Are Mont Blanc the king of pens? 

Probably.

I mean, I can’t think of many other luxury pen brands. Can you?

With their recent web redesign, and new boutique opened in the middle of Belfast last month – I wanted to dive into the Mont Blanc website and see how they don’t just sell pens, but sell them with hefty price tags.

As always, I’ll dive into their Site, Serach and Social and wrap up with anything else I can see that’s interesting.

Will Mont Blanc be as Ink-credible as I imagine?! (Sorry…)

Super Site!

It’s unconventional, especially on desktop, but I like it. 

Firstly, the imagery is super high quality, and the site is very quick and suitably minimal for a big boy brand. It does give off the ‘I’m expensive’ vibe straight away. 

If nothing else, that highlights the importance of good imagery on your store, replace that clock face above with a shoddy, unprofessional image and you’ve immediately made a crap first impression and put your conversions at risk. 

The logo is off centre which is odd, and the navigation works as a pull in from the left hand side when you hover over – ‘shop’. Does it feel right to you? Test it. 

(Almost) Product Page Perfection

Superb. I needed to spend some time here. 

There’s obviously a hell of a lot of web development gone into this, it shows. This sort of custom online shopping experience is what really screams luxury. You can tell it’s not a run of the mill Shopify Store.

It’s very product heavy, the images are very slick, and I love how you can use the mouse to rotate. The ‘nib guide’ and the ‘size guide’ are there to help me as a consumer make my decision when buying, also very important. 

My favourite feature is that when you scroll down below the fold, the ‘add to bag’ becomes sticky almost as if to say, ‘don’t forget to buy me’. Constantly reminding the customer what the next action is. Lovely. 

Recommendation: My only criticism, and it is nit picking. Is that the returns and refunds information is hidden away in a page in the footer. 

Maybe the clever people at Mont Blanc have a reason for hiding this, but I’d include a quick ‘14 day return policy’ next to the ‘Free shipping on over £25’.

For these prices, returns might be a genuine customer concern. As a rule of thumb, you never want your customers to work harder than they have to. I had to go digging about on for the returns information. Bit annoying. turns out aI can return it, and they use UPS which is good. Imagine if Mont Blanc used Hermes.

And while I’m on – if I’m going to drop ~£500+ on a pen, I’m not being funny, I want to try it first. I ain’t that rich. So if I can’t get to the new store, I need those returns! Not everyone will be like me, I have a friend who bought a car online without test driving it… So there’s definitely a shift occurring there.

Mont Blanc’s Search Marketing

It’s doing its job….

We all know that search captures demand, it doesn’t generate it. The job of search here is to grab all of those people who are kinda thinking about buying a Monty, but aren’t fully convinced yet.

A quick look at SEMRush shows us: 

• Authority Score – 67
• Organic Search Traffic – 1.8M
• Paid Traffic – 68.5K
• Backlinks – 1.3 M

Good stats, tbf! And unsurprisingly, it’s nice to see the branded keyword ‘mont blanc’ have incredibly high volume at 49,500. That’s what hundreds of years of marketing will do for you.

Keyword: Luxury Pen

You could probably argue then, that ‘luxury pen’ is a useless keyword…

…or you could realise that that Mont Blanc want the benefit of premium positioning. Think ‘luxury pen’, think ‘mont blanc’.

There are some Google Ads people that won’t really like this one, opting to go for direct conversions instead, but I’m a fan.

Quick side note:

When searching I found a truly revolting pen for £68,000! Sixty eight thousand. The product page ain’t even that good! We’re playing a fascinating game here.

Keyword: Mont Blanc Fountain

And so, the hardest question in Ecommerce; Mont Blanc, your products are readily available from other retailers – why should I buy it from you directly?!

In Ecommerce, there is not enough thought going into that question. 

Could it be that if you buy directly, you get direct access to the official aftersales team? Are the official Mont Blanc boxes worth something? Could I get entered into a draw to win a free Mont Blanc? 

I don’t care what it is, just give me something. 

Goldsmiths, for example, offer a 0% finance over 4 months payment option. If spreading the payments is important to the customer, you can guarantee that the customer will go for the better deal for them on Goldsmiths. 

Can you see the problem here?

Recommendation: WHY SHOULD I BUY FROM YOU, MONT BLANC? NO, IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT, I NEED MORE.

Should Mont Blanc should have a split payments option on their site? Maybe. 

You’d have to weigh up the anticipated conversion rate increase, with the cost and operational impact of providing. There may even be a branding implication to this… Perhaps it’s a bigger question to answer, remember this is just my two cents 😉 

A Quick Look at Social 

Because you can’t not look at social…

Mont Blanc’s brand shows on FB and Insta too, both platforms boasting 1.7M followers. There’s also a healthy scattering of Paid Social Ads on their FB Ad library too. But I think you’ll agree these aren’t working too hard. 

A Mont Blanc Tik Tok Page exists and is verified, but there’s nothing there yet. What’s the play here? User content with Mont Blanc seems to be all about fragrances – so maybe that’s the way to go? 

Justifying A Chunky Price Point

The most important thing for Mont Blanc to do with this website, is to justify the chunk price point. And classically, Mont Blanc don’t underestimate the power of storytelling. Let me point you to the Writing Instrument Craftsmanship page, and the Fine Watching page. 

And to quote some of the copy directly: 

It takes 35 skilled steps to craft a nib and an additional 70 steps to assemble and test a Montblanc fountain pen until it is deemed ready to become yours. Each Montblanc nib is handcrafted from either 14K or 18K gold. Under the pressure of up to 18 tons, the nib’s silhouette is stamped out and then carefully pressed into shape. 

The pages are full of this type of copy. Can you see how specific and detailed it all is?

‘Under the pressure of up to 18 tons’ could easily be written as ‘pressure testing’. The specificity reminded me of the David Ogilvy classic.

It might be worth you looking at your existing copy, and asking yourself, how can we make this more specific?

Wrapping up & Final Recommendation

Stacked Marketer reports that Montblanc opened a new boutique in Belfast, UK, last month, in the latest example of the company’s store strategy.

“The space is rooted in providing an experience”, apparently. And this is definitely the way retail needs to go. If I’m going to get myself into a busy town centre, in a crowded area, struggle to find a parking space, etc. The whole experience has to be worth it.

How to blend retail and digital? Well, for Mont Blanc, I’m thinking a quiz.

Hear me out, an interactive quiz which ‘helped find the perfect pen for me’, continues with the story how every MB is handcrafted and made with care. The quiz could then capture my email address, and encourage me to visit for the in store and testing experience.

And you know what, my girlfriend is Northern Irish, and I’ll be in Belfast soon. The locations won’t be great for all consumers, but this blend would definitely take me from Awareness, and into Consideration.

For a mahhooosive brand like Monty, that’s definitely worth thinking about.