How Vitacost empowers a fully digital customer experience with Quantum Metric.

Here’s a look at the key results Vitacost achieved by using Quantum Metric.

• Empathize with Vitacost customers and ensure that the digital shopping experience is accessible for all and easy-to-use
• Get customer data and insights in real-time by embracing tools like heatmaps to better understand how customers navigated through the product.
• Quantify the business impact of potential business opportunities, so that the team could prioritize building features that would most benefit the business’s bottom line.

“Quantum Metric has allowed us to create an efficient workflow in identifying areas of opportunity…that show what the customer is experiencing in real time.” – Guy Burgstahler, General Manager of Vitacost

Vitacost is an eCommerce company that sells vitamins, supplements, and organic grocery products to consumers. In 2014, the company was acquired by Kroger. Even after the acquisition, the company maintained its own mission of enabling consumers to buy products tailored to a healthier lifestyle, right from their own devices.

At Quantum Metric’s annual LEAP conference, Elissa Quinby, Senior Director of Retail Marketing at Quantum Metric, spoke with Guy Burgstahler, General Manager of Vitacost. The two discussed how Quantum Metric has enabled Vitacost to better monitor and improve the customer experience on Vitacost’s website. 

Here’s a look at what they discussed.

Personalizing the customer experience.

Even though Vitacost is a fully eCommerce business, the retailer cares deeply about building a personalized, standout customer experience. They want their customers to feel seen and supported, almost as if they were shopping in-person.

With Quantum Metric’s help, the Vitacost team empathizes with their customers and ensures that the digital shopping experience is accessible and easy-to-use.

Customer support.

Vitacost maintains a fully integrated customer service department. In addition to offering customer support via phone, Vitacost has built additional tools such as a live chat function to ensure customers can always get the individual support they need. 

Offering personalized recommendations.

As an eCommerce business, Vitacost also has the opportunity to tailor the shopping experience based on the customer’s previous searches and purchases. The content and recommendations Vitacost provides to each customer is always relevant to the individual experience, which enables them to develop deeper relationships with their customer base.

Optimizing for each unique device type.

Quantum Metric also helps Vitacost personalize the experience for customers based on their device, whether it’s Mac or PC. As Burgstahler notes, “Vitacost isolates by device to understand and optimize what is working for each individual device and what isn’t.”

If something is affecting PC users but not Mac users, for instance, Vitacost can more quickly identify and address the problem.

How Vitacost uses Quantum Metric to measure the customer experience.

Before Quantum Metric, Vitacost measured the customer experience manually, which was time consuming. 

After integrating Quantum Metric, the team was able to get customer data and insights in real-time. They embraced tools like heatmaps to better understand how customers navigated through the product. Quantum Metric also enabled them to quantify the business impact of potential business opportunities, so that the team could prioritize building features that would most benefit the business’s bottom line.

“Quantum Metric allows us to prioritize and monetize the various conversion barriers we have so that we can optimize with greater proficiency.” –Guy Burgstahler

As of now, Vitacost uses Quantum Metric primarily to monitor the desktop experience, but they hope to start monitoring all devices soon, including mobile. 

Quantum Metric as a seamless transition.

Vitacost has a rigorous testing process in place for building and launching new products or marketing strategies. The team works cross-functionally with a set roadmap to ensure that all teams align around the customers’ needs. 

As Burgstahler notes, “Quantum Metric was engaged and accessible from the start of integration.” Analysts, product managers, marketers, and other cross-functional experts from both companies came together to ensure that Vitacost was getting as much value from the platform as possible. 

Quantum Metric helps Vitacost decide where to test and what to test, as well as assess which features will lead to the best business outcomes. Once they have this information in hand, they implement their findings in the product, and continuously monitor and improve the customer experience, from small bug fixes to major design improvements. 

Now, the retailer is continuously discovering new and surprising ways to improve the customer experience with Quantum Metric.

Doubling down on the Vitacost mission and vision. 

When Vitacost was acquired by Kroger in 2014, Vitacost started losing focus. As Burgstahler put it, “When we were acquired, we went through a hiccup, by expanding our categories too broadly.” 

The expansion of products went beyond Vitacost’s core values of wellness, and was overshadowed by too many products. Customers were unhappy, and business started to decline.

Quantum Metric helped Vitacost develop a process that reinforced their core values of “happiness and health.” 

In 2019, they turned the business around by focusing on enhancing their tech stack, marketing strategy, and merchandise offerings. Quantum Metric helped them develop each of these areas by helping the team to understand what products customers wanted or needed most. This refocus saw success in Q3 and Q4 with new customer acquisition and retention. Key metrics slowly stabilized and then started to rise, which left Vitacost prepared for the sudden shift to digital-first brought on by the pandemic. 

The COVID pandemic allowed for a refocusing of Vitacost’s core values of health and wellness, as people were keenly aware of their well-being in such an unprecedented time. The nation’s shift to “wellness revolution,” as Burgstahler put it, has bolstered Vitacost’s business and key mission. 

In choosing to emphasize health and wellness, Vitacost returned to their roots and prepared themselves for a new revolution on well-being.