I'm Thinking... ThinkGeek

-

ThinkGeek
(Geeknet, Inc., 2018)

Geeks are notoriously collectors and ThinkGeek is the go-to website for all geeky collector items. ThinkGeek prides itself “with creating and sharing unique and authentic product experiences that stimulate fans’ imaginations and fuel their geek core” (Geeknet, Inc., 2018).

The online retailer is perfect for the geeky collector because they feature items not only by product type, but by fandom or interest – no matter how geeky or not the consumer is. The items on the site appeal to all geeky people, not just one age group or gender. The fandoms or interests range from cats to Star Wars to Tolkien and even to journaling, while the range of items is even greater. You name it and it’s probably on ThinkGeek: figurines, underwear, tools, games, office supplies, and much, much more (Geeknet, Inc., 2018)!

But, how does one find ThinkGeek in the big world of the internet? There are several sites dedicated to selling geeky collectibles and vanity items, but ThinkGeek stands out among them. Why is that? Part of the reason is that ThinkGeek is unique in what items it sells and in its geekily relatable voice. A lot of online retailers focus on trying to sell the product rather than telling you about in a way you understand. ThinkGeek specializes in relating to and conversing with its consumers in their own language. The other reason is simple and, of course, the focus of the blog: web analytics and SEO.

Web Analytics

ThinkGeek focuses on the consumer relationships over anything else. To understand the consumers to create this relationship, ThinkGeek needed to gather data on the consumers, how they maneuvered through the site, and what they bought. In turn this allowed ThinkGeek to do a few things. The brand could give each consumer a personalize experience when they visited the site. This also gave ThinkGeek a chance to segment the audience and find understand the segments in depth. Ultimately, this led the geek retailer to use geo-targeting to bring traffic to the site because they saw how different the geek interests were between cities and regions (Cameron, 2014).

Keyword Optimization

ThinkGeek also takes advantage of on-page SEO to draw customers to the site. Do you know of any geek fandoms? Try Googling the fandom and an item, for example: “star wars desk lamp” or “dungeons & dragons shirt”. There’s a good chance a link to ThinkGeek was on the first page of your search. There’s also a good chance your keywords were in the page title and the meta/product description of the ThinkGeek product.

ThinkGeek D&D Shirts:

Competing D&D Shirts:

Which shirt would you buy? I’d buy the one that sounds fun and is described with nerdy lingo. Product descriptions are one part of the SEO game that ThinkGeek has down to a science. ThinkGeek is known for giving its products long descriptions that include all the right words but aren’t too forceful. The descriptions are also in line with the brand voice and words consumers use (Karr, 2017). Each product on the ThinkGeek website has at least two paragraphs describing the product and that’s not including any product specifications or specific details about the item itself (Geeknet, Inc., 2018).

While it may seem that product descriptions are just product descriptions, they aren’t. Product descriptions are a key part in attracting visitors to your site. You want to use find the perfect balance between using positive wording, describing the products, and keywords. Too little or too many keywords in your product description and the consumer will opt to visit another site (Mercer, 2015).

URL Optimization?

Keywords aren’t only for titles and descriptions. Adding keywords to your site’s URL is one of the many ways to make your URL SEO-ready. For as well as ThinkGeek handles keywords within other parts of the site, I was surprised to see that keywords aren’t located in the site’s product URLs. Giving URLs a similar description to the page title is another common factor in SEO ready sites (Fishkin, 2015).

What ThinkGeek does have are short URLs. Where most sites have a basic product description in the URL, ThinkGeek keeps it short and sweet. Each product URL is typically in the format of www.thinkgeek.com/product/XXXX/, replacing the “XXXX” with a four number/digit code where each product has a unique code (Geeknet, Inc., 2018).

We know that, as consumers, it’s easy to read and we feel safer clicking on URLs that are short, legible, and still descriptive. I think ThinkGeek could benefit from adding another descriptive word or words to the product URL and still keep the four-digit product identifier. For example, if the product is related to Harry Potter, the URL could read www.thinkgeek.com/product/harrypotter/XXXX. With the addition of Harry Potter to the URL, consumers know at least which fandom the product is from even if they don’t know the fandom.

References

Cameron, N. (2014, April 3). CMO interview: ThinkGeek CMO on customer analytics and cross-company relationships. CMO. Retrieved from https://www.cmo.com.au/article/542040/cmo_interview_thinkgeek_cmo_customer_analytics_cross-company_relationships/

Fishkin, R. (2015, February 24). 15 SEO best practices for structing URLs. Moz. Retrieved from https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls

Geeknet, Inc. (2018). ThinkGeek. Retrieved from https://www.thinkgeek.com/

Karr, D. (2017, September 13). What ecommerce business owners need to know about shopify SEO. MarTech. Retrieved from https://martech.zone/shopify-ecommerce-seo/

Mercer, M. (2015, September 11). How to write product descriptions that will make customers love your brand.  Moz. Retrieved from https://moz.com/blog/how-to-write-product-descriptions-thatll-make-customers-love-your-brand

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Countly vs. Google Analytics

-
Image
Google Analytics, though a great tool, isn’t the only option when it comes to web analytics. Some of the most notable alternatives are Adobe Analytics Cloud and Kissmetrics. Other options include Piwik, Clicky, Woopra, Open Web Analytics, and Countly. Here we will go over Countly and how it compares to Google. (Countly, n.d.) Countly Countly  is one of the many Google Analytics alternatives on the market. Countly offers a plugin-based platform for businesses to track “customer journeys in web, desktop, and mobile applications” (Countly, n.d.). Focusing analytics on mobile, web, desktop, and IoT, Countly is a qualified contender against Google Analytics. This service is available internationally and has two editions available for use, Community (free) and Enterprise (paid) (Countly, n.d.). Relying heavily on plugins, Countly allows users the ability to get the most out of this tool. Plugins are created to effortlessly integrate with Countly and give the user better ...
Read more

Web Measures: Clickthrough Rate

-
Clickthrough Rate Clickthrough Rate (CTR) is thrown around a lot in the world of analytics – but what does it mean and why is it important? The clickthrough rate is the ratio of consumers who see content and click it, hence ‘clickthrough’. CTR is important to digital marketers because it’s a concrete way of measuring how effective a brand’s content is performing. (Google, 2018). The CTR is found by dividing the number of clickthrough’s by the number of views (Kaushik, 2018). Measuring and analyzing clickthrough rate may seem like an easy task, but there’s more to it than it seems. The CTR is the perfect metric to measure ad text and descriptions; consumers clickthrough because the content is engaging. If the clickthrough rate is low, there are other factors that could be involved and should be investigated. The problem could be the text and descriptions don’t match the content the consumer is taken to or there could be a broken link. Conclusions shouldn’t be drawn until all fa...
Read more