Rather Outdoors
After acquiring multiple legendary outdoor brands, the Rather Outdoors team needed both a digital experience platform and a full service systems integration firm capable of unifying all their content and eCommerce efforts. Together the Rather Outdoors team, BlueBolt and Optimizely delivered on the following goals:
Implement Optimizely to create a unified eCommerce global business architecture with all eCommerce brands.
Create a unified user experience and an exceptional customer journey using across multiple brands.
Use Optimizely to unite all third party fulfillment and data systems to create a streamlined experience for all.
Develop a set of best practices and use them to train Rather Outdoor's team to maintain and operate the website themselves.
From the shop that sold the Rather family their first rods, to the pros that mentored them along the way, the fishing business has never been "just business" to the Rathers. It's been their community, culture and family. Believing that everyone should be able to experience nature the way they do, with the right equipment, made with passion and sold with truth, the Rather family made it their mission to protect and respect the world's greatest outdoor brands.
Their commitment to pass these brands on to future generations, stronger than when they found them, was what led Rather Outdoors to partner with Optimizely and BlueBolt Solutions to create a world class eCommerce experience for their customers. It was important to Rather Outdoors that their new solution would not only deliver a dynamic and simple user interface for their guests, but it would also streamline internal IT and marketing workflows.
Now Rather Outdoors content authors and marketing managers are able to easily transition between work on their multiple brands with minimal training, leveraging the same digital strategy across all brands thanks to a global code base. Workflows and layouts enable the marketing team to work seamlessly, while ensuring branded content only rolls out to the appropriate store(s). Gone are the days of relying on agencies and developers for each and every update.
Customers are being treated to a world class, streamlined user experience across all brands, in multiple languages. While Rather Outdoors’ desire is to pass along their heritage and love of fishing to their community, their new best in industry website solution features a modern and engaging UI/UX design, fresh educational content, state of the art products and an easy checkout experience, which features a variety of relevant paying options including Apple Pay, Android Pay and Amazon Pay. Everything customers need to spend time out on the water.
BlueBolt and Rather Outdoors were awarded an Outstanding Website Award (2022). The Web Marketing Association independently judges each website entry. Rather’s Lews.com scored perfect marks in both design and content, with very high marks in interactivity, copywriting, ease of use, innovation and technology. One judge remarked that the site featured “Great high contrast design and vibrant imagery, leading the user to the content they seek.” This is what fishing enthusiasts would call “catching a keeper.”
Even better than winning an award is realizing ROI on a high performing website solution. In the first six months after launch, Rather realized many great statistics throughout their family of brands with bounce rates falling an average of 40-60% and user sessions coming in between 50,000-100,000 per brand. Even better? Goals set for YTD Average Order Value, YoY Conversion Rates and YoY Revenue Growth were all surpassed during this time period. YoY Average Order Value went up 19%, YoY Revenue growth exceeded goals by 3.5% and YoY Conversion Rates came in at 10% over their annual goals. This “weigh in” would please the most serious of anglers.