Case Study · eCommerce & Digital Growth
RectorSeal sold across 126 brands but its digital experience was built for the company, not the customer. Over three years I rebuilt how people found, understood, and bought its products, growing digital revenue from $7M to more than $50M.
The results
The challenge
When I arrived, eCommerce adoption was low and conversion sat near half a percent. Customers could not search the way they actually shopped. To find a product they had to know its exact SKU or the precise name RectorSeal used for it internally.
The site was full of technical jargon. The category taxonomy mirrored the structure of the ERP rather than the way a customer would browse, filter, and search. Product and email content talked about what interested the company, not what mattered to the buyer, so engagement and conversion stayed flat.
There was no value proposition anywhere. Nothing told a contractor why a product was worth buying, how it saved time, made installation easier, or beat the competition. The digital experience was a catalog, not a reason to buy.
The approach
I integrated Algolia so search became elastic and forgiving. Customers could find products the natural way they searched, instead of needing the exact SKU or internal product name. I also rebuilt the taxonomy and filters around how customers browse, not how the ERP was organized.
I restructured each page so the information customers need first, SKU, inventory, and price, appears first. Below that I added richer descriptions framed around benefits, clear value proposition messaging on why each brand is different and easier to install, and a closing case for why to buy from RectorSeal. Information structure, the words themselves, and the visual design all worked together to communicate value.
Rather than chasing traffic the old way, I created content that gave real value to the end user. That generated organic demand among the professionals who actually use the products, demand that then flowed through to the wholesalers. Over three years the mix flipped: direct traffic fell from roughly 80 percent to organic search driving close to 80 percent of arrivals.
I interviewed customers and customer service to learn what data wholesalers needed and how they wanted to see it, then rebuilt the procurement, invoicing, billing, and account management dashboards around that feedback. Engagement with the site rose sharply as a result.
I built the data and automation infrastructure that did not exist before, collecting customer and purchase data for the first time and using it in HubSpot to power automated recommendations. Working with other teams, I created the sales logic that looks at what a wholesaler already buys and recommends the next product in the basket. The projected revenue from this engine over three years was $181M.
The through line: I treat a digital experience as revenue infrastructure. Every change, from search to content to automation, was designed to make it easier for customers to find value and act on it.