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No Mountain Too High

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When it comes to enjoying the great outdoors, gear matters. At Backcountry.com – an online retailer of performance outdoor adventure gear and apparel for men, women, and children – the entire organization is dedicated to the concepts of authenticity and service. Much of the company’s success can be attributed to the fact that it focuses on offering the right product to hardcore outdoor enthusiasts and presenting information in the right manner.

With 600 employees working in Park City, Utah, Backcountry.com carries more than 400 brands to suit the particular needs of outdoor niche markets, including backpacking, camping, hiking, climbing, skiing, biking, and more. Backcountry.com also operates online properties BackcountryOutlet.com, SteepandCheap.com, Dogfunk.com, Tramdock. com, WhiskeyMilitia.com, and Chainlove.com. “We have a powerful niche marketing strategy,” says Shopping Search Manager Ben Wheeler. “We build a unique site for each core market segment we cater to, so we can offer the right product to the right customer, and present it in the right style and voice. This creates a highly focused, authentic experience for our customers.”

Onward and upward

According to Wheeler, Backcountry.com is a “totally awesome and amazing” place to work, where every employee has a voice and is expected to use it. Wheeler started out as a marketing intern, and now manages the company’s shopping search programs, handling tasks like data feed construction, performance reporting, and everything in between. Wheeler is also the person who tracks what drives business online and how well Google Product Search™ is performing.

The company started using Google Product Search years ago, back when it was called Froogle, to establish an online presence and to drive traffic to its newly launched site. Today, the company still relies heavily on Product Search as a vital component of its shopping search channel. “We are always looking for ways to gain higher exposure for our products and our company at low cost, and Google Product Search is the most powerful way to do that,” says Wheeler, signaling the fact that Product Search is free. He is particularly pleased when his products appear among search results on Google.com. “My favorite feature of Product Search is when product results show up in Google Search. The increased exposure from these results is remarkable and certainly something we value,” he says.

Staying at the top

With 20 percent of its sales being generated from search properties, one quarter of that traffic comes from Google Product Search. The results become even more compelling when taking into consideration that conversion rates for Google Product Search run 30 percent higher than the search channel average. “Product Search enables us to achieve our revenue goals by providing a tremendous volume of exposure for our products with no associated advertising costs,” says Wheeler.

With Google Product Search driving traffic to its sites, the firm is able to suit shoppers’ needs to a tee, for free. “Simply put, we would not be able to reach our aggressive ROI targets without Google Product Search,” states Wheeler.