As 2020 has progressed, many businesses have had to pivot rapidly towards digital solutions to make up for shortfalls in their physical businesses, whilst Corona Virus has caused lockdowns and forced closures of physical locations – prompting consumers to turn to businesses with a digital footprint to a much higher degree. This pivot has also likely led to questions over long-term budgeting for digital projects, and a more clinical review of digital capabilities and positioning for many business leaders.
A new report from Econsultancy and DeepCrawl suggests that, in the face of a new way of living in much of the world, search performance has become a key indicator of business health for many marketers – and the upfront investment in SEO capabilities for long term digital gains that can set up a website for success for years.
Whilst some businesses have had to re-invent their offering, many others have seen success by investing in their digital capabilities early – in the UK, Asda reported that it is gearing up for a record online Christmas as it published its Q3 results for 2020, which included a 72% year-on-year increase in combined net sales for Asda.com and George.com. COVID conditions will certainly have had a positive impact for businesses like Asda regardless of their digital offering, user behaviour is still changing. Referral marketing platform Mention Me’s fourth annual research study into Black Friday shopping trends, carried out in partnership with One Poll, found that nearly a fifth (19%) of UK consumers planned to shop from their mobile during Black Friday ‘ a 90% increase on last year.
The findings also showed that the rise of mobile commerce has been undented by the shift towards working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the home working trend has given rise to other behavioural shifts, with 24% of those surveyed saying they will shop from home in the evening. One in ten consumers also admitted to shopping for Black Friday deals during the working day, with 35% more men admitting to this behaviour than women.
Businesses seriously considering their SEO for the first time should also be aware that digital-first strategies carry their own risks; In 2019, ASOS reported a pre-tax profit fall of 87%. The interim results statement in April of that year stated growth in both active customers and traffic has been behind our plans. The company’s traffic was affected by a number of factors, one of them being some instability in SEO performance…caused by multiple customer navigation changes to our websites and our release of 200 local web experiences, which whilst strategically the right thing to do, had an impact on SEO rankings in the short term.
The Econsultancy survey even found that 55% of companies have experienced a negative impact on marketing performance from a technical change made to their website. While organic search drives significant revenues, organizations aren’t always united when it comes to the prioritization of projects that can improve their on-site performance.
However, it is becoming increasingly clear that a digital marketing strategy is necessary for many businesses to survive during turbulent periods, and to drive that survival towards success during periods of relative calm.
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