Von Maur Case Study

Where they were

Von Maur is a leading department store chain in the US with 31 high-end department stores. The brand had a lot of branded traffic, but the site was not performing at par with other national brands on Google. Modulus Systems Europe Ltd designed a comprehensive strategy that saw outstanding results.

At the start, organic search accounted for under 5% of visits. Almost all traffic was branded - people already searching for Von Maur by name. The opportunity was the huge volume of generic, non-branded demand the site was not capturing.

Objectives

• Design a strategy to drive non-branded traffic and sales for generic keywords like "men's t-shirts" on Google.com.
• Improve the on-site user experience.
• Set up online sales reporting using Google Analytics.

Strategy

We built a multi-disciplinary plan that combined technical fixes, e-commerce tracking, link building and social signals.

• Brought in a technical team to help the existing Von Maur team improve database fetching speed.
• Set up Google Webmasters and e-commerce tracking on Google Analytics.
• Put all Von Maur products on Google Shopping as a quick win.
• Created a massive link building campaign.
• Improved user experience by reducing the number of clicks to purchase.
• Integrated social signals on all product pages.
• Optimised titles and descriptions based on scalable templates.

Results

The combined work transformed the site's performance and its share of organic, non-branded demand.

• Reduced page load times from 15+ seconds to under 4 seconds.
• Year on year traffic increase of 50.39%.
• Year on year revenue increase of 33.5% - a multi-million dollar rise.
• All the rise in traffic was organic and non-branded.
• Organic search grew from under 5% to 23.4%, then on to around 35%.
• Social shares increased manifold once the social plugins went live.

Organic search alone justified the return on investment for the year, and adding the social plugins was a big success that amplified the brand's reach.

"Arjun was an immense help when the term 'SEO' was the current rage. He actually flew over from the U.K. to meet with us in person. He checked in with us weekly... Arjun delivered in every facet of our agreement and was a pleasure to work with."

Jim von Maur, President of Von Maur Inc.