Ratio Coffee
Ratio is all about making great coffee. The Portland-based company produces premium coffee makers that look beautiful while brewing the perfect cup. Their products are available from several retail partners; however, their own storefront is entirely digital. With the website as the primary location for their customers, the Ratio team approached me to help manage their online presence.
At first, they were simply in need of several updates to their website. But that quickly grew into an ongoing retainer where I provided a wide variety of digital marketing services and tackled several larger projects over the years, including re-platforming the website.
Featured Skills
Making Moves
One of my first major projects with Ratio was moving their site from WooCommerce to Shopify. With the site as their primary sales channel, it was essential that this move not only improved efficiency on the backend but also performance on the frontend.
To ensure these goals were met, I approached the project in several stages:
Information Architecture
I audited the existing site content and helped craft an updated sitemap for how pages, products, and collections were arranged throughout the site.Wireframing & Designs
While the previous site was in no way bad, I took the opportunity to help modernize the design of the site through several rounds of wireframing and designs to ensure we were putting our best foot forward with the new site launch.Development
The site was built to modern web standards, with extra care made to ensure it was easy to update for the Ratio team. While I was happy to help with future updates, I wanted to ensure they didn't need coding experience to be able to update content.Launch
At its core, launch was simply updating a few DNS records. But a lot more preparation and care went into it, including ensuring updated sitemaps and redirects were ready for SEO purposes and internal staff was trained on how to operate the new system within Shopify.
In the end, the new site launch was a huge success. In the year after the site redesign - combined with the ongoing optimizations covered below - we saw a 52% increase in conversion rates and nearly 200% more mobile transactions.
Ongoing Optimization
My work with Ratio spanned several years. Each month, I'd work with their team to prioritize new features, seasonal changes, and support for any upcoming campaigns.
But I'd do much more than just implement requests. I'd also regularly provide my own recommendations for improving site performance, conversion rates, and the overall user experience. These recommendations were based on a variety of things, including:
my own heuristic review of the site
industry best practices and trends
analytics data, powered by a customized Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager configuration as well as heat mapping software
post-purchase surveys
seasonal trends
I'd break down this data each month, analyze it, and make recommendations based on these insights. Sometimes, that'd take the form of a new A/B test that I would facilitate. Other times, it was a clear opportunity for improvement that we'd simply prioritize implementing.
This process was extremely efficient, as I was not only making the recommendations for optimization, but also designing the solutions and implementing the code.
As a result of this work, I've helped to improve conversion rates site-wide, increase average order values, improve accessibility, and dramatically improve the mobile experience.
A Bit of Everything Else
Given the experience and skillset I've gained from working with a wide variety of clients over the years, I was able to act as a sort-of external marketing department for Ratio in many ways. In addition to my work on their website, I have also:
Managed email marketing efforts, including setting up templates, automations, segmentation, and more.
Designed print materials for retail partners, internal marketing efforts, and events.
Helped create several crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter, WeFunder, and Republic.co
Optimized Amazon brand and product pages
Helped implement affiliate marketing programs
The list goes on. I'll be the first to admit that for some of these tasks, I didn't have any prior experience. But I tend to pick up new things pretty quickly when it comes to the digital realm. And the relationship with Ratio was such that if I said I could tackle it, they trusted me to dive in and figure it out.
The result was a notably more cohesive approach to their online presence and digital marketing efforts.
I’ve worked with David for several years on UX and IA projects. He is careful to gather all the relevant information before tackling the implementation, and often would come back with ideas to make the end result even better. I appreciate the blend of “art and science” you will find in David’s work.
In Summary
All in all, I loved working with the team at Ratio. Together, we worked to grow their business by optimizing their digital presence across the board. And I'm excited to see how it continues to grow in the years to come.
Check out Ratio for yourself - and if you're in the market for a new coffee maker, I absolutely recommend picking up one from their lineup.
