Challenge
Isaac Childs and his best friends started going on frequent backpacking trips in the spring of 1998. He began documenting his experiences using a basic journal. Before long the journal started to fall apart. Disappointed in the quality of the journal, Isaac decided to create one. He took a bookbinding course and Rustico began. Rustico + Stryde Rustico came to Stryde with a large hurdle standing in their way of online growth. Several months earlier, Rustico moved from RusticoLeather.com to Rustico.com. Along with the new domain, the team revamped the entire website to reflect the brand vision. from one domain to a new one, Google organic search traffic took a massive hit. Traffic fell more than 50% to less than 10K visits per month. In addition to the misstep in migrating the site, Rustico needed help converting site visitors into email subscribers, reaching a new audience through content marketing, social and influencer marketing. We dug into Rustico’s analytics to understand the issues they were experiencing with organic search and analyzed landing page and traffic data pre-launch of the new site. Then we analyzed traffic coming to the site post launch, channels driving traffic and revenue coming from each channel and found the following challenges and opportunities: ORGANIC SEARCH AND CONTENT CHALLENGES Organic search traffic was the highest priority for Rustico when they initially looked to Stryde for help. They lost more than half of their organic search traffic with the site transition, which was the top performing channel up to that point. Some of the problems included: new content across the site, lack of site optimizations for key landing pages, updated navigation and more. To recover organic search, STRYDE implemented these solutions. EMAIL MARKETING CHALLENGES Rustico was having challenges getting potential customers to opt in to their list and generating revenue through email. This was a big opportunity to capture potential customers while recovering organic search traffic. STRYDE implemented the following to increase subscribers and revenue from email: SOCIAL MEDIA CHALLENGES Rustico was creating beautiful imagery for their social channels but they weren’t getting followers as quickly as they hoped. They needed to generate engaged followers that would help spread their message to a wider audience and improve brand awareness. STRYDE was able to grow engaged followers to their social media profiles and increase revenue coming from each channel through:
Solution
SOLUTIONS Analyzed keywords and put together a massive keyword strategy Mapped and implemented keywords to specific landing pages to build keyword relevance Redirected old product, category and subcategory URLs to relevant pages Cleaned up numerous technical issues and improved site speed Restructured the site navigation and architecture Setup popups to start collecting email addresses Ran A/B tests on popups to improve email subscriber conversion rate Began segmenting their list to better understand customers that purchased specific products for more relevant emails Paid Facebook ads to select blog content Influencer outreach and promotions using bloggers and Instagrammers for product placement and giveaways Regularly pin products on group boards and Rustico’s own board Pushed promoted pins on top performing blog content
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