CONSUMER ELECTRONICS COMPANY WEBSITE DESIGN & SEO USING WORDPRESS
In January 2021 I was contracted to provide marketing consulting services to DPVR, a consumer electronics brand that manufactures virtual reality headsets. As a start up brand in the consumer electronics industry they have enjoyed incredible growth since they were founded in 2016 but most of that was coming from their domestic market in China. They had a website set up for people in English speaking countries but they didn’t feel it was generating leads or awareness for them.
The first step was to audit their current digital marketing efforts, conduct competitive analysis, use the information to create a new website & then provide ongoing marketing consulting support under retainer. The new site was launched in May and has already begun do deliver incredible visitor traffic growth & broad keyword search coverage in a matter of weeks.
BRAND COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
NEW WORDPRESS WEBSITE DESIGN
WEBSITE
SEO
WEBSITE
COPYWRITING
CONTENT
CREATION
SOCIAL
MEDiA STRATEGY
WHAT WAS THE MARKETING BRIEF?
Can a new website grow brand exposure in English-speaking markets?
DPVR wanted to explore options to improve the exposure their brand was getting in English-speaking markets. They had a website but didn’t believe it was helping them & they were on the verge of investing in paid advertising to generate more exposure. So the first part of this marketing project was to complete a digital marketing audit to create a baseline to work from.
What I quickly discovered was their website was basically empty, it had pages, but each one was filled with a static image. So visually it had information that people could read, but from a search engine perspective, it was essentially blank. The consequence of this was the brand was generating little to no website traffic & the only keywords it was achieving results for were branded ones for the company or specific models of VR headset. The audit also looked at their use of social media and content creation activities to provide improvement suggestions in those aspects as well.
WHAT WAS MY SCOPE OF WORK?
Once the marketing audit was completed it gave DPVR the confidence to proceed with a monthly retainer that would give them the flexibility to execute their marketing activities based on month-to-month requirements. The first few months were focused on building the resources required to redesign their website. The strategy would be to get the new site launched, gather learnings & then continue to develop the site with new & relevant industry content.
- Digital marketing audit
- Search keyword research
- Creation of a new website using WordPress together with Elementor Page Builder.
- Copywriting for the new website
- Creating a catalogue of photos to turn them into images that could be used on the website.
- Editing, resizing and renaming each photo to help contribute SEO results.
- Online competitor research to understand popular phrases and words being used for similar brands.
- Submit the completed website to Google Search Console to check for site indexing & any potential errors
- Setting up Google Analyics, Search Console and Tag Manager for performance measurement.
- Re-write previous news releases to be relevant for search
- Convert social media posts to content pieces for the site
- Proof check & adjust PR releases to be suitable for search
- Provide analysis and reporting on website results
- Provide advice & direction for social media management
WHAT MARKETING RESULTS WERE ACHIEVED?
My marketing strategy has helped to deliver immediate results for DPVR. The new website now presents a fresh, modern look for the brand, organic search volumes are the highest they have seen & there have been nearly 5,000 pageviews on the new website in a matter of weeks. The new content on the site has already delivered a number of potential sales leads for industry niche’s in training and events.
DIGITAL MARKETING AUDIT
The digital marketing audit provided DPVR management with the information they needed to make an educated decisions on their executions. What I was able to communicate was the executions their marketing team had created were not delivering any type of meaningful result.
Their website didn't even have Google Analytics installed to measure website traffic, the site didn't have an active SSL certificate & as mentioned above, it used images on every page rather than the correct technical SEO implementation with headings, text & images.
NEW WEBSITE DESIGN
The old website look impressive visually, but lacked the right technical set up to get found online. It used images that weren't responsive & the execution wasn't delivering good engagement for visitors. I completely re-designed the overall look and feel of their website to give it a bold, modern, clean look. This included product pages, but also areas to showcase use case scenarios, news & even case studies.
NEW CONTENT MARKETING PLATFORM
Using the post structure within WordPress I set up content areas across the site that could be used to share corporate news, case studies and examples of the VR headsets being used in different scenarios. The content will eventually be displayed dynamically across the site in relevant areas to ensure the right information is being shown to visitors to drive engagement.
ORGANIC KEYWORD SEARCH GROWTH
Using SEM Rush I began tracking and comparing the organic keywords DVPR began to rank for. Within 6 weeks of the new site going live there were improvements in terms of volume, breadth and phrases in top 10 positions on search. With more content being added to the site and ongoing SEO development this is expected to continue.
BRANDED & NON-BRANDED KEYWORD SEARCH GROWTH
One of the first things I did was set up Google Analytics and also submit the site to Google Search Console to begin collecting data before the new site was launched. It would create a baseline to measure performance from and as you can see in the images below there was an immediate change in results.
Not only did search impressions improve by more than 4X but so did clicks form search - and this could be seen within just ten days of implementation.
The other major achievement has been the breadth of keywords shifting from just 41 phrases to over 450 in the first couple of weeks to over 700 as of the end of June.
