Schuler Shoes was able to decrease its website bounces, gain improvements in its search and navigation pages and increase the time spent on its site after implementing a search and navigation plugin.
The company’s challenge was that as it increased the number of available products and moved to the Magento ecommerce platform, it needed a compatible, SaaS-based search and navigation solution.
Ecommerce Director Michael Schuler said the company implemented SLI Systems, including its plugin for Magento. Whether using the SLI’s auto complete menu from the search box or navigating through refinements like shoe width and brand, visitors are now spending more time on the site and leaving less often.
Schuler said the depth of the product catalog used to mean slow page loads, and customers were getting frustrated. Before implementing SLI, he said Schuler had to modify code to improve the site’s SEO and create merchandising banners.
The goal of the SLI implementation, he said, was to speed up the site, improve the connection with Magento and generate product information.
“When we first started with Magento, it was much more difficult to make sure everything was up to date with search results,” said Schuler.
Since implementing SLI, Schuler Shoes has seen 20% fewer bounces from search and navigation pages and a 7.5% increase in time spent on the site.
“There has been much better time spent on pages, much more simplified navigation through filtering options, and URLs are much easier to generate,” Schuler said. “From a customer perspective it is much easier for us to present them with a promotion category, an event or items on sale. It has made the entirety of the catalog easier to find, whether it’s a certain size or width or color.”
Going forward, Schuler Shoes is making sure things are as optimized as possible. As the brand makes changes on its end, they make sure the changes are in sync with Magento.
“The big thing is learning navigation,” Schuler said. “It allows us to have a lot more control over categories and promotional texts, changing page titles and header tags and all the coding so those pages are getting indexed properly and are SEO friendly.”
Daniela Forte is Multichannel Merchant’s Content Producer