Industry:
Retail
Location:
Omaha, Nebraska
http://www.accuquilt.com
  • A/B Test: Do customers prefer the familiarity of an Amazon Store page or an eCommerce site?
  • Google Search Ads were pointed toward an Amazon Store page, and Amazon Attribution was used to stitch the data together.
  • The results showed an across-the-board increase in nearly all metrics.

Background

AccuQuilt is a company that was built upon a rolling pin. Yes, like the kind used to prep cookie dough. While Steve Nabity, the founder, was watching his wife make cookies with a rolling pin, inspiration struck. If a rolling pin could cut cookies, then why wouldn’t a rolling mechanism work to cut paper?

He discovered the answer was that it could. AccuCut was born in 1990 and catered to the paper crafting industry. Then, Steve discovered that not only could his innovation cut paper, it could also cut fabric! He started AccuQuilt in 2008 and has been serving quilters worldwide ever since. The company’s fabric cutting systems yield accurate fabric shapes each and every time, and save time for quilters so they can get down to the fun part of quilting.

Located in Omaha, Nebraska, AccuQuilt’s mission is to inspire makers everywhere to experience the joy of quilting. The company even has a quilt gallery at its headquarters with exhibits that change about every three months. In a typical year, the gallery is open to the public and visitors are encouraged to drop in for a tour.

We switched from driving paid search traffic to our eCommerce site to driving it to an Amazon Store page. The results showed an increase in metrics across-the-board – clicks, revenue, and average order value all improved dramatically. Without Marin’s Amazon Attribution solution, it wouldn’t have been possible.

Justin Tefft
VP Operations

Challenge

AccuQuilt sells on its own website and also sells through online and offline retailers. The company’s paid search advertising had always sent traffic to its own website, but AccuQuilt wanted to understand if shoppers preferred the familiarity and convenience of buying on an Amazon Store page vs. the company eCommerce site.

Would AccuQuilt see a significant increase in conversion rate if the company directed paid search traffic to its Amazon store instead of its own website? Would the additional revenue cover the higher cost of selling through Amazon? How would AccuQuilt connect the paid search clicks to conversions on Amazon?

Solution

AccuQuilt and its agency put this hypothesis to the test during the 2020 holiday season. They decided to direct non-brand paid search traffic on Google to the Amazon Store page. The Amazon Store provided a compelling landing page for interested prospects, highlighting the full range of AccuQuilt cutters.

The search ads were rewritten to highlight the destination and to provide transparency for searchers, in order to align with Google’s best practices.

AccuQuilt leveraged Marin’s Amazon Attribution solution to connect the conversions on Amazon with the search keywords the customer clicked on. Thanks to an automated API setup, AccuQuilt only needed to link Amazon Attribution to MarinOne — the rest of the detailed tracking was set up automatically. Finally, Google cost data and Amazon conversion data were pulled into MarinOne and stitched together for reporting and optimization.

Results

The results showed a conclusive preference for the familiarity of buying on Amazon vs. the company site. The Amazon brand impact extended to the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), where AccuQuilt saw a high click-through-rate, increasing the overall volume coming from its advertising.

  • Ad Clicks improved 154%
  • Conversions rates held constant
  • Total Conversions improved by 220%
  • Revenue for the holiday season improved by 213%
  • Average Order Value improved 17%