Sherpa! Shapes SPANX for Improved Bottom Line

Summary

SPANX is the brand behind the revolutionary control-top woman’s hosiery marketed in a cheeky, fresh voice, which appeals to a wide variety of female consumers. The company was born in 1998 in an Atlanta apartment when founder Sara Blakely cut the feet out of pantyhose. Since those modest beginnings, SPANX has expanded to include tights, hose, shapers, bras and underwear that have taken the industry by storm.

While Spanx was achieving great growth through positive media coverage and word of mouth, the highly-graphical eCommerce website abysmal rankings in the search engines. As a result the company was missing out on a valuable opportunity to grow its online sales. To respond to this challenge, Spanx sought guidance from Sherpa!'s interactive group to aggressively improve search engine generated traffic and produce measurable and sustainable growth for their online initiative.

Challenges

• The SPANX website didn’t adhere to many search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, greatly increasing the challenge of improving rankings in the search engines.
• SPANX.com was a highly customized e-commerce website that was not SEO-compliant, thus making limited the ability to implement common SEO techniques.
• The SPANX website was competing with numerous small online retailers who also sold its products, many of which with properly search engine optimized websites.
• SPANX executives had concerns about the initial outlay of funds for the project and having their expectations met.

Solution

Sherpa! took SPANX.com through their proven Search Engine Optimization process. Drawing on experience with previous clients, Sherpa! strategists delivered increased, targeted traffic to SPANX.com visitors, encouraging a higher conversion rate.

"SPANX is a hallmark project for Sherpa!. There are many challenges to the project. However, we were able to decipher what key strategies needed to be deployed to produce optimal results. We have delivered results that will serve SPANX well," says David Felfoldi, Chief Experience Officer and co-founder of Sherpa!.

Results

• Search engine referrals to SPANX.com increased by 118% in just a few months after fully implementing SEO techniques.
• By making SPANX.com list earlier in search engine and for better searches, Sherpa!’s strategic efforts resulted in an increased conversion rate of site visitors into actual customers.
• Major search engines such as Google pointed consumers to SPANX’s website for highly competitive key-phrases such as “body shapers,” “footless tights,” and “leggings.”
• Due to the increased site visitors and resulting improved online sales, SPANX experienced a complete return on their investment with Sherpa! in just three months.
• After attaining stellar results with SEO, Sherpa! introduced executives at SPANX to pay-per-click advertising, which will further increase the number of site visitors and conversions over time.