Hallmark Cards’ new website design has seen improved response times as well as a higher customer conversion rate, reports computerworld.com.
The new site, which launched in September last year, was expected to have a lower conversion rate when it launched but the statistics show quite the opposite – it increased by 30 per cent.
Paul Barker, the vice president and general manager of Hallmark Digital, initially thought the new launch would be difficult for the firm: “We expected to have a lower conversion rate because we thought, with a new site, it was going to take some time for people to get used to it.”
“We were all kind of standing around waiting for it to break, waiting for it to crash, and it didn’t – it was a real confidence booster, I think, for the entire organisation.”
The firm also said that customers experienced a 370 per cent improvement in site response time. After launching the site last September, response times in December improved by more then 50 per cent over the previous year.
Commenting on the old website, Barker told itworld.com: “Our response time would erode significantly during the peak times. That was an unacceptable level of performance.”
The new website now has an average response time of 2.47 seconds, with the benchmark average set at 3.35.