WEBSITE VISITOR TRAFFIC GROWTH
The organic search growth translated to record levels of organic website visitors. To prove this, I had set up Google Analytics tracking when the project first started. So from the time the new site was launched in May it was possible to measure the impact the new site and SEO development was achieving. As demonstrated in the report below there was a near immediate acceleration of website traffic volumes.
More significantly was the growth in non-China traffic locations with nearly all Countries showing improvement in the early stages after the new site was turned on.
IMPROVED WEBSITE VISITOR ENGAGEMENT
The other important factor to consideris what all the new website traffic is doing. It's one thing to get more volume, but it is another to make sure it is high quality. Thankfully, every significant measure was improved - volume, pages per session, average time on site and pageviews. People were enjoying the use of the new site.
Training was one of the particular areas that required focus from DPVR. A lot of time was spent creating content on their site to get found for this search topic. It was good to see initial wins being achieved with top 10 placings on SERP results. This translated to new leads for the DPVR sales team to follow up.
WHAT WERE SOME OF THE WEBSITE DESIGN HIGHLIGHTS?
There are lots of little details that go into designing a consumer electronics website that can make the difference to SEO results and converting visitors into enquiries / sales or leads. These elements have to work together to help generate traffic but once a person has arrived you have to have the right information to convince them to buy or enquire.
STRONG VISUALS AND RELEVANT CONTENT
The DPVR team had a lot of existing consumer electronics images that could be used on the site as well as a library of photos from events, VR installations & company announcements. These were used extensively throughout the site together with content that was clearer, easier to navigate & complimented with the correct technical SEO set up.
CONTENT MARKETING WEBSITE STRUCTURE
One of the biggest improvements that was made for DPVR was creating a website structure that could allow them to implement stronger content marketing activities. Their previous news section just had space for some text and not much else. I transformed their existing content & added new pieces that included a mix of photos, videos, external links and deeper information.
This content marketing execution helped deliver not only the keyword ranking improvements but lead to many pieces being ready for 2 minutes or longer on the site. It gave DPVR management demonstrable proof that the market strategy used was relevant, necessary & high quality.
SEO OPTIMISED PAGES
Woven into the copy and headings for each page are relevant phrases and sentences that related back to the keyword terms that were uncovered during the research phase. Each page has also been structured to have a hierarchy of headings and text that is suitable for search engine robots to read to maximise potential search engine performance. Each page was deliberately kept clean, simple and easy to read while being simple to use on mobile devices.
CUSTOMISED CONTACT PAGE WITH LEAD TRACKING
The contact page was set up to provide all the relevant contact details for visitors which is fairly standard practice. Although behind the forms on various pages were anti-spam filtering as well as tracking mechanisms to feed the information into Google Analytics for performance reporting but also help DPVR direct & measure their lead performance. Within the first seven days enquiries were flowing through and that has continued since the site was launched.
Most importantly it enables DPVR to measure any future marketing activities to gauge effectiveness.
WHAT OTHER OBSERVATIONS WERE NOTED?
Every time I get involved in a marketing project I try to add value in other areas because it can help maximise results for the client. This project was no different and very quickly I was able to spot opportunities for DPVR.
CASE STUDIES
Even though the brand had been operating since 2016 with thousands of units in sales and lots of customers using their products around the world, the brand didn't have any case studies. Creating these can help provide engaging, deep content that showcases the features and benefits of a product in different scenarios.
It can compliment standard product copy and bring an item to life by showing. itbeing used in situations that are relevant for different site visitors. In DPVR's case they didn't have examples of their headsets being used in Education, Training or at Corporate Events.
As a brand it made be difficult to generate these, but with. theright engagement through the sales team with clients they can be constructed. The exposure for the client can benefit them and the brand while creating potential backlink opportunities between the websites.
SOCIAL MEDIA WITH NO EXPOSURE
The DPVR social media accounts didn't have a consistent structure, different channels had different names & the brand was exploring ideas around establishing sub-channels for gaming, training, events etc. The content that was being posted was basically sharing stories from other locations on external websites.
There was little to no engagement on any of the platforms & in the case of LInkedIn there was less than 1,000 impressions created on posts for the last 12 months. Although this wasn't being measured by the marketing team to understand if the work they were doing was valuable.
After conducting analysis of their LinkedIn brand page data & looking at the Google Analytics traffic results it was pretty clear to see the results - less than 3% of traffic coming from those sources. So the advice provided was to spend more time on content creation for the website that could then be shared on social platforms. This will help SEO results & add more value to the efforts being made.
NO DEMAND GENERATION ACTIVITIES
While DPVR have various eTailers, resellers and integrators selling their headsets, there isn't any mass market demand generation activities taking place. It has been recommended they explore paid search or social media ads to generate brand awareness in parallel to new content being created for the website.
Taking this approach can help accelerate exposure for the brand to help it catch competitors.
This marketing project was another example of senior management not having the information or tools to clearly understand whether their digital marketing was helping the brand or not. My marketing consultancy work provided an audit that gave them the insights needed to approve the changes that needed to be made. In a short space of time, their new website has already delivered great results and they have a platform that can easily be built on in the coming months.
