How FedEx increased 82% the revenue through interactive content

The company

The FedEx Small Business Center is a resource that guides entrepreneurs through the complex process of starting a small business and helping them navigate the shipping world. This also includes a wealth of information about freight shipping for both national and global markets. However, until recently, the site was extremely text-heavy, with over 900 static pages that could often be difficult to navigate. So, with efforts to enhance the site, Marketing Specialist Advisor Danny Kirkman, along with FedEx Freight Content Lead Brian Smith wanted to create an interactive experience to walk business owners through the often-complicated process of freight classification and shipping.

“We’ve all been to enough seminars and conventions to know that interactive is the way online communication is going,” Kirkman says. “We wanted to be ahead of the game and use interactive content to make shipping easy and engaging.”

Getting started

Before building interactive tools into their web experience, the FedEx Small Business Center team first looked to streamline the “Getting Started Online” section of their eCommerce tab by auditing all of its existing content. The site took all existing pages of eCommerce material and broke it into five parts, which covered the process of starting a small business from start to finish. One of the most critical steps in evolving the site toward interactive content was revitalizing the seven-year-old Freight Central site and incorporating it into the Small Business Center, a process that involved repurposing content into interactive solutions with the help of Ion interactive.

Education made easy

In conjunction with Ion interactive, the FedEx Small Business Center team built six experiences to help gamify, and also simplify, the freight shipping process for users.

• The Freight 101 tool educates customers about the shipping process by walking them through a step-by-step guide for packing and shipping heavy freight as well as leading users through pricing guides and helping them open shipping accounts.
• The LTL Freight Classification Tool uses interactive icons to easily guide SMB owners through the complex process of estimating the freight class of their cargo and to introduce product solutions.
• Beginning Your Export Journey is an interactive assessment that helps SMB owners self-identify pain points in their international shipping models and offers customized solutions for small businesses looking to ship outside the US.
• Customs Compliance Made Easy educates SMBs with an eye toward international markets on regulations and even helps them prepare necessary documents for international shipping.
• The FedEx Freight box page tools help customers get information about FedEx Freight box, how to get signed up and information about zone pricing for their freight boxes with the help of a zip-to-zip calculator along with color coded maps. This has been the most successful of FedEx Small Business Center’s interactive solutions, and in fact, the tool has become the third most-trafficked page on the site, not to mention reaching the top of SEO rankings within a few weeks of launch.

“Switching to interactive experiences has simplified the customer education process,” Kirkman says. “The goal for myself and project partner Josh Rosa was to make this better for the customer. It’s more interesting now. It gets them engaged.”

Top ranking results

As a matter of fact, FedEx Small Business Center’s evolution of the buyer’s journey is garnering attention not just from customers, but from the marketing world as well. The Huffington Post named FedEx Small Business Center one of the “10 Top Small Business Blogs” of 2016.

Users are also flocking to the new site in droves. Kirkman says that since June, The Freight Box experience alone has generated 136,000 visits and showed a 151% increase of Freight Box shipments over the previous six months before the page existed. The service has also seen an 86% average growth in month over month volume as well as an 82% average increase in month over month revenue. That’s a lot of freight!

“We’re starting to make waves and get attention,” Kirkman says. “Thanks to upper management support, vision and resources, we’re now ahead of the curve. Since we’ve launched, we’ve been approached by other companies outside the transportation industry who want to know how we did it.”