How brands can boost reputation and revenue with accessibility
As an industry leader in home appliances, Cuisinart is known for delivering high-quality, tailored solutions to customers around the world. Since 1973, this award-winning brand has been educating home chefs and culinary enthusiasts like Julia Child and James Beard on how to Savor the Good Life®.
As Cuisinart has grown, the Connecticut-based company has stayed committed to improving its products and reaching a new generation of foodies. The company set a goal to provide the same type of market-leading experience on its website that its appliances deliver in the kitchen.
Transforming the Cuisinart digital experience
To improve their web experience, Cuisinart chose to partner with Optimizely as their new digital experience platform. With Optimizely’s support, Cuisinart was able to redesign its 13,000-page website in only seven months. And while this process created a lot of chaos for the Cuisinart team, it put them on the path to delivering the customer experience they’d envisioned.
“We can see into the back end, without asking someone to do it,” explained Mary Rodgers, Director of Marketing Communications. “We can change prices, adjust Google feeds, make email corrections. We have more control.”
As the project progressed, Rodgers became increasingly concerned about user accessibility and Cuisinart’s Google scores. The team needed a solution to improve their website’s accessibility both strategically and tactically.
To address this opportunity, Cuisinart sought expert help. Recommendations from several providers, including Optimizely, mentioned one tool over and over again – Siteimprove.
The Cuisinart team looked into Siteimprove and saw the potential for enhanced control and a streamlined process for fixing site issues that would help their website thrive in the modern digital market.
A huge part of the value prop for me is the support for the consumer experience. Words like soufflé, Worcester and avocado are common spelling errors and those, coupled with broken links, can hurt the user experience. Siteimprove makes it easy to identify these problems and make corrections. It’s very motivating to see how we are making progress and improving the site every day.
Mary Rodgers
Director of Marketing Communications
8 months to 80% fewer accessibility issues
When Cuisinart began its partnership with Siteimprove, the company faced 45 major website issues. In eight months, the Cuisinart team cut that number down to nine. “We’ve made a ton of progress,” Rodgers said. “Once we solve our link-breaking challenges, we’ll be above benchmark.”
With Siteimprove, the team can track site errors and correct them more effectively than ever before. The partnership with Siteimprove has also had a profound impact on Cuisinart’s Google scores. And the natural integration of Siteimprove makes it easy to continue to make progress on website goals as the Cuisinart team conducts a data cleanse.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t even know what to do, if I couldn’t see all the mistakes we have on our site that Siteimprove shows me,” Rodgers said. “I’m afraid they wouldn’t even be on my mind. The visibility gives me more control and makes it easy to work on fixing issues.”
The Cuisinart’s site accessibility scores are quickly moving above benchmark, allowing the team to focus on using Siteimprove to maintain results and ensure new landing pages and branded gift guides incorporate accessibility best practices. The result is a better, more accessible web experience that maintains Cuisinart’s place as an industry leader.
