America has a deep and rich history of rewarding trendsetters and innovators; the trailblazers are the ones who forged new ground and made way for the rest. In that regard, it seems only fitting that we celebrate Sheplers, a hundred-and-some-odd-year-old multichannel retailer of such iconic Americana like cowboy boots, dusters, and Stetsons. But the ground they broke wasn’t in the rugged West, it was in the wild fringes of the new digital age: the internet.

Sheplers has always been one step ahead of their competition; even before adding a strong website testing focus, the company was a pioneer in the realm of online marketing and merchandising. They were one of the first to adopt PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, and to this day still use over 300 custom landing pages that are based on the most frequently queried keywords in search engines. You can dig into the full details of Sheplers’ current digital marketing techniques in this free white paper, Sheplers: Over 100 Years of Smart Marketing.

Sheplers’ ability to remain relevant and profitable did not happen by coincidence; some of the ways they have generated considerable gains on their website is by:

• reducing friction at all possible venues in their customers’ shopping experience
• displaying region-specific content to make every market a “local” market
• drawing attention to bestselling and top-rated products through badging
• intelligently deploying free shipping offers to take advantage of continuous incremental profit contribution

This is only a brief description of Sheplers’ recent online marketing efforts; theirs is a story of rigorous website testing and optimization on top of their already century-old mantra of inovation through marketing. To get the full picture of their experience, along with a greater idea of how they were able to improve key metrics such as conversion and shopping cart abandonment, check out our free white paper, Sheplers: Over 100 Years of Smart Marketing.