Born in Toronto during the funkiest part of the 70's, Anna later moved to the ragged wilderness of British Columbia where she began her magical journey into the realm of incense. With the help of her family, she soon began sharing her incense at local flea markets and music festivals. Her popularity reached cult proportions with regular fans coming back again and again, bringing friends and family from far and wide for Anna's fine incense.

Having graduated from Radio and Television school, Jeremy applied his knowledge of the Internet - and communications in general - to Anna's successful line of incense bottles. Under the spiritual and financial guidance of their father, Steve, retired entrepreneur and life long sales expert, the brother and sister team had been able to spread the smell of Anna's Incense to thousands of people around the world.

The Challenge:

Anna's popularity and activity soon outgrew their original website:

• Fulfilling orders became cumbersome and time-consuming.
  
  
• Sales were being lost due to website limitations.
  
  
• Competitors and "copycat" websites were becoming familiar - potentially cutting into market share.
  
  

The Solution:

Anna's Incense approached DJ's to develop their new website and implement their ideas. The website was to further differentiate themselves, expand marketing, enhance customer service, and streamline business processes.  Together, we commerce-enabled four (4) websites that interlink and support consumers throughout the shopping experience.

Web Site Design

The sites are easy to use, the images load quickly, and the style is pleasing and inviting to their target market. The goals of the site design are (1) to help keep potential consumers engaged and motivated to stay and learn about Anna's and their products; (2) to properly communicate the site content; and (3) to help guide consumers to the necessary steps of liking, preference, conviction, and purchase.

Anna's website was designed so that they are easy to do business with:

Useful. Online shoppers care about finding a product that fits their needs quickly and easily. Customers can quickly locate products of interest. They also have easy access to prices, descriptions, ordering information, and their shopping cart.

Efficient. Customers have one-click access to all important sections from any page on the website.

Bandwidth-friendly. Customers visit the Anna's Incense website to shop - not to be wowed by art. Zona Research estimates that websites are losing $362 million per month, more than $4 billion annually, because of unacceptable download speeds (The Need for Speed, Zona Research Inc., June 1999). We did not want Anna's to become just another statistic.

Simple. Shopping on the Internet is all about simplifying the purchasing process: Simple to search, to browse, to check out, to return, to find help, to locate any information that might be relevant to the purchasing decision. The Anna's website is very simple for the customer to use and place orders.

Show me the money. Easy access to the shopping cart gives shoppers a sense of security. It lets them know what they've chosen and that nothing has been accidentally purchased or lost. At Anna's, once the shopping process begins, customers can see at the bottom of every page:

• The number of items in the shopping cart
• The subtotal of shopping cart items
• The last item added to the shopping cart

Customers can view the entire shopping cart by clicking the View Cart/Checkout button, located at the bottom of every page.

Search. Anna's understands and anticipates how customers will use their site. Consequently, they have a robust keyword search engine that queries all of the products in the database. They also have a 'What Other's are Buying Right Now' search tool. This feature lets customers see what fragrances others are buying, while returning a list of suggested items by querying the database.

Easy to navigate. Studies show that regardless of the Web savvy of the user, ease of navigation is the most important element of design. Anna's Incense is made easy to navigate - a customer can get to any important page regardless of where they are in the site.

E-commerce & Database Development

May I take your order, please?  The ordering system is smooth and effortless. Customers can easily add items to the shopping cart while continuing to browse. Once they have their baskets filled up, the checkout wait is minimal- the page is quick loading and the checkout interface is easy to use. Customer credit card validation is done automatically, and if everything is ok the order is placed. Automated invoices are then sent to the consumer, and order status can be viewed online.

Ready to Reorder?  The ordering process is even easier for repeat customers. When a customer enters their phone number in the Ready To Reorder! field, they can click on the Reorder Favorite Items link. This automatically places their previous order in their shopping cart. When the customer is ready to leave, all of their shipping and billing info is already entered. The customer simply has to re-enter their credit card information and click the Place Order button. A four step shopping process.

For more e-commerce and custom Internet programming features, please visit the Anna's Incense e-Software section.

Webmaster & Marketing

DJ's hosts the sites; provides technical support; helps maintain the search engine positioning and link gathering; brainstorms marketing ideas; performs site updates and changes; communicates key "performance indicators"; and also performs custom tasks to help in the implementation of the strategy.

Without divulging into the particulars, the marketing strategy involves:

• understanding consumer pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase behaviors, attitudes, and influences.
  
  
• interpreting marketing cues.
  
  
• Measuring and monitoring campaigns.
  
  
• Testing and re-adjusting based on what the measurements reveal.
  

Emphasis is placed on how customers come to purchase their products (from unawareness to purchase).

An important piece of the marketing strategy is using the strengths of the Internet to provide great customer service. Research shows that 90% of all online shoppers consider good customer service to be the critical factor when choosing a Web merchant to give their business (Driving Sales with Service, Forrester Research, November 1999).

The Result:

With the new sites, Anna's has realized a 25% increase in order size, a 30% increase in revenue, and a 20% increase in order frequency and hits to order ratio. Furthermore, they have realized a 20% decrease in operating costs. Anna's Customer Shopping Experience rating is amongst the most highly rated in the Bizrate.com system- and it is constantly increasing at regular intervals.

Anna's Incense is an exciting Internet success story.

The Intangibles:

• Anna's Incense is a respected industry leader. This spawns copycat competitors. The current functionality of the website and custom programming is difficult to emulate giving Anna's a distinct competitive advantage.
  
  
• Customer loyalty to Anna's Incense is increasing significantly: 
  
  
  • Anna's receives increases in repeat orders each month.
    
    
  • Anna's receives hundreds of positive testimonials.
    Many with a "I will only shop at Anna's for incense" theme