Retailers are always looking for ways to improve their digital presence and drive more traffic to their site. So what can be done to support this? Enter the “cat nap strategy.” Just as taking a quick cat nap in the middle of the day can help improve memory and performance, quick wins in SEO and user experience (UX) can do the same to supercharge a retailer’s digital presence.
SEO and UX can be a great way to make a big impact with simple changes. To identify these quick wins, start by running an audit of your site. This will help you identify problems that can be fixed quickly, such as content issues, tech changes or security issues. By speaking to the teams involved, you can estimate the effort needed and weigh that against the potential gain.
Quick wins are not only useful for moving the performance needle in the short term but also for proving ROI, especially to senior stakeholders. By performing full audits across the entire site and prioritizing actionable insights using a cost/effort vs. benefit matrix, you can identify key quick wins to improve user experience and help search engines better understand the structure of your site.
Obviously, quick wins are one of many jigsaw pieces to improve overall sales, but they’re also crucial for wider optimization. They provide short-term gain when trying to hit targets, tangibly demonstrating ROI and appeasing stakeholders whose main focus is on the finances.
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One key quick win we find is the implementation of pagination, which divides content into multiple pages to make it more easily digestible for users. Often this is suboptimally set up as standard on some site builds. As a result, search engines can’t follow the next pages and effectively won’t see any of the links on page two, three, four and so on. By optimizing this, you can aid search engines’ understanding of your site’s structure and improve user experience when browsing. Additionally, the newly found links to further products or content can help bolster crawlability and authority flow through the site.
There will be a lot of these types of issues across most sites, so working out what to prioritize can be tricky. But a good place to start is to take an audit of all your current activity. This can help identify pain points and issues that can be addressed quickly, particularly when it comes to UX and SEO. By planning your activity with time scale in mind, you can action short-term tasks while your longer-term strategies are still in the works. Through effective prioritization, businesses can achieve quick wins that improve their SEO performance, enhance the user experience and ultimately drive more traffic to their site.
By approaching UX and SEO strategically, there is a great opportunity for retailers to stay ahead of the competition and achieve digital cut-through. The next time you’re looking to boost your digital performance, remember that quick wins can make a big impact. Just like a quick cat nap — they can give you the boost you need to succeed.
Joe Ford leads the Search team at Organic as Director of SEO. With several years of experience in the search marketing industry, Joe has strong knowledge in many aspects of digital marketing and account strategy for a variety of industries including retail, finance and insurance. When he’s not working to improve our clients’ search performance, he likes to fine tune his fleet of vehicles.
