Today, CoffeeForLess (CFL) is a Top 500 Internet Retailer with $19 million in annual sales, primarily in the US. (Windsor Circle) Monthly traffic averages 220K visitors, compared to its largest online competitor Keurig.com, which has 2.8M monthly visitors. Google search provided 54% of traffic (90% organic, 10% paid search), followed by direct traffic (including affiliate redirects) and referrals, primarily from retail coupon websites. Only 1% of traffic came from social media, primarily Facebook (SimilarWeb), despite having regular account activity including 12K followers and 51K likes (Sutton). The company maintains 1st position in branded keywords as well as keywords associated to low prices such as “Keurig k-cup cheap price.” The company’s customer base ranges in ages between 40-60 years of age. (Sutton)
Web Analytics Support Transition from Customer Acquisition
to Retention
Although CoffeeForLess owner Ben Kirshner has Elite SEM
clients who happily use CoreMetrics and Omniture, the coffee company believes
it can’t live without Google Analytics (GA) consulted multiple times a day because
it “allows us to make our site work harder with the insights provided,”
including channel attribution, buyer trends and seasonality, site abandonment
and conversion funnel issues. (Hushin) CFL has been a GA user since the tools
inception.
Kirshner’s philosophy is to outsource many CoffeeForLess
functions including warehousing, order fulfillment and e-commerce platform and digital
marketing including affiliate marketing, email, SEO, comparison shopping
management, user review generation and media buying. Customer service is now
supported in-house, along with an e-commerce manager, marketing and website
analytics management and social media. (Ryan)
Strategically, CoffeeForLess took an initial slow
profitability-mode as they grew acquisitions and their customer database.
Although now very profitable, they continue to balance new customer
acquisitions because of growth potential with the development of return
customer engagement initiatives that include user generated content development,
an auto-ship program and loyalty club program. (Ryan)
CoffeeForLess
uses Bazaarvoice for its onsite customer generated product reviews. In its
first-phase deployment of product reviews to its website, organic search traffic
rose 10% with conversion rates increasing by 125%, while time-on-site and page-views
per visit increased 157% and 111%, respectively for visitors interacting with
the reviews. (Sutton) User generated content is important because it adds a
layer of content that competitors don’t have and because users write in the
colloquial language they also use to search, the reviews provide rich keyword
research content. CFL found that the average per visit revenue associated with
a product review-engaging customer is $20.49 while non-engaging product review customers
contribute $9.15. (Ciperski)
The
company continues to use the following tactics as it implements additional user
generated content platforms (Sutton) ultimately designed to maintain and build
optimal search engine results:
-
Make reviews search-friendly.
- Moderate reviews for more than profanity, including removing customer experience reviews from product reviews as well as rating mistakes.
- Teach customers how to review with detailed instructions and good examples.
- Encourage customers to review by email and through offering sweepstakes.
- Share reviews on social networks including auto-tweet high ratings and support customer sharing on Facebook.
CoffeeForLess’ most recent user content initiative was in
partnership with TurnTo, a Social Q&A platform that allows customers to
engage with other product-purchasing customers or the Customer Service team, to
answer store-related questions or problems. The vision for this tool is to
provide customers with a virtual coffee shop experience that provides for barista-quality
interaction. TurnTo fully integrates with CoffeeForLess’ Magento Enterprise e-commerce
platform as well as Bronto, the company’s email service provider. After
interacting with desktop Social Q&A, shoppers converted at 2-4 times higher
than before implementation. Because answers come from actual past customers are
viewed as more objective than those from Customer Service, the
CoffeeForLess.com brand trust builds faster objective. (TurnTo)
As a Windsor Circle client, CoffeeForLess further strengthened
customer engagement and retention initiatives by implementing Windsor Circle’s
automated lifecycle marketing platform. The tool provides email and on-site new
customer screen prompts, personalized by customer visit and order history latency,
or the time between purchases. In the initial email campaigns, CoffeeForLess increased
revenue by $200K in the “Win-back” first time buyer, $150K with the “Replenishment”
repeat buyer and $200K for the “Best customer” high order-value email campaigns.
These campaigns increased the company’s monthly repeat traffic from 7% to 38%
while associated revenues moved from 27% to 86%. (Windsor Circle) In September
2014, CoffeeForLess reached the milestone of making over $1 million annually
from email customer contact enabled by Windsor Circle's technology. (Pearson)
My CofeeForLess.com Website Visitor “Test Drive” Experience
I found the CoffeeForLess desktop and mobile websites to be
easy-to-navigate. The landing page header tabs denote the main product types
(coffee by brewing type, tea, coffee machines, hot chocolate and more). The left
sidebar provides recent purchase and top seller product suggestions along with social
media follows and email signup. The main body provides a flash banner ad,
product category click-though and product suggestions personalized by visitor
on-site search and viewing selections. The lower portion of the page provides a
well-organized site map along with visitor privacy and business trust icons. Overall,
the landing page is text-rich and image-lite and has a short learning curve to
navigate-through.
