Gatemaster Technology case study

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Increase in Page Views

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Increase in Site Visit Duration

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Increase in Return Users

Project Overview

Color Up Co. is one of the leading CBD product companies in the country based near our Denver, CO office. As fans of their products, we connected with them to solve architectural issues that had developed as the business scaled their online sales over 6 years prior to our engagement. Color Up makes products for esthetician professionals as well as consumers and has won many industry awards for the quality of their products. Along with rebranding their products and company name, it was time for a digital facelift and to focus online efforts to generate more community engagement around their products and other aspects of the business that had further developed in recent years.

Services Provided

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Web Development

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Web Design

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WooCommerce Customizations

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3rd Party Integrations

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Website Hosting

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Blog Writing & Publishing

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Facebook Advertising

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Ecommerce Management

Challenges

Starting this project, we were technically looking at 2 websites that served different but similar purposes that needed to be rebuilt. Color Up was managing all wholesale customer sales through one website that had alternative user features and additional training information and online courses available for esthetician partners. Separately, they had a retail website for consumers to use for personal orders. Many products were the same but certain variations were only available for consumers or wholesale customers. Each purchase type also requires various taxation statuses.

We saw this as a major problem as advertising is still not “allowed” in the CBD space and organic ranking and traffic is crucial for gaining brand awareness and customers. Splitting the traffic between two sites for a singular brand was reducing their potential SEO impact. Additionally, there were many operational complications created by maintaining two sites – two separate inventory lists, two separate payment processing accounts, etc. We saw this as an opportunity to help improve operational scalability while also helping bolster the brand and user interface for the online store to generate more sales.

Execution

When starting the project, we made the decision to merge the two site environments to one. This was by far not the easiest path forward but definitely what would be best for operational capacity and SEO. We created custom user roles with 3rd party integrations and WooCommerce extensions that allow for users to be identified as either retail or wholesale customers. This allows for dynamic pricing and dynamic product management based on the user role.

Users can now see recommended products and more easily navigate through COlor Up’s offerings while Color Up can also more easily add new products based on updated categorization of products on the site.

By integrating all website traffic into one site, the site structure became much larger and there were significant impacts on site metrics being improved after launch.

Separate from the website, we also assisted with building out Facebook Advertising campaigns despite facing extreme stipulations and setbacks from Facebook along the way. All CBD products must be advertised with no mention of CBD and only the use of hemp-related terms so it creates many complications. Additionally, we provided organic blog articles structured from an SEO strategy which assisted with increasing organic site traffic with targeted keywords and phrases that are often searched in relation to CBD products.

Results

Launching the new site combined all site traffic and lead to over an 80% increase in pageviews on the site, a 21% increase in site visit average and a 30% increase in return visitors. All of these metrics affect Search Engine Optimization greatly and help drive increased organic traffic. Over the first 90 days after the site launch there was already a 20% increase in organic site traffic bringing over 2000 additional new visitors to the website.

The long term impacts of this transition are still being realized, but this also provided Color Up with a singular inventory list to maintain and manage inventory on the site across both sides of their operation. We also implemented new features like Cart Abandonment tools and newsletter signups. This has all lead to increased repeat visitors and ultimately increased revenue from sales.

This project as a whole is a great example of how our team works together to deliver the best possible results for the businesses we work with. There was not an initial plan to merge the sites and it is often regarded as a very complicated move to combine two existing e-commerce sites with varying functionality requirements. However, we saw this as the best route after discussions between our web development and Search Engine Optimization departments and evaluating the landscape for CBD online sales and Color Up’s current positioning in the marketplace.

“ I’ve absolutely LOVED working with the entire team! They have really mastered their skills and are always coming up with new inventive ways to best service our team. I’ve often been blown away by the detailed explanations of why they are choosing one way over another, and the updated versions of already awesome layouts. As a small business owner who has reached out to hundreds of companies, I must say that I am MORE than satisfied with the Evoke Group. Thank you! ”