Lillian Vernon is one of America’s leading mail order and online retailers, distributing over 100 million catalogs each year. Today, more than 50% of their orders are placed through their website (www.lillianvernon.com). At the top of the standard template for pages on this site is a Universal Page Header which contains a wide array of variables including various icons, buttons, and font treatments. Realizing that these variables have a significant impact on the behavior of their web visitors, Lillian Vernon brought in Optimost to help them optimize the Header. Specifically, they wanted to increase the number of web visitors who added at least one product to their shopping cart and then went on to complete a purchase transaction.

Working together, Lillian Vernon and a dedicated Optimost project team developed a test plan which included 6 variables and 24 different values (versions of the variables). Based on this test plan, the Optimost solution engine quickly identified and generated over 2,000 different permutations of the Universal Page Header.

Key Findings

• When the shopping cart was on the bottom of the menu, alternative shopping cart layouts performed well
• Reducing the size of the Lillian Vernon logo by 25% had a negative impact on response
• Changing the appearance of the Search button increased the number of visitors who added items to their shopping cart

About Lillian Vernon

Lillian Vernon Corporation is a 54-year-old company and a leading national catalog and online retailer that markets gift, household, children's, and fashion accessory products. The company specializes in personalization, organization and celebration. Lillian Vernon was a pioneer in offering personalization, a company trademark. With one of the largest personalization departments in America, the company eliminates the customary delay associated with personalized merchandise. It offers 14 different kinds of personalization and personalizes 5.3 million products a year. According to an Opinion Research poll, more than 47 million Americans are familiar with the Lillian Vernon name. Since 1951, the Lillian Vernon logo has appeared on three billion catalogs, 172 million shipping boxes and 485 million products.