Jelly Belly Innovates Online
Jelly Belly Candy Company has been delighting candy lovers with its gourmet products for more than 140 years. Recently, the Internet has become an important sales channel for the company, which makes more than 75 flavors of jelly beans as well as more than 100 other candies, including gummies, licorice, chocolates and holiday sweets.
"While e-commerce makes up less than 5 percent of Jelly Belly's revenue, the channel is very important as it continues to show double digit growth," says Jason Marrone, e-commerce marketing manager for Jelly Belly.
When Jelly Belly decided to re-launch its Web site in late 2008, the company was dedicated to maintaining its long-standing reputation for excellent customer service. The ability for an e-commerce company, like Jelly Belly, to utilize the wealth of information gleaned through multiple channels, such as on-site search, ratings and reviews and personal recommendation clicks, might just be considered the Holy Grail of marketing, as it provides immense opportunities for cross-selling, up-selling and building solid customer relationships.
"We knew that to accomplish the lofty goals we had set for our e-commerce site, we were going to have to outsource some needs to a number of technology service providers to reduce the burden on our IT staff, while setting us apart in the minds of our customers," says Marrone.
First Things First
As it stood, Jelly Belly's existing e-commerce site wasn't providing a personalized experience for its loyal clientele and new customers. Search was one of the first areas the company focused on, as its former site search solution did not allow customers to locate products and information in all of the ways they wanted.
Jelly Belly selected Learning Search and Site Champion from SLI Systems, a provider of intelligent, on-demand search services for Internet and e-commerce sites. Since implementing SLI's site search, which was incorporated into the site's launch in August 2008, conversions have grown nearly one third, average orders have increased 10 percent and Jelly Belly has boosted its visibility on major search engines.
Marrone points out that new merchandising capabilities were keys in improving conversion rates as well. "No one does this better than apparel sites. I look to them for inspiration," says Marrone. "They live and die by their merchandising -- the ability to zoom in, look at alternate views or view the product in different colors." Jelly Belly extended some of these techniques to JellyBelly.com using SLI Systems' tools.
Data from Learning Search has also helped Jelly Belly make product decisions based on search requests from site visitors.
"We used to offer only a 10-pound bulk case of our Champagne Bubbles candy," Marrone says. "Using information from Learning Search, we discovered that Champagne Bubbles candy had become the third-most requested search. We decided to offer a one-pound container -- and it's now one of our biggest sellers with wedding planners."
Adding Further Value
In addition to providing a seamless site search experience for its customers, Jelly Belly turned to MyBuys, a SLI Systems partner, to provide personalization services for its Web-based customers in March 2009. Showcasing products that customers might be interested in based on current behavior and/or past purchases, as well as customized personalized e-mail alerts based on customer preference, Jelly Belly has seen its e-mail conversion rate jump 85 percent higher than the industry standard and prompted close to 20 percent of visitors to take action based on Web recommendations.
Another important element of the Jelly Belly online shopping experience is its use of user-generated reviews. Marrone knew that reviews were an integral part of shopping research for its customers, and that they would feel more comfortable making purchasing decisions after seeing input from their peers. In addition, reviews prompt the ongoing creation of useful, relevant content, which helps with Web site optimization and better natural search engine rankings.
Implementing PowerReviews Customer Reviews in March 2009, Jelly Belly was able to add more than 1,000 user reviews in less than 60 days, which has provided the company a greater level of credibility with its customers, and has contributed to an increase in sales.
"Customer-generated product reviews provide a powerful way to keep people on our site longer, as they are able to do the research they need without looking elsewhere," says Marrone. "In addition, we believe the reviews we have generated thus far are contributing to a more enjoyable online experience for our customers as they can quickly and easily find the products that are just right for them."
Moreover, consumer-generated reviews present consumer goods manufacturers like Jelly Belly with a bevy of insight that can be leveraged across all operations, including innovation. "When the opportunity presents itself, we'd definitely take consumer reviews into consideration on the product development side," says Marrone.
Sweet Additions
Most recently, Jelly Belly further innovated its online selling capabilities with the launch of MyJellyBelly.com, a personalization site where you can select your favorite flavors or colors of jelly beans, select a container to have them packed into and then design the container with personalized graphics and messages.
The company is also in the process of building a B2B e-commerce site for its retailers and brokers. "This is a huge initiative that will help streamline our order processing and free up customer service reps to focus on other important issues," closes Marrone.