Annie Selke

Annie Selke Outranks Goliaths with Instant Page Loads

Annie Selke, a leading home and décor retailer, introduced its first cotton woven rug over 15 years ago and has slowly evolved to become a mega-retailer. While Annie Selke never intended to launch a brand under her name, the fast-growing customer base of her two existing brands (Pine Cone Hill and Dash & Albert) drove her to unite them under the Annie Selke umbrella. Since then, the retailer has expanded its customer base on a global scale, selling its products in more than 3,000 physical locations nationwide with distribution available in Europe, Australia, and Canada.

Annie Selke has adapted to the changing technological landscape, launching a React-based sub-second eCommerce progressive web app (PWA) on Edgio and AWS. Its instant website boosted organic traffic by 32% and lifted revenue by 13% boost to conversions. Moreover, although the home and décor retailer’s annual revenue is less than 10% that of Amazon, it outranks the eCommerce giant in SEO, as well as other multi-billion dollar competitors, including Williams-Sonoma, Wayfair, and Overstock for various key phrases.

Since Google’s ‘Speed Update’ rolled out in early 2019, fast-loading websites have been ranked higher than slower-loading websites. Annie Selke is a shining example of a website rising in the ranks by following the search giant's lead and investing in website speed.

Before Annie Selke launched its instant eCommerce PWA on Edgio, it would only appear far below the fold on Google’s SERP, if it even made the first page. This became detrimental for the home and decor retailer, considering that the average eCommerce company sees a large share of its traffic and revenue from organic and paid searches. Today, the retailer outranks its multi-billion dollar competitors, boosting overall organic traffic by 32% and mobile organic traffic by 40.41%.

Annie Selke was able to outrank industry leaders with much larger teams and budgets dedicated to SEO with its sub-second website. The average first-page loads reduced from several seconds to 0.74s across channels, with an average of 300ms first-loads from search, on Edgio. Once onsite, customers browse through the pages at lightning speeds, with half of the website load in under half a second.