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Website
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VerticalBeauty
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EcommerceShopify
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ORLY Customer Story
4,000 reviews
Generated in first 6mo
14% of reviews
included UGC
2.5x ROAS
after Google Shopping Ads with Reviews
ORLY first came into being in 1975 when Founder Jeff Pink pioneered the French Manicure, a natural nail look designed to minimize actresses’ time between wardrobe changes. Now, ORLY is still a family-owned business and a leader in the professional nail care and nail color with top-selling treatments for every nail need and over 300 shades across multiple nail color formulations. Available in top beauty retail stores and online — and a favorite of consumers and professionals alike — anyone who’s gotten a manicure in the past 47 years has likely encountered an ORLY product.
ORLY wanted to grow its presence on Google and make its online store more discoverable to take its DTC channel to the next level. The brand partnered with elite Shopify agency GoldenWeb to audit its site and identify how it could improve its SEO efforts, which recommended syndicating reviews to Google Shopping. Unfortunately, achieving this goal was a challenge with Bazaarvoice, the brand’s original reviews provider. GoldenWeb suggested migrating to Okendo, allowing ORLY to not only display star ratings and UGC in Google Shopping search results, but also to dramatically enhance page load times and accelerate organic traffic.
Taking Control of ORLY’s DTC Channel
ORLY is well-known in stores like Ulta, Target, and Walmart. However, the brand has a high number of SKUs, which means it competes for valuable shelf space. Because it’s impossible for any retailer to sell all of its products, ORLY’s DTC channel compensates for what won’t fit in a retail environment, providing consumers access to hundreds of nail polish shades. The brand’s online store became particularly popular during the COVID-19 pandemic when people were shopping in stores less but still clamoring for new colors.
Growing a DTC channel necessitates social proof. If consumers can’t hold a product in their hands and appreciate its color, it helps to have photos and videos from other customers who have already tried it to guide their purchasing decisions. Tal Pink, VP of Business Development at ORLY, says:
“ORLY manufactures our own products at our Los Angeles Headquarters. We put a lot of effort into their formulas and test them vigorously for performance, so it’s essential to see customers’ genuine reactions. Anyone shopping online these days deserves to see social proof to determine if what they’re buying is of quality or if it’s hype. It’s where marketing meets reality.”
ORLY installed Bazaarvoice into its Shopify store to collect and display said social proof. When GoldenWeb conducted its SEO audit, though, the agency discovered that reviews weren’t loading quickly or visible from Google cache view. Tal notes that ORLY also wanted a platform capable of syndicating reviews to Google Shopping and with a more robust Shopify integration that granted the brand more control over UGC collection and display. The team explored different options before being impressed with Okendo’s more user-friendly interface, affordability, in-depth insight into ROI, and its enhanced functionality that lets ORLY take more control over its DTC channel.
Incentivizing Social Proof & Increasing Traffic with Google Shopping
With Okendo factored into ORLY’s tech stack, product pages load faster and index better with Google. Benjamin Golden, Founder at GoldenWeb, explains:
“We noticed immediately that Okendo accelerated load speeds and improved implementation of customer reviews in the Google Merchant Center. We also love that ORLY can now sync reviews and Google Shopping ads — which they run many of — because star ratings on Google listings can increase a brand’s click-through rate by as much as 30 to 50 percent.”
In ORLY’s case, reviews present in Google Shopping ads has earned them a 2.5x return on ad spend (ROAS) and kept their results steady despite drastically scaling their campaign.
To incentivize social proof, ORLY offers customers $5 off future orders if they leave testimonials with a photo or video. Tal says generating reviews this way works well: many customers are eager to show off their finished manicures, and the more images the brand can collect of different shades, the more it can help shoppers account for differences in screens, brightness, camera quality, and other factors.
Customers can also rate different Okendo Attributes that ORLY uses to collect product feedback and customer details, specifically application, quality, value, age, and customers’ level of expertise. Age, for instance, informs the brand which demographics prefer to shop online compared to in-store, while quality refers to how long shades last and how chip-proof they are.
“Ease of application is a critical piece of data; our wider curved brushes are designed to be DIY friendly, offering full coverage with a couple of strokes ,” Tal elaborates. “Customers’ perception of value is an essential metric, too — we include almost 20 percent more product in each bottle than our competitors, so we consider ourselves a brand that offers a lot of value in our pricing. As for expertise, some of our products require more technical ability and are targeted toward professional manicurists. We validate our efforts through these feedback channels.”
Upon migrating to Okendo, ORLY generated almost 4,000 reviews within six months, 14% of which include a photo or video. These pieces of social proof — as well as GoldenWeb’s SEO guidance and Okendo’s integration with Google Shopping — have helped ORLY’s DTC channel continue to grow and remain a major player in the nail care and cosmetics industries.
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