MakerBot Achieves Engagement Success on its Website

Taken from Multichannel Merchant

By Daniela Forte

3D printer manufacturer MakerBot has always been about providing a personalized experience that puts its customers at the forefront of innovation. And by making improvements to its overall web presence, the company saw an 18% increase in homepage engagement, a 5x ROI on its website and a 5% reduction in cart abandonment.

MakerBot used Dynamic Yield’s Unified Customer Engagement Platform to address engagement across the website.

The company needed a single interface engagement solution to test and execute key marketing initiatives that would increase purchases, reduce cart abandonment and generate more leads.

“It’s very important for us to create engagement everywhere on our site,” said Colby Dennison, MakerBot’s vice president of marketing. “We’re the first company to sell more than 100,000 3D printers, and our community, Thingiverse, is the largest 3D design community, with more than a million designs uploaded. We want to keep our community happy, and at the same time make new visitors feel welcome. That means different visitors should see different things.”

On the homepage, the company wanted to display the right messaging with a call to action that would drive further engagement. For the checkout page, MakerBot wanted to increase purchases by persuading more abandoning visitors to complete their orders. And on its use case page, which provides real-world product applications, it wanted to target visitors in this high-value area to generate more leads.

Dennison said Dynamic Yield sees MakerBot site as “real estate,” understanding that pages should drive conversions or revenue.

“With their help, we look at each module to see how we can optimize performance,” he said. “We optimize what we call the ‘hero slider’ on our homepage and personalize it based on the visitor.”

Dennison said if MakerBot sees a customer is already engaged with a particular image, it is automatically refreshed. If they know a customer previously bought a particular printer, the customer is taken to relevant selections.

Since using Dynamic Yield, MakerBot was able to drive engagement via the homepage banner with three different message variations: “Buy Two Get One,” “Request a 3D Printing Sample” and “Watch a Free Webinar.”

MakerBot was able to reduce cart abandonments on the checkout page, providing real-time messaging to create exit-intent overlays which persuaded leavers to complete their purchases.

The messages honed in on the industry’s top reasons for cart abandonment and were triggered if a customer rapidly moved the cursor to x-out of the checkout page. MakerBot tested four variations – free shipping, options for financing, help with the order, and request a free 3D printed sample.

“We learned quickly that offering financing and free shipping were more effective for ecommerce sales,” said Dennison. “The option to request a quote became a lead generator so our internal sales team could then close those leads. These actions reduced card abandonment by 5%, a big boost for our bottom line.”

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