Introduction
An essential facet of
being an e-commerce retailer today is the fact that companies must be
constantly aware of how their brand, website, traffic, and digital advertisements are performing. While this has been the ideal for quite some
time, it has truly become an imperative piece of e-commerce. Search engines are
used for online shopping, price comparisons and more and in order for companies
to stay relevant, they must be aware of their website and search engine
optimization performance. Without this knowledge, sales or website traffic
could be decreasing without a plausible explanation. While this problem can
often be easily fixed or modified, without the proper tools in place, it could
have a lasting effect on a retailer, especially during the holiday season.
Kate
Spade
Kate Spade is one such e-commerce retailer. Kate
Spade, along with the majority of popular e-commerce retailers, has an online
web presence that includes a website, blog, newsletter, Facebook, and Instagram
page. Across all of these platforms, Kate Spade tracks their online traffic and
is sure to use this data to retarget their prospective and current customers. First,
it is important to understand exactly what happens when customers navigate to
Kate Spade’s website in order to begin to understand the Kate Spade data
collection process. When customers navigate to the website, they are greeted
with the below message welcoming them to the website
and offering a fifteen percent discount for those
who sign up for the newsletter (Kate Spade, n.d.). At first glance, it may seem
that this is the only information that the pop-up includes. However, in small
print, it is denoted that “all information collected will be used in accordance
with our privacy policy” (Kate Spade, n.d.). While this information is
informative, it is not detailed so most prospective customers are not aware of
exactly how their information is going to be used and how. When delving farther
into Kate Spade’s interest-based advertising policy, it becomes evident just
how Kate Spade is planning to utilize the data they are collecting on their
website. The advertising policy states that Kate Spade may allow “ad exchanges,
web analytics vendors, social networking platforms and other third-parties to
measure and target advertisements on our behalf” in regards to their products
and services (Kate Spade, n.d.). In addition, Kate Spade allows third-parties
to utilize “cookies, web beacons, pixel tags and similar technologies to
collect certain data and other information about your interaction with us on
our websites and elsewhere on the internet” (Kate Spade, n.d.).
While it is obvious that Kate Spade is collecting
the data of online users at a rapid rate, it is helpful to know how these users
come to Kate Spade’s website initially. Determining where website visitors
originate is helpful in many ways for e-commerce retailers, most particularly
in order to determine which marketing techniques and platforms are performing
best.
In order to operate a successful e-commerce
website, companies need to ensure that their web pages load quickly, utilize
pertinent keywords, have accurate headings, and replace any images with
detailed coding. Having these techniques in place will create an optimized site
for bots and crawlers to recognize and return to often which will raise the SEO
of the entire site (Reed College of Media, 2018). If prospective customers are
searching for products that Kate Spade is offering, it is essential to keep
these customers engaged throughout their web search. After reviewing the title
of the opening site page, Kate Spade offers a well outlined title, but their
meta description is what really accurately describes the site. The meta
description is “Kate Spade New York® – Shop crisp color, graphic prints and
playful sophistication. From handbags and clothing to jewelry, accessories,
home decor, stationery and more. Free Shipping and Returns to all 50 states! (Kate
Spade, 2018). These few sentences outline the brand perfectly and will greatly
aid in providing a higher on-page search optimization. One thing that will not
assist Kate Spade in on-page optimization is the page loading speed. The front
page of the site takes 3.48 seconds to load (Open SEO Stats, 2018). That speed
is low and is slower than 71% of all other web pages (Open SEO Stats, 2018).
This slow page load could be due to the fact that Kate Spade currently is
utilizing a glittering holiday image on their home page, but this is not an
excuse for a slow load. In order to keep prospective customers engaged, and
perform well in daily and holiday organic search results, Kate Spade to work to
ensure that their site loads faster for users.
Conclusion
All e-commerce retailers today must be
cognizant of, and constantly updating and analyzing their web analytics. The
amount of online traffic that moves through an e-commerce site each day makes
this aspect of e-commerce necessary. It is not simply enough to set up a page
and let it perform, but adjustments and edits must be made to the web analytics
and the web site continually in order to optimize on-page search, especially
throughout the holiday season.
References
Kate Spade. (2018). Retrieved November 17, 2018, from
https://www.katespade.com/
Kate Spade: Interest-Based Advertising Policy. (n.d.).
Retrieved November 13, 2018, from https://www.katespade.com/katespade-customer-service-ks-privacy-and-security/ks-interest-based-advertising-policy.html
Katespade.com Traffic Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved November
13, 2018, from https://www.similarweb.com/website/katespade.com#search
Open SEO Stats (Formerly: PageRank Status). (2018). Retrieved
November 17, 2018, from
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/open-seo-statsformerly-pa/hbdkkfheckcdppiaiabobmennhijkknn?hl=en
Reed College of Media. 2018. West Virginia University. IMC
642: Web Metrics and SEO. Week 6. "SEO – On-page Optimization.”
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