The addition of new hardware, better marketing and some site redesign is helping Beckett Media LP boost its web traffic.
In a maturing market, Beckett.com’s site traffic was peaking at about 40,000 visitors per day, says senior manager of web commerce Shawn Schietroma. “This is not a huge growth industry and we were putting along,” he says.
But in the past week the number of daily visitors has increased by 25% to around 50,000. The increase is a result of a variety of initiatives, including more targeted marketing. The company, No. 351 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, hired a full time online marketing manager and pruned its e-mail list to about 200,000 names. Beckett then adjusted its e-mail strategy to include less content and graphics in the body of the message and make its marketing message clearer. As a result, the average open rate per campaign has increased to about 10% with a goal of reaching 20% and 25%.
Beckett, which carries 4 million unique products such as cards and other sports memorabilia on Beckett.com, has redesigned certain pages such as its marketplace page with less graphics and more content. “Just that change now usually gets us on the front page of Google,” says Schietroma. “Before we were landing pretty far back.”
Along with the marketing and design changes, Beckett brought in bigger servers to host Beckett.com. With the increase in traffic, Beckett expects to increase its e-commerce sales by about 8% to around $14 million in 2007.
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