90 day experiment re: content presentation -- 101% increase

[tangor]

Ecom site. Originally had 135 pages for 126 products ranging from $xx.xx to $x,xxx.xx.

Now has three pages. Index (with everything in clear marked anchors/sections, an about page, and a check out page.

A specialty niche where the big items begged for "attachments, etc." for performance and usability and that's where this change in format made a difference in overall sales.

I've run this redesign for 90 days and saw a 101% increase in sales/revenue because the visitor could get to the item via a SE search (anchored/sectioned) or just scroll through the landing page. All items are fully described but, other than a total of three images, 1 of which was a logo, no other images are visible unless the visitor "Click for an image of this product" did that, thus the images are available in search engines, just not displayed on the actual page ... which, even at 160k loads like lightning, even on mobile.

This might not work for all ecoms, of course, but it might provide a thought on how some consolidation can make a difference and give the shopper more views of what's on site.

As for the search traffic, it is still rising as that "one page" is RICH in everything regarding that niche and is not just "stuffed with keywords".

YMMV

[ergophobe]

Thanks! This is a nice tie-in or followup or whatever you want to coll it to my questions on pruning content.

So basically, in this case, the index page is the catalog? So it's one long page with 126 products in expandable sections?

[tangor]

In this particular case there is no expansion as the descriptions/specs are about 2 paragraphs each. To the side of each is a "For image" and "Add to Cart" set of buttons. But I see no reason why expandable (More info) can't be used for the same concept.

I don't see this working well for over 200 items ... but one could certainly do their top cat and then drop to a sub page(s) setup the same way.

Aside: this particular site/niche does update, but rarely as the products are fairly fixed in nature/use, thus trying this seemed like a good idea at the time. If the increased metrics and REVENUE hold up over the next 90 days then I will consider the effort a success and might use this philosophy for other sites in the future.

[tangor]

I'll also add that from a content management POV this is really quick and easy. Three pages. Since the products are stable offerings it is almost like "do it once, do it right, and you are done".

[robzilla]

Aren't you losing out on product specific search traffic though?

[tangor]

No.... the products are fully listed, just found on one page. :)

As I noted earlier, this might not work for all.

[ergophobe]

Aren't you losing out on product specific search traffic though?

It does make you think about all the articles you've read on keyword focus, doesn't it?

tangor - when you look in the Search Console, are you getting a lot of product-specific rankings, or is it more ranking for a narrow niche, getting people in and finding them the right product within the niche?

[NickMNS]

Very interesting Tangor, I have few questions.

Is the increase in sales/revenue evenly distributed across all products, or is specific a product or subset of products that account for the bulk of the increase?

Is the increase in sales/revenue the result of an increase in the number of users on the site coming from search, more specifically are you seeing the same or lower conversion rate, but with a much greater number of users? Or is it the inverse, fewer users with a higher conversion rate?

What did you do with the pages you deleted, did you 301 them to the new pages?

What was the backlink profile like before the change?

I would guess that one limiting factor for consolidation would be pages speed. Clearly you have taking care of this, but there is only so far that you can push it until it becomes an issue.

[tangor]

First, there is no advertising, nor has there ever been advertising, on this site. The product niche is extremely narrow. Think hand made products of a particular use.

The over all result has been greater revenue as the visitor looking for WidgetA saw, in extreme close proximity, attachment(s) for WidgetA not normally thought of in the seek and buy phase. And, after that short scroll to read about that, also see WidgetB as well.

The site traffic, originally around 250-300/day is now up to 600plus/day and rising month on month. Over the last month a dozen links from related niches have appeared and might be helping.

These are not world beater numbers, but for the creator of this product(s), it is a boon and might lead to expansion if this 100% increase in business continues, or goes higher.

As for the original pages they were deleted and a custom 404, listing all of the original pages as direct links to each anchored/sectioned item on the index page with the WidgetA, WidgetB, etc. in LARGE TEXT BOLD with the accessories listed below each.

"Site has been redesigned. Your product is listed below, please use that link. Thanks!"

Could have used 301, but since all would have pointed to the home page I didn't want to chance a soft 404 by any of the search engines.

[NickMNS]

Thanks for the response, I was thinking that the boost might have come from a boost of page rank resulting from 301 redirect from multiple pages pointing to a few. But this obviously not the case since you used the 404's. The leads one to think that improved UX has lead to the boost.

Do you know if the conversion rate improved, or is the increase in sales due only to the increase in traffic?

[tangor]

Again, both. As noted above, the visitor very quickly becomes aware of additional (and desirable) add ons to the product initially sought. It is those secondary sales which really took off. From a visual perspective the content is rapidly presented. In example below imagine each xxxxx line as a three to five sentence paragraph. The "b" is a button. Top is for an image the lower is to add to cart:

rule
header/widget
xxxxx b
xxxxx b
rule
header/addon
xxxxx b
xxxxx b
rule
ete.