The internet retailer says it plans to explore other updates, such as cross-selling technology. “I anticipate continuing to develop our customer tools to achieve our goals,” he says. “It pays for itself.”
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