Lobster.com Case Study

How LOBSTER.COM Used HITSLINK Before, During and After the Re-launch of a Trusted, Old Website

PART 1:  LOBSTER.COM Prepares to Shed Its Old Shell

Background:  

With a name like LOBSTER.COM, it is not too hard to guess what this company does online.   That’s right: They sell lobsters.   Fresh, live Maine lobsters.    Since the late-nineties this simple site has become a favorite destination for people who want to send the gift of a delicious lobster dinner to friends and loved ones far and near.

Recently, the owners of LOBSTER.COM decided it was high time for this humble site take its rightful place in the e-commerce world, with a new site, new logo, and an updated image that reflected the company’s values, and expanded product offerings.

This case study in four parts will chronicle how LOBSTER.COM used HITSLINK at each step of the process of re-launching a major e-commerce site.    It will start with this first part – how to use HitsLink to understand what is happening on the site now and how that information can be used to influence the new design.

The second and third parts will go into more detail on tracking early results, tracking email metrics real-time and early site testing during a busy holiday period.   The fourth and final installment will include a full analysis of the first quarter of the new site after the launch, and HITSLINK data will continue to play a vital role in site enhancements, paid and organic search campaigns, and even new product development.

Part One – LOBSTER.COM Prepares to Shed its old Shell

Before launch, the folks at LOBSTER.COM wanted to know what was really happening on the website.   They had used some basic tracking programs, AWSTATS and URCHIN, but those tools did not seem to give a very intimate feel for what was really happening on the current site.

Here is a snapshot of the current home page, prior to launch:

Figure 1:   Home Page of Lobster.com. Simple, Quaint,
and in need of a redesign

The old LOBSTER.COM website is relatively small, with fewer than 12 pages, including a very basic shopping cart .  The navigation, though slightly non-standard is very utilitarian and easy to follow. 

The questions we had regarding the LOBSTER.COM website were pretty much the basic ones that anyone website owner would want to know, including:

1. Where are visitors coming from? 
2. How are they finding the website now?
3. What keywords are bringing motivated visitors?
4. What are people doing on the site? 
5. How long are they staying?  What time do they usually come?

The great part about analyzing website data is that it always leads you to ask more and more questions about the data, the visitors and the site’s performance.    A real strength of HITSLINK is how quickly it presents very good top-level data very quickly.

Many of the most important and frequently asked questions about website performance can be answered in minutes on HITSLINK without going through tons of menus and screen loads as is required on other analytics tools.

First Surprise - Lobster is a Worldwide Phenomenon

Figure2:   Surprising Traffic Patterns – Seen at a Glance
on the HITSLINK Map Overlay

One of the first really big surprises we obtained from HITSLINK Visitor Analysis Map overlay was the amazing extent to which the traffic to LOBSTER.COM was coming in from international sources!  A quick glance at the map shows that visitor traffic from Europe is strong, if not stronger than in the United States. 

The reason this is so surprising is that LOBSTER.COM only ships live lobsters in the continental United States!  In the ten year history of the company, exceedingly few orders for live lobster have ever come from outside the US.  Given the strength of the international traffic, the management team at LOBSTER.COM started to consider what additional opportunities were available from European traffic.     

As they dug down into the data, it became clear that the traffic from overseas did not seem all that interesting.    Visitors were not staying on the site very long and bounce rates were very high.   Certainly, the fact that LOBSTER.COM is an English-only site and only ships to US customers could be a primary reason why foreign visitors do not stick around.    If the site was re-designed with European visitors in mind, would these visitors stick around and perhaps become customers – buying lobster for their American friends and families?    More exploration in the data was required before making that kind of investment.

A second hypothesis arose – that the international traffic is mainly due to the one-word domain name.   Single word domains, especially names that are as evocative as lobster, can bring naturally attract visitors who will never be interested in buying lobster.
Taking a quick look at our Visitor Referrals Pie-Chart and the underlying data, that hypothesis  became more likely the reason for the short unproductive visits from our international visitors.   So LOBSTER.COM put the idea of dealing with international business opportunities on the back-burner for now, and decided to focus on the primary market for US visitors. 

Figure 3   HITSLINK Pie-chart showing profile of referrers to
Lobster.com.  Single word domain names tend to
have a lot of direct traffic – and not necessarily productive traffic.

