Condoms UK - Case Study

The story surrounding the UKs longest established internet-based condom retailer and how it doubled sales in just two months, thanks to Search Laboratory.

Background

Condoms Direct (www.condomsdirect.co.uk ) is an internet-only retailer that approached us to help them capture more of their on line market. The company had been trading on line since 1996. In recent years the orders had not increased and in the last year they had actually decreased.

The company put the decline down to increased price competition on line and an influx of new retailers, mainly due to the ease of setting up an on line store.
The company was using a number of search marketing techniques already including pay per click but did not have a measure of the success rate.

At Search Laboratory, we first set out to prove whether the company’s assumptions about the market were correct.

The Analysis

We instantly installed analytics tracking software on the site, and in parallel set about analysing the performance of the site from the log files, order history files and all on line third party statistics available.

The primary aim of the analysis is to determine the company’s position in the market relative to competitors and to prove or disprove any assumptions about performance. In this case the analysis phase looked at the following:

• Traffic trends of this site
• Link analysis and market position
• Competitor positions and traffic rank
• Search engine positioning
• Price sensitivity
• Order analysis (number of orders, trends of orders, repeat order behaviour, value and profit on orders)
• Analysis of potential foreign markets (primarily French and German for this site)

The orders were indeed in decline

Analysis of the traffic showed the picture above with a stagnant looking picture with traffic diminishing slightly over time.

The position of the company against its competitors showed that it was drifting in the mid point of all sites for which third party data was available. It was actually tenth out of eighteen identified sites.

The analysis of links and search engine positioning showed many of the reasons for the performance. The data and a price comparison with other competitors showed that price was not statistically the reason for the site’s performance.

Recommendations

Search Laboratory provided a set of recommendations including:

• Pay Per Click campaigns on selected search engines to be fully managed and monitored
• Minor web site changes to improve search engine optimization.
• Landing page optimization to increase conversion rates.
• Link campaign management by the client using training and documentation from Search Laboratory.
• Full tracking and monitoring of all future orders to identify the campaigns that are working.
• A multilingual website rollout plan based on competitive information gathered on the French and German markets.

A full report was provided to the client and the recommendations were adopted by the client in their entirety

The Results

Search Laboratory started the optimization and PPC work at the point marked on the graph below

:

Analytics were installed and following some minor changes to landing pages and the site generally, the PPC campaign management began.

Also, in preparation for the long term sustainable improvements, the client received training on link generation. Some pages were also amended and content added to enable more effective natural search based on an analysis of actual searched terms in the client’s industry.

Some key performance increases were measured as follows:

• More Orders
  The number of orders doubled in the first two months.
• Visibility of Reporting
  All aspects of the site are analysed and tracked. The source of every order is known, along with its cost to acquire.
• Market Position
  In the first month the client’s web site climbed six places in the rankings when measured against its competitors and came in fourth place out of eighteen .
• All improvements made with no lowering of selling prices.

Conclusion

The client’s web site showed significant improvements, even in the first two months. All keywords are managed using Search Laboratory’s proven methodology and systems meaning that while the client is spending the same on PPC as previously, the keywords used and the management is much more effective.

For more information and to find out how search Laboratory can increase your on line performance, please contact us now .