Product-type catalog pages provide excellent left side-bar
filters for 25 categories that enable a customer to drill-down to the specific
products that meet their purchase interests. Individual product pages provide the
product image, manufacturer product details, review comments, access to the new
Social Q&A conversation areas and social media “likes”. On the right of the
screen, a “Feedback” form icon is available for product, site content,
technical challenges, suggestions, can’t find and other visitor comments. It’s
not clear how this form powered by Kampyle Ltd, relates with reviewer, Social
Q&A or Shopper Approved review data transparent to website visitors. As
items are added to the shopping cart, a popup window appears on the top-right
of the website screen that details shopping cart items.
 |
| Product Page With Social Customer Q&A and Reviews |
The checkout process has a one-page process that allows the
customer to review the order, make changes, and add shipping information along
with credit card data. When the order is processed there is a one-page thank
you confirmation page that also provides “Did you know” contact information
including auto-reorder program links, newsletter signup.
 |
| Order Thank You Page PopUp Window |
There were a few recent reviewer comments about “annoying
popups” that after my visit, I can relate. When my order thank you page
appeared, I had popup windows appear for me to consider Google transaction
protection, Facebook “likes” for the vendor, and the Shopper Approved shopping
experience rating. During my early visits to the website, I encountered a large
coupon email signup popup (with expired coupon codes) as well as a $5 order coupon,
I could validate by giving my email address. Overall, I found CoffeeForLess to
be an easier-to-navigate, lower-cost, and more informative K-cup coffee online
supplier option than the redesigned Keurig e-commerce site after the Green
Mountain Coffee merger.
Cart Abandonment and Multi-Channel Metrics Support Quality
Customer Engagement
During my CoffeeForLess research, I was surprised that neither
Ben Kirshner nor Marketing VP Zachary Ciperski mention tracking shopping cart
abandonment rates including rates by source/medium. While 89% of online
retailers track conversion rates, only 54% tracking cart abandonment metrics. In
8% of checkouts, shoppers were like me and could not find a working discount
coupon code, while unexpected shipping costs is the most frequent issue for 28%
of cart abandonments. (eMarketer)
CoffeeForLess would benefit from multichannel funnel
metrics including assisted conversions (both micro-conversion goals of reviews
as well as macro-purchase conversions) by source/medium as well as time lag would
help CoffeeForLess better understand the social media reviews’ contribution to revenue
goals compared to on-site customer reviews and questions. Similarly, the
company should track feedback form, Social Q&A, LiveChat (Customer Service)
and reviews per session to tap into whether individual visitors use all on-site
engagement forums or have preferences. Overall, these metrics will help
CoffeeForLess evaluate and identify multichannel synergies that will build
customer engagement from duplicative effort that over time, will degrade the
quality of user generated content.
eMarketer (13 January 2015) How to Take Advantage of
Shopping Cart Abandonment. eMarketer.
[Website] Retrieved from http://www.emarketer.com/Article/How-Take-Advantage-of-Shopping-Cart-Abandonment/1011802
Hushin, Kelly (3 May 2012) CoffeeforLess.com’s ‘One Thing’
is simple – and crucial. The eTail Blog.
[Blog] Retrieved from http://theetailblog.com/2012/05/03/coffeeforless-coms-one-thing-is-simple-and-crucial/
Maras, Elliott. Philadelphia OCS operation finds new
markets in specialty coffee, single-cup brewers and the Internet. CoffeeForLess.com [Website] Retrieved
March 1, 2015 from http://www.coffeeforless.com/coffee-serv-finds-ways-grow-in-mature-ocs-market/
Pearson, Andrew (29 April 2014) Windsor Circle
CoffeeForLess EliteSEM Webinar Slides Apr 2014. Windsor Circle. [Case Study] Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/windsorcircle/windsor-circle-coffeeforless-elitesem-webinar-slides-apr-2014?qid=920888c8-4d01-4902-bc28-1aabe8f4d7e6&v=qf1&b=&from_search=1
Ryan, Shaun (28 April 2009) Transcript: Ben
Kirshner from Coffee for Less. Ecommerce
Podcast. Retrieved from http://www.ecommercepodcast.com/podcast-transcript-ben-kirshner-from-coffee-for-less
SimilarWeb (2 March 2015) Coffeeforless.com SimilarWeb [website data set] Retrieved
from http://www.similarweb.com/website/coffeeforless.com?competitors=keurig.com
Sutton, Adam T. (3 May 2012) User-Generated Content:
Organic search up 10%, conversion up 125% with rich product reviews. Marketngsherpa. Retrieved from http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/organic-search-up-10-conversion
TurnTo (2014) CoffeeForLess.com Solves Customer Engagement
Challenge with TurnTo. TurnToWorks.com
[Website Case Study] Retrieved from http://www.turntonetworks.com/resources/
TurnTo (15 October 2013) Social Commerce Webinar -
CoffeeForLess com Solves Customer Engagement Challenge with TurnTo Q&A.
[Video] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yduN1oScEeg
Windsor Circle (2014) How CoffeeForLess Made More than
$500k in 6 Months From Data-Driven Lifecycle Emails Windsor Circle. WindsorCirlce.com [Website Case Study]
Retrieved from http://www.windsorcircle.com/results/coffeeforless
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