TV shopping network HSN, a global leader of multichannel retail, and the online arm of TV’s 4th largest cable network, offers tens of thousands of compelling and innovative beauty, home, fashion and jewelry products online, including highly respected brands like, Gateway, Paula Dorf, Kodak and Cuisinart, as well as many proprietary brands.
Situation:
Although HSN offers tens of thousands of products online, only a small amount of unique pages were indexed in Google in early 2005. This level of visibility was primarily only generating search traffic for HSN-related brand keywords (such as “HSN,” “Home Shopping Network” etc). Unbranded “long tail” search terms however accounted for a very small percent of HSN’s natural search traffic. Upon investigation, it was discovered that many of the indexed pages consisted mainly of duplicates of similar pages, as well as article-related content, rather than unique product-related pages capable of attracting unbranded search terms and sales.
Challenge:
HSN’s strategy was to take steps to capture more unbranded search traffic by getting more product pages indexed. However the prospect of re-architecting the HSN.com website to accomplish this would require many hours of development time and would impact many website stakeholders. According to Rob Caiello, OVP of Online Marketing, “We knew we needed to take action quickly and that we did not have the internal resources to restructure the HSN.com website at the time. We needed to find a powerful and immediate solution to achieve greater visibility in the major search engines for unbranded keywords.”
Solution:
HSN decided to implement a faster, more robust, proven approach to capturing natural search potential, using a hosted, natural search proxy optimization technology developed by Netconcepts, known as GravityStream™. This patent-pending optimization technology provided HSN with a real-time proxy of the retail website for search engines and search engine users, with very little effort required upfront. Around 40 hours were required by HSN’s internal IT department to set up, test and launch the GravityStream proxy site.
The solution has also been resource-friendly after the initial launch. As a real-time proxy of the website, new pages and links are emulated and made crawlable automatically, requiring only a few hours of ongoing maintenance from the marketing team on a regular basis.
Results:
The results achieved speak for themselves. Within 12 weeks of launching the GravityStream solution, HSN’s indexation in Google had increased 1200% from previous levels, and included all tens of thousands of product-related pages. This newfound level of visibility instantly began delivering on the “long tail” promises with over 25% of unique pages yielding increases in unbranded natural search visitors. In fact, during the critical 2005 holiday season, this visibility led to an increase in nonbranded search sales of 150% over Q4 levels from 2004.
Kristina Stern, Online Marketing Manager of HSN.com stated, “When compared to other options, Netconcepts GravityStream proxy solution is a quick and effective way to get many, deeper level pages indexed on Google that can deliver incremental, unbranded traffic and sales.”
According to a recent study by Netconcepts, and documented in the whitepaper titled “Chasing the Long Tail of Natural Search,” the average multichannel retail website has only a small percentage (usually under 5%) of its E-Commerce pages yielding traffic. For merchants utilizing Netconcepts’ GravityStream proxy technology, including HSN, over 20% of all unique pages are yielding unbranded natural search traffic. To get a copy of our “Chasing the Long Tail of Natural Search” white paper, click here or call a Netconcepts at 608-285-6600.
