Altius

The Client

Altius Spices & Seasonings Inc. is a full service spice house with extensive production capacity and state of the art grinding, mixing and packaging equipment. They have a sales and distribution network throughout North America and provide quality products to all sectors of the food industry – retail, food service, industrial, and direct to consumer via their online shop.

Project Summary

In addition to their retail, food service and industrial products and services, Altius was developing a number of product lines which they branded with the intention of selling directly to retail consumers via an online shop (among other channels). I was contracted to design and develop this shop. Once live, I was then responsible for generating traffic and converting that traffic into customers. I used a wide array of platforms and tools to gather information in order to make continuous incremental improvements and increase conversion rates and other KPIs.

Challenges

One of the key challenges of this project was to understand who the customer segments were and how to formulate value propositions and associated product offerings which would result in good conversion rates, all while keeping customer acquisition costs (CAC) reasonably low. Additionally, it was necessary to establish a marketing strategy directed towards existing customers to ensure repeat orders, leading to higher lifetime value (LTV). These challenges would ultimately require a multifaceted approach involving ongoing UX, design and marketing efforts.

My Responsibilities & Tasks

UX / Web Design

  • Competitive analysis
    • Userflows
    • Pricing models
    • Design conventions
    • etc.
  • Sitemap (IA)
  • Mockups
  • Site development
  • Ongoing design iterations and feature implementation based on analytics data and user / customer feedback

Web Analytics

  • Google Analytics
    • Goal creation and conversion tracking
    • Segment creation
    • Advanced ecommerce tracking
  • Hotjar
    • Heatmaps
    • Session recording
    • Feedback form
  • Google Search Console
  • Mailchimp analytics
  • Facebook insights

Ecommerce / Marketing

  • Ad campaign strategy and implementation
    • Google display, search and shopping campaigns (Google Ads)
    • Facebook ad campaigns
  • SEO
  • Social media management
  • Newsletter strategy and implementation
  • General CX contributions
    • Customer support
    • Collaborating with team to create new product sets and establish shipping logistics related processes and guidelines

Results & Insights

Early user research and ongoing feedback made it clear that the retail level consumer of spices was typically accustomed to purchasing them locally (in person), and not in large volumes. This presented a significant barrier to success, as it was necessary to set a minimum order amount to qualify for free shipping in order to make the pricing model viable. To overcome this barrier, among other changes, we created a number of larger product sets which made it easier and significantly faster for users to fill their carts and qualify for free shipping, leading to a decrease in cart abandonment and increased sales volume (this could perhaps be attributed to Hick’s Law).

With respect to paid ad campaigns, this required a lot of trial and error, but over time cost per click decreased, engagement increased, and return on ad spend improved.

My biggest takeaway from this project was that it is a costly endeavor to target too broad of an audience and attempt to persuade them to go against their conventional purchasing habits. Narrowing down on customer segments, altering product offerings to suit their needs, and simplifying the process for them wherever possible is critical to achieving a successful outcome.