Bollman Hats Company is America’s oldest hat maker. Started in 1868, Bollman grew from a single factory in Adamstown, Pennsylvania to a global leader in the headwear industry.
Today, Bollman represents a dozen global hat retail brands, and the management of the company’s growing eCommerce footprint has presented a unique challenge: how to deliver an exceptional user experience to each and every online shopper across Bollman’s many online applications?

Customers demand the best possible experience when they shop on our websites, explains Chris Tanner, director of e-commerce at Bollman Hat Company. “Our site needs to efficiently deliver high-quality content across a variety of devices, locations, and connection speeds.”

Users Demand Rich Shopping Experiences

Humans process images 60,000 times faster than text, so it’s no secret a successful online shopping experience must incorporate striking visual elements, as well as personalization, to align with end-user wants.

However, image-heavy sites are slow to deliver content to the end user. The real challenge at Bollman was to discover a way to deliver rich experiences without dragging down application performance – most notably, page speed.

Faster Load Times = Better User Engagement

A slow load time sends a clear signal to the end user – this is not a quality experience. It happens all the time; unhappy users bounce and find what they want elsewhere. Think of examples from your own life –  how long will you wait for a website to load before giving up?

Once the end-user is lost due to a poor experience, it is very hard to win them back. Consider these statistics on mobile retail: of visitors frustrated with a mobile shopping experience, 29% will wait a year before returning, 30% plan to never return again, and 43% immediately defect to a competitor.

Solving the Application Optimization Puzzle:

Keeping users engaged and on your application is key to driving eCommerce revenue, and Bollman Hats Co. found the perfect solution to this challenge with Yottaa’s cloud-based automation platform

“With Yottaa, we are able to create a secure, visually appealing site without sacrificing performance,” said Tanner. “Yottaa allows us to control what content our customers see and when they see it. This kind of user-based sequencing solution has optimized our site performance and increased conversions.”

Two of Bollman’s top websites: hats.com and kangolstore.com have witnessed 20 percent year-over-year conversion rate increases since implementing Yottaa’s proprietary web performance platform. Additionally, kangolstore.com’s bounce rate decreased by 6.5 percent and hats.com’s by 5 percent, meaning fewer people were leaving.

Bollman Hat Company has thrived for a century and a half because of a dedication to the customer. The company recognizes that they provide more than a product – they impart experiences. Through leveraging Yottaa technology to create remarkable experiences for customers online, Bollman is well-positioned to continue their standard of excellence in the digital age.

*Image Source: www.bollmanhats.com