Environment Luggage Online is the interactive business unit of a regional brick & mortar luggage retailer. In 1999, the online luggage marketplace was highly competitive with more than 40 e-Commerce luggage sites offering the same brand names at the same discounts with similar shipping and return policies. Most of the sites, including Luggage Online, engaged in a “lowest price online” sales strategy. With its existing e-Commerce site enjoying a steady but unremarkable volume of sales, Luggage Online partnered with Backe Interactive to kick it up a notch and help them stand out from the competition. Challenge Differentiate the Luggage Online brand to allow it to pull away from the pack. Conduct a comprehensive competitive study to identify areas in which Luggage Online could either reach or exceed parity with its competitors. Develop not only an easy and rewarding user experience for veteran travelers, but also seize on the opportunity to guide novice travelers in their luggage selection. Build a site that would grow as projected sales and usage grew. Strategy To capture consumer loyalty and push Luggage Online above the crowded marketplace, Backe Interactive recommended the company capture the niche of “travel resource” within the luggage arena. To do this, Backe Interactive developed the new tag line — “the source for people who travel,” and added content, such as airline baggage restrictions, travel tips, packing recommendations and more. Backe Interactive also made the shopping experience more convenient. The agency restructured the site to allow customers to easily find products by either brand or category and created a “Personal Shopper” to help customers find the perfect luggage for their trip. To increase the number of units sold per order, Backe added an “intelligent” application that suggests cross sells. Backe also built in an automated coupon and sales promotion “$ off” and “% off” discount functionality and shipment tracking to increase customer retention and loyalty. For accommodating future growth in product lines and site traffic, the agency created a highly scalable architecture allowing the site to be updated easily and cost-effectively by Luggage Online personnel. And, the agency created automated tracking and reporting that lets Luggage Online track users through to completed sale from banners, search engines, affiliate referrals and emails. Results Luggage Online is now the number one luggage site in terms of usability, as ranked by BizRate. Repeat purchases have significantly increased along with the number of products sold per transaction. In addition, site traffic has improved dramatically and conversion rates have increased by more than 30%.