Search engine and conversion rate optimization is often times the lifeblood behind an E-commerce web property. The strategy must be very thorough with cross platform integration at the center of it all. It starts with the design of the website. Many organizations make the mistake of focusing 80% on the aesthetic appeals and only 20% or less on building a foundation for search engine optimization. For starters, when the backbone of the site isn’t just about visual appeal and has a big focus on no pages and links breaking out of the structure the entire site can help with indexing (Lyngbo, 2013). E-commerce sites are constantly updating their products and it is extremely important to ensure the web property is being crawled early by the spiders that search. With stock keeping unit’s being refreshed frequently this is critical to do this early on to make sure page links are remaining intact. Search engine optimization needs to be a part of planning phase to ensure subpages and different section templates have product pages to promote them with an internal linking structure (Lyngbo, 2013).
An organization that has plans to do a very effective job at maximizing their sales from an effective use of Google Analytics and search engine optimization strategy is the organic juice company Raw Generation.
Jessica Geier was a certified health coach by profession before she created Raw Generation in Middletown, New Jersey (Raw, 2016). Jessica brought her father Bill into the picture and established a company that makes losing weight and being healthy a simpler task. Raw Generation focuses on a weight loss system that uses organic juices, superfood, fruit and energy teas to help jumpstart a weight loss (Raw, 2016).
Bill and Jessica’s initial method of sales and lead generation was surrounding social media and it was not successful(Raw, 2016). Granted they were primarily going for a more organic approach trying to generate a buzz from clever posts, followers and shares. I do believe that targeted advertisements at this stage would be far more effective for them on social media channels. As we have discussed in prior lessons, Facebook has the ability to peg down into user demographics and psychographics that can be extremely valuable for positioning advertisements. Today this health crazed millennial generation can actually be painted with a pretty broad brush, but the channels in which to reach them are now far more targeted.
Jessica and Bill experienced tremendous sales growth going from $8,000 in May, 2013 to $96,000 in July, 2013 (Wang, 2014). They experienced this tremendous success through the use of deal sites like Groupon, Rue La La, and Gilt (Wang, 2014). Now they claim the majority of the sales and efforts come from repeat customers and positioning new sku’s to them. According to Jessica they are now in a mode of branching out to see additional methods of driving revenue and customer acquisition. An increased focus on Google Ad Words has made the top of that list. I mentioned earlier in this post that Raw Generation has plans to effectively utilize search engine optimization. Avenues like deal sites are typically cheap and come with the cost of expensive customer acquisition and heavily discounting products. This is a never ending cycle and it thins margins, while in contrast an effective search strategy coupled with an ad campaign is extremely useful for customer acquisition and long term strategy.
There was not much information on Raw Generation’s SEO activity, but to be fair it is difficult to find this information on any organization as it is all executed internally and typically not released. I was able to look at their backend code and woo rank to determine how effective their on page optimization efforts have been thus far.
Here are a few observations:
• There is no title tag.
• There is no meta description.
• They have H1-H6 tags in place, but have not done a good job in matching up the tags with desired search queries.
• There in-page links are very solid and there is no broken links.
• They have many of the basics down like www resolve, robots.txt, xml sitemap, long domain registration and an active blog.
• They also did an excellent job with a building a mobile optimized site. Unfortunately they couples the aesthetically pleasing site with an extremely slow load speed. They need to immediately go in an compress files so they are not turning away potential buyers due to a poor experience.
Over all they have a lot of work to do on page before they jump into the next phase of off page optimization. As I mentioned earlier in the post these are things that can be fixed, but it all works better if done prior to the site being built and indexed.
In conclusion, E-commerce search engine optimization demands a team handling it that is well versed across many disciplines. It is important to have an understanding of target market, many different marketing channels, a good understanding of analytic platforms, conversion rate optimization, web development experience, communication, usability and customer experience. The most optimal team members to work on a web property have a good understanding of how the businesses message is presented and received at large.
E-commerce optimization and conversion rate is never finished. A team that knows how to put data and metrics into executables helps drive an E-commerce site forward.
References:
1. Wong, J. (November, 2016) E-Commerce Examples | 5 Inspirational Case Studies for You. Retrieved from: http://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/e-commerce-examples-case-studies/
2. Wang, D. (May, 2014) How One Ecommerce Entrepreneur Explored New Sales Channels – And Took Revenues From $8K to $96K per Month. Retrieved from: https://www.shopify.com/blog/14154621-how-one-ecommerce-entrepreneur-explored-new-sales-channels-and-took-revenues-from-8k-to-96k-per-month?ssid=1025d04ab08274a0f9695eea6a2814&signup_code={signup_code}&ref=wbe
3. Lyngbo, T. (November, 2013) 17 SEO Best Practices That Could Double Your E-Commerce Sales. Retrieved from: http://searchengineland.com/best-practices-in-e-commerce-seo-176921
4. Raw Generation Official Page. Raw Generation. Accessed November 21st 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.rawgeneration.com/pages/it-s-a-family-affair
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