Specialty foods cataloger/manufacturer Stonewall Kitchen relaunched its Web site last month in an effort to increase visitor-to-buyer conversion rates.

E-commerce manager Mark Marquis said StonewallKitchen.com receives about 35,000 unique visitors per week, but he estimated about 55% to 60% of all Web orders are from people actually ordering out of the current print catalog.

The site, built with the help of Colchester, VT-based C2, is the first to use Microsoft's new Commerce Server platform, noted company co-founder Jim Stott. Online sales currently represent about an eighth of the company's overall business. Wholesale is about 50%, while catalog and retail account for the remainder. About 500 products are sold in the catalog, including Stonewall Kitchen's own jams, mustards, sauces and syrups, as well as high-end kitchenware and utensils.

Unique visitors have increased by 300% in the last year, much due to links on 400 sites and e-newsletters through an affiliate program with LinkShare. Search engine optimization has also helped boost visits. Marquis noted that keywords like jam — one of the catalog's core products — don't work, because “jam” is more likely to pull up a list of rock bands. Listings like “gourmet gift basket” are much more successful.

Over the last year, Marquis said the company has cleaned up the look of the 2-year-old site to better reflect the brand. The new design, which incorporates photography shot exclusively for the Web, is closer to the look of the company's print catalog.

A real-time online inventory management system was also put in place, as was a campaign management system to better analyze site traffic. Visitors are now tracked by the search engine keyword that linked them to the site, as well as their preferences and shopping patterns.

The average order from the catalog is $64, compared with $69 online, said Marquis. E-mail marketing is done regularly to an e-house file of about 22,000 names, which represents about 15% of the overall house file.

The company will mail 1.3 million copies of its 56-page print catalog this holiday season. The catalog first rolled out in the fourth quarter of 1999, with a 150,000-piece mailing of a 28-page book. All catalog design is done in house; the company sends out 12 different catalogs each year as part of four different major creative efforts, said co-founder Jonathan King.

This summer, inbound call center operations were outsourced to Call Tech, Columbus, OH. Sales operations manager Andrea M. Hall noted that while Stonewall was nervous about outsourcing, it was the most feasible option since the company forecast it would need 60 to 70 customer service reps on the phones this holiday season, a drastic leap compared with last year's peak of 35 and the four who did the job when the catalog was first issued in 1999. Call volume is up 26% overall this year.

Stonewall Kitchen got its start in 1991 when Stott and King began selling homemade preserves and plants in a local farmers' market. Today the company uses over 1 million pounds of pure cane sugar and 500,000 pounds of fruit annually.