Search marketing spurs growth at redesigned Toolfetch.com

With a new site design launched in April, Toolfetch.com expects 30% growth this year driven by a more effective search engine marketing campaign, president Evan Brown tells InternetRetailer.com.

Toolfetch, No. 473 in the Internet Retailer Top 500Guide to Retail Web Sites, relaunched its site in April on a NetSuite platform and experienced a 15% year-over-year spike in sales in May. The new platform provides for a better shopping experience, thanks to features such as a category navigation section that appears on all pages and stronger integration with customer-serving back-end databases, Brown says. The new site also accommodates the uploading of product videos and still images and specification manuals that are important to educating customers on the details and operations of many of Toolfetch’s products, which range from hand-held power drills to masonry saws and log-splitters.

Top 500 Guide

But to continue driving growth at sharper rates of increase, Toolfetch is also improving its search engine marketing strategy and is working with TrafficLeader to get more effective use of paid search on Google and natural search on Yahoo. “Search engine marketing is a top priority for us,” Brown says. “Without SEM, customers wouldn’t find us.”

Its paid-search efforts have improved by using more specific product keywords, such as “cordless 18-volt drill” instead of just “power drill” and “electric cement mixer” instead of just “cement mixer.” Using such terms not only produces more return on paid-search spending, but by bringing more shoppers to the enhanced product content pages on the new NetSuite platform, it helps Toolfetch transfer more sales from its call center to its web site, Brown says.

Although Toolfetch operates only online, 50% of its orders are placed through its call center. “A lot of our customers come to the site not understanding what they need for their projects, so they rely on our call center reps to talk them through it,” Brown says. By using search to get more customers to the site’s new content-rich product pages, Brown hopes to reduce the share of orders going through the call center to 40% this year, he says.

Toolfetch is also placing content on Shop.com and Froogle.com and building up its affiliate connections through Amazon’s Merchants@ program—all steps that can improve its appearance in natural search rankings.