What Keywords Are Bringing the Most Motivated Visitors
The fact that LOBSTER.COM has a natural advantage for attracting searchers on the search query, “lobster”, was pretty much confirmed by the HITSLINK data.  

However, for the web design team, a more interesting question, the more interesting question was – what keywords are bringing in the most motivated visitors?   What keywords should they focus on for search engine optimization purposes?

The HITSLINK data has been tremendously helpful in helping discover this important data.    With very little effort on our part, we were able to determine exactly which words would be our most valuable. 

HITSLINK Reports let us look at the data across a number of behavioral metrics:

1. What keywords are attracting visitors who visit multiple pages?
2. What keywords are attracting visitors who stay the longest on the site?
3. What keywords are bringing repeat visitors?
4. What keywords are driving revenues?
5. What keywords are bringing all of the above? 

Figure 4   HITSLINK Search Term Chart shows exactly what
keywords bring truly interested visitors

Without having to run any special analysis, HITSLINK practically hands you a prioritized list of the most valuable keywords driving traffic to the site.    This saved us hours of data manipulation.  From this one data report, LOBSTER.COM was able to sort keywords by the most visitors, by the keywords that drove the longest site visits, the most pages, and the fewest bounce-outs, and which resulted in repeat visitors.

A simple export of this report into Excel, allowed us to grab the best of the best keywords across all of these categories, and make our SEO research a breeze. 
The companion report to this search report, the Activity Report, shows additional “golden” data – the keywords that drove transactions and revenue, as shown below.     Confidential data has been removed, but the power of these automatically generated reports become obvious at first glance!

Figure 5    HITSLINK Charts show revenues, and conversion
rates of top producing search queries.

How Important are IPhones, Blackberries, Androids and other Mobile Devices?

LOBSTER.COM did not know to what extent it should be designing the new website with mobile browsers in mind, and wanted an idea of what devices are being used now.   The HITSLINK Report, Operating Systems Versions, shown below, reports that in Q3 2009, fewer than 2% of LOBSTER.COM visitors came in on mobile devices.     

Figure 6  HITSLINK Report showing  relative popularity of
User Operating Systems visiting LOBSTER.COM

That is not enough to warrant a big push for the web design team, but that also depends on how fast mobile device use is increasing.  How fast is mobile usage increasing and when will it become an issue?

HITSLINK also shows trends in operating systems, which enables you to see how devices are growing or waning in importance.   In looking at Q4 2009, LOBSTER.COM has seen a  30% growth in mobile browser visits.   Not a tipping point just yet, but certainly a trend to keep on top of for the next site redesign:

Part 1  Wrap up  

In this part of the case history, we’ve shown some of the HITSLINK Reports that have helped shape  both the business and website design decisions made during the preparation phase for the re-launch of LOBSTER.COM as it gets ready to launch the new site with expanded offerings and a new shell. 

Coming Next:   

Catch it While It’s Fresh!!!   LOBSTER.COM – Launches onto the Web

In the next episode, we’ll present the freshest data from the fresh new launch of LOBSTER.COM.    We will focus on how HITSLINK,  the only real-time analytics platform on the market  today, enables you to make up-to-the minute adjustments to your marketing programs – Especially Important as you navigate the current holiday season.   

About the Author:

Matt Van Wagner is a seasoned sales and marketing professional specializing in paid and local search engine marketing strategies in the United States and Canada. An award-winning speaker whose presentations are usually as entertaining as they are informative, Matt has been a popular speaker at SES, SMX and other search conferences. Matt is President and founder of Find Me Faster a search engine marketing firm based in Nashua, NH. He is a member of SEMNE (Search Engine Marketing New England), and SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization as a member and contributing courseware developer for the SEMPO Institute. Matt writes occasionally on internet, search engines and technology topics for IMedia, The NH Business Review and other publications and served as technical editor for Andrew Goodman's "Winning Results with Google AdWords" and Mona Elesseily's "Yahoo! Search Marketing Handbook." Matt is a graduate of St Lawrence University, Canton NY (BS Economics) with an M.B.A. from Rivier College, Nashua, NH.

Matt Van Wagner
Find Me Faster
Lobster

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