In 2005, Rob Conley was at an entrepreneurs’ conference when he was given a handful of vanilla beans by an importer. As a college student who loved to cook with exotic flavors, he was instantly hooked by the unique aroma, texture, and appearance of the beans.
Upon discovery the price — up to $12 for a single bean at the grocery store — he decided to create his own website to provide consumers with a source of quality, affordable vanilla beans. Conley quickly sold the 40 beans he was given and made enough money to buy 500 more.
Today, he’s the founder of two successful websites, Beanilla.com and SpiceJungle.com. Beanilla is the largest online retailer of premium grade vanilla beans in the world, importing beans from seven different countries. Beanilla’s sister website, Spice Jungle, goes beyond vanilla beans and sells everything from coffee to kitchenware.
In the food & beverage industry, product and brand discovery is everything. Especially for brands like Conley’s, which sell hard-to-find products to a very specific type of consumer, which are traditionally bought offline.
“SEO was very important to me. My last reviews solution was limiting: I was getting customer reviews but they didn’t help my position on Google,” Conley explains. As a result, Conley was looking for a solution with a holistic SEO approach that would bump up Beanilla on Google SERPs.
As a fast-growing, direct-to-consumer brand, another concern was lack of resources and a lean team. “Once we got big, I realized that moderating and approving reviews would become a full-time job.” Conley wanted a solution that would eliminate the workload from his staff.
Conley chose Yotpo after surveying his options – their partnership with Google and ability to showcase star ratings in Rich Snippets and Product Listing Ads gave Beanilla the best change at getting recognized by Google.” It also seemed like “Yotpo’s detailed and automated moderation settings” would help address Conley’s staffing concern and “make managing reviews easy.”
Another important and underrated feature that sold Conley was Yotpo’s grouping of reviews by product across SKUs. “When selling vanilla extract, I can sell it in five different sizes, and positive reviews would be applied to each size.”
