Overview
There is no doubt that Search Engine Optimisation is a powerful Digital Marketing tool. It assumes even higher importance for an eCommerce website. The reason is evident from the research by SEMRUSH which shows, about 40% of traffic to eCom websites comes from search engines. An user is mostly likely to search for a product & click on results to shop.
Challenge in Optimising for eCom website
Optimising an eCom website is way different from a regular website in following ways
- It involves deeper understanding of business goals, products, features, brand positioning
- It requires intense research of user behaviour, keywords used & competitor activities
- It demands skillful implementation of many powerful tools provided by Google specifically for eCom SEO
- Multiple SEO activities need to be carried out parallely to achieve results
Here is a case study of how we optimised the eCom website of a leading FMCG company that delivered results.
Initial Study of Client Requirements
Our client is a leading FMCG company who is into food & beverages. They wanted to reach a far & wider audience through their recently launched eCom website. They wanted to attract new customers in new geographies who search for similar products online. This can be achieved by increasing the Google search ranking that will result in increased online traffic & thus increased sales.
As a first step, we studied the product category, brand & researched on competitor analysis including what kind of keywords are getting optimised for similar range of products. This helped us to arrive at the initial list of keywords. Being an eCom store, we considered a healthy list of buying intent key phrases, brand / product related keywords based on search volume, and competition. We also considered the estimated timeline to bring the pages on top of search engines for particular keywords. After a few iterations, we optimised a list of the first set of keywords which are likely to give maximum results in the shortest time span.
Mapping Keywords to the Web Pages
It is important that an eCom site’s structure & architecture is properly aligned for Search Engine Optimisation. The necessary tweaks on category / sub-category / product naming conventions are ensured with neat & easy navigation for better user experience. The chosen keywords were mapped to various web pages & the on-page optimisation was completed.
Enhanced eCommerce Setup
We followed this up with setting up Enhanced Google Analytics for Ecommerce tracking for the eCom store. This feature provides a wealth of data points that allow marketers to analyse the performance & align their activities to improve conversions.
Enhanced eCommerce tracking allows to break down the entire pipeline process events including product impression, views, add to cart, shipment, placing of order etc.
Steps followed enable Enhanced Google Analytics for Ecommerce
- Implemented Universal Analytics on the site
2. Configured gtag.js to use enhanced ecommerce
3. Turned on Enhanced Ecommerce for individual views
Google Tag Manager
The gtm.js thus generated are inserted into the pages of the website. This small piece of JavaScript and non-JaaScript code enables Tag Manager to fire tags at each stage of the eCom pipeline process. Our developer pastes this code across the category, sub-category, product search, selection, add to cart, payment, result pages. The careful implementation at this stage results in quality reports.
The following screenshots show the various reports & metrics that resulted out of enabling the eCom Setup.
eCommerce Dashboard
Ecommerce Dashboard gives a macro view of the performance of eCom website.
Ecommerce Shopping Behaviour
The above report shows the number of sessions at each stage of the purchase funnel ie Sessions with Product Views, Add to Cart, Check-Out, Transactions. Along with this, it also shows drops at various stages like No Shopping Activity, No Cart Addition, Cart Abandonment, Check-Out Abandonment. This report shows the weaker links in the funnel that needs fixing for better conversion.
Ecommerce Checkout Behaviour
The checkout-funnel shows you how many users moved from to Check-Out stage & the dropoff. It also shows the data for New Visitors & Returning Visitors, which helps to work out specific campaigns / messages to increase the conversions.
Ecommerce Product Performance
This report gives you insights on how your product is performing from two different perspectives: summary and shopping behavior.
Ecommerce Product list Performance
This allows you to see and compare how your product lists are performing on your site using the following metrics; product list views, product clicks and product list CTR.
Ecommerce Sales Performance
In the sales report you can analyze sales through two different dimensions. Transaction (date,time, traction ID) or date (cumulative transaction data by date). The metrics include, Revenue, Tax, Shipping (Total charges for Ecommerce transactions), Refund Amount, and Quantity (number of units sold).
Other Ecommerce SEO activities we do after implementing Enhanced ecom Analytics.
Product Featured Listing
We optimised the category landing pages by improving the content quality that matches the keywords ( key phrases ) to list on Google Features Listing.
Contact Snippet
We took efforts to list on the high trust domains to enable visibility on features snippets page.
Google Product Shopping List
We created a new Google Merchant Center account & listed all our products into Google shopping list to drive organic leads.
Questions & Answers on Google
We interacted with customers, live on Google Question & Answers, in coordination with client, guiding them to make purchase decisions.
Reviews and Ratings Snippets for Products
We also carried out Individual Product Schema implementation, Star Rating Snippets implementation for higher visibility on organic traffic.
The Results
With continuous monitoring & fine-tuning of SEO efforts, we were able to achieve following results in a period of 4 months for our client.
- 4 fold increase in organic traffic
- 2 fold increase in sales
- Top search results on 20 + keywords
- Reduction in Exit Rate by 40% & increase in Conversion Rate by 25%
SEO for eCommerce websites is both challenging as well as interesting. At Pixel Studios, we savor challenges that need a set of divergent team members to bring business results. Read more case studies of how we are solving our client’s challenges or reach us if you have one.
