Inflow Case Studies Reviving eCommerce Site Performance through Technical SEO: A Case Study on TotalHomeSupply.com

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	Reviving eCommerce Site Performance through Technical SEO: A Case Study on TotalHomeSupply.com Inflow

Reviving eCommerce Site Performance through Technical SEO: A Case Study on TotalHomeSupply.com

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Technology Category	Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Applicable Functions	Quality Assurance
Use Cases	Traffic Monitoring Transportation Simulation
Services	Testing & Certification
Challenge	TotalHomeSupply.com (THS), an eCommerce website selling products for homes and businesses, was facing significant challenges with their eCommerce platform, Volusion. As their inventory grew and the site’s customization needs increased, they required a more robust enterprise solution. They decided to migrate to Mozu, a more advanced version of Volusion. However, post-migration, THS experienced a significant drop in organic traffic and transactions. Organic traffic, which historically made up more than 65 percent of visits and more than 40 percent of all conversions, dropped nearly 35 percent. Transactions were down 21 percent. Although the conversion rate improved by 24 percent, the overall revenue was down by 7 percent. Further analysis revealed that traffic to category pages was down by 25 percent and product page traffic was down by more than 50 percent. The migration coincided with Google's rollout of Panda 4.2, which further complicated the situation. Read More
About Customer	TotalHomeSupply.com (THS) is an eCommerce website that offers a wide range of products for homes and businesses. Their inventory includes air conditioners, heaters, fireplaces, and appliances. Initially, they were using Volusion as their eCommerce and shopping cart platform, which was a suitable solution for their business size. However, as their inventory expanded and the need for site customization increased, they required a more advanced enterprise solution. This led them to migrate to Mozu, a more robust version of the Volusion platform they were already using. Despite the initial post-migration challenges, THS was committed to improving their site's performance and enhancing their customer's shopping experience. Read More
Solution	To address the issues, THS identified and fixed technical flaws within the Mozu platform that were preventing the site from being indexed efficiently. The biggest issue was with category page pagination, which required executing JavaScript and was not being crawled by Google. THS worked with Mozu to update the JavaScript-loaded pagination URLs to static pagination URLs and added a “NOINDEX” rule to their robots.txt file. This allowed product pages to get crawled easier and kept the paginated URLs out of the index. In addition to fixing technical issues, THS also focused on improving content quality. They pruned more than 100 category pages and over 1,000 product pages that had low-quality content. They improved the keyword targeting and content quality for the remaining category pages and rewrote product page copy for most of the remaining product pages. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

Applicable Functions

Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Traffic Monitoring

Transportation Simulation

Services

Testing & Certification

Challenge

TotalHomeSupply.com (THS), an eCommerce website selling products for homes and businesses, was facing significant challenges with their eCommerce platform, Volusion. As their inventory grew and the site’s customization needs increased, they required a more robust enterprise solution. They decided to migrate to Mozu, a more advanced version of Volusion. However, post-migration, THS experienced a significant drop in organic traffic and transactions. Organic traffic, which historically made up more than 65 percent of visits and more than 40 percent of all conversions, dropped nearly 35 percent. Transactions were down 21 percent. Although the conversion rate improved by 24 percent, the overall revenue was down by 7 percent. Further analysis revealed that traffic to category pages was down by 25 percent and product page traffic was down by more than 50 percent. The migration coincided with Google's rollout of Panda 4.2, which further complicated the situation.

About Customer

TotalHomeSupply.com (THS) is an eCommerce website that offers a wide range of products for homes and businesses. Their inventory includes air conditioners, heaters, fireplaces, and appliances. Initially, they were using Volusion as their eCommerce and shopping cart platform, which was a suitable solution for their business size. However, as their inventory expanded and the need for site customization increased, they required a more advanced enterprise solution. This led them to migrate to Mozu, a more robust version of the Volusion platform they were already using. Despite the initial post-migration challenges, THS was committed to improving their site's performance and enhancing their customer's shopping experience.

Solution

To address the issues, THS identified and fixed technical flaws within the Mozu platform that were preventing the site from being indexed efficiently. The biggest issue was with category page pagination, which required executing JavaScript and was not being crawled by Google. THS worked with Mozu to update the JavaScript-loaded pagination URLs to static pagination URLs and added a “NOINDEX” rule to their robots.txt file. This allowed product pages to get crawled easier and kept the paginated URLs out of the index. In addition to fixing technical issues, THS also focused on improving content quality. They pruned more than 100 category pages and over 1,000 product pages that had low-quality content. They improved the keyword targeting and content quality for the remaining category pages and rewrote product page copy for most of the remaining product pages.

Impact #1	The changes implemented by THS not only resulted in increased quantity of traffic but also improved the quality of traffic. The technical fixes and content quality improvements allowed the site to be indexed more efficiently, leading to a significant increase in organic traffic. The pruning of low-quality content pages and the enhancement of remaining pages with better keyword targeting and content quality also contributed to the increase in organic traffic. Moreover, these efforts resulted in a substantial increase in revenue from organic traffic. Despite the initial post-migration challenges, THS managed to turn a potentially devastating situation into a significant win, demonstrating the power of technical SEO in enhancing eCommerce site performance.

Impact #1

The changes implemented by THS not only resulted in increased quantity of traffic but also improved the quality of traffic. The technical fixes and content quality improvements allowed the site to be indexed more efficiently, leading to a significant increase in organic traffic. The pruning of low-quality content pages and the enhancement of remaining pages with better keyword targeting and content quality also contributed to the increase in organic traffic. Moreover, these efforts resulted in a substantial increase in revenue from organic traffic. Despite the initial post-migration challenges, THS managed to turn a potentially devastating situation into a significant win, demonstrating the power of technical SEO in enhancing eCommerce site performance.

Benefit #1	Organic traffic increased to over 30,000 visits in July, almost double the amount from March, and over 5,000 visits more than the average monthly traffic pre-launch.
Benefit #2	Revenue from Organic traffic in July 2016 was double the revenue generated in July 2015.
Benefit #3	Post-optimization, the site's revenue started bouncing back in Q2 of 2016, with revenue in July 2016 being more than double that of July 2015 (or any other month in 2015).

Benefit #1

Organic traffic increased to over 30,000 visits in July, almost double the amount from March, and over 5,000 visits more than the average monthly traffic pre-launch.

Benefit #2

Revenue from Organic traffic in July 2016 was double the revenue generated in July 2015.

Benefit #3

Post-optimization, the site's revenue started bouncing back in Q2 of 2016, with revenue in July 2016 being more than double that of July 2015 (or any other month in 2015).

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Overview

Reviving eCommerce Site Performance through Technical SEO: A Case Study on TotalHomeSupply.com

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit