Smythson Case Study
Smythson of Bond Street, established in 1887, has a strong reputation for producing high-quality stationery, travel accessories and leather goods. Its range of products is classic and iconic in design, while the clean, minimal style is timeless.
Smythson had an ecommerce system in place but needed a world-class Japanese website to maximize their presence in Japan, one of the most developed internet economies in the world. We provided a fully localized and optimized e-commerce website, where Japanese customers can browse, buy products and pay in their local currency Yen.
- The Challenge
- The Solution
- The Results
The Challenge
- To localize Smythson.com for a Japanese audience
- To maintain the impeccable brand image
- To implement a separate ecommerce system alloying payment in JP Yen
- To integrate with SAP for order fulfillment and live stock levels
- To keep the Japanese website updated in line with changes to the American site
- To achieve top 5 SERPs for the main search terms
The Solution
- Deploy a new ecommerce system OS Commerce an integrate existing design
- Professional Japanese translation of top selling 500 products and static website copy
- Brand Research on 'Smythson of Bond Street'
- Proof editing and testing to ensure a fully localized user experience online
- Use translation memory to reduce costs and improve consistency
- Keyword Research, Search Engine Optimization and ongoing link building to ensure high SERPs
- Implement professional email translation system for localized customer services experience
The Results
- Smythson.jp launched early 2008
- Localized website looks and feels identical to Smythson.com
- Top positions for brand related keywords in Google.jp
- 2.5% Visitor to Customer conversion rate, 36% funnel conversion rate
- On average, each visitor looks at 16 pages
- 500% Return on investment achieved within 10 months
