ISI Brands Case Study
ISI Brands stands for health. They own Twinlab, Metabolife and Alvita - some of the most trusted nutritional supplement brands in the nation. Their vitamins, herbal supplements and weight loss products anchor the shelves at major retail chains and online stores.
They came to us because their own e-commerce efforts were under the weather. While consumers would visit their sites and browse the information, they would go elsewhere to purchase the products.
ISI Brands needed help finishing the sale. They approached us about designing a new, snazzy front-end that would hold consumer attention and a back-end that would provide easier management and control.
Rethinking, Front to Back
We are unabashed geeks. We can’t help but think through problems from every angle. And while this sort of curiosity doesn’t work for cats, we’ve found it can do wonders for business and tech challenges.
ISI wanted a front-end solution. We noticed a back-end problem. ISI’s 12 brand sites were operating on 12 different platforms, each with a different administrator. Each site’s order chain back to fulfillment was long and convoluted. Updating and harmonizing content was as difficult as completing a 12-step program.
So our consumer-facing solution started with a client-facing first step. We rebuilt all their sites onto a single Drupal backbone, with a central administrator that could implement dozens of site changes instantly. Just as quickly, the quality of product information across their sites improved, and their marketers could quit updating and be marketers again.
Providing Reasons
We look at problems from every angle because solutions are rarely as straightforward as they seem at the outset.
The deeper we went into the analytics, the more we found that the ISI sites’ layout and visual appeal wasn’t the fundamental problem. Consumers could navigate easily, but they didn’t have a reason to. So our redesign pivoted into a content solution. We did some tweaking of fonts and layouts, but most our focus was on developing audience engagement vehicles such as Benchmark Buddy and Weight Loss Buddy: two simple fitness tracking tools that reinforced ISI’s branding and drew users into a deeper interaction with the site. This, along with online/offline advertising and branding campaigns began to drive users to the brands, and move products off the shelf.
Another Look
By taking a less-than-expected approach, ISI got a better-than-expected result. Content quality jumped. So did users’ time on site. Traffic volume increased. Online sales rose. Store traffic increased and retailers saw more brand support in the form of increased sales. The only thing that dropped was how much time ISI spent maintaining its content.
We think the lesson is pretty clear: healthy clients = healthy and happy consumers. And that's just what the doctor ordered.
