When we talk to brands, one of the first questions we ask is often ‘what is your money keyphrase’.
Most of the time, this is a single, or handful of keyphrases that represents the brand, best describes what they offer, and often, prove to be most profitable. Knowing that you have such a keyphrase is one thing, owning that space online can be incredibly difficult. But that’s where we come in.
Today, we’re exploring the competitive keyphrase ‘shabby chic furniture’, which receives around 6600 searches per month. We’ll look at three brands who are performing well within the space, using the top 3 organic results: Shabby.co.uk, Homesdirect365, and Melody Maison.
Table of Contents
The main SERP
For such a research-driven term, the space is dominated by PPC ads. That is where Google makes its money after all. You’ll recognise Dunelm, Oak Furnitureland, Wayfair and Made. All big, high street/established names within the furniture realm.
What would you be like as a consumer here? Are you more or less likely to click on these brand names that you recognise? (More on that here). Do they have a head start as you already know, like and trust these brands (or not, depending on your experience)
We talk a lot about spending on brand awareness at that first entry point to a buying funnel — this is where the big boys can afford to spend (potentially unprofitably) and dominate. This is despite somewhat ironically already having the most well established brands.
We’d probably look to garner some initial brand awareness in such a search — someone searching ‘shabby chic furniture’ likely doesn’t have a front-running brand in mind — yet, making the carousel a fantastic attention-grabber.
With a query which is about researching a topic in its nature, the imagery shown in a Google Shopping Carousel helps out hugely here. Yet interestingly, none of the three organic brands appear for this term. Perhaps they’ve pulled back spending on such terms, if they’re performing so well organically?
It’s possible to tweak parts of your Google Shopping feed to show on these sorts of high-volume, top of funnel searches without blowing your whole budget on them, just to get your brand name into potential customer’s minds early on. Even appearing alongside trusted brands like Dunelm and Wayfair will motivate users to click when they find your organic listing further down the page, so it’s definitely worth experimenting with.
Search Ads
The Search Ads aren’t too exciting, yet again, we don’t see the three brands we’re looking at — assume they rely on organic here, despite the fact the organic results are a long, long way down the page. 36% of searchers still try not to click on search ads, opting of organic “non-advertising” search results instead.
Again, the search ads don’t really speak much about shabby chic. Wayfair draws attention with a free P&P over £40 offer, and some great reviews, but that’s as compelling as it gets.
Other & local results
Google then isn’t quite sure if we need pointing in a different direction so offers up its selection of ‘Find results on…’. These links point people to:
- A business with an exact match name on Facebook
- Preloved.co.uk
- And a Gumtree (presumably used goods) search for ‘shabby chic furniture’
It then goes on to offer local listings which makes sense — customers likely want to see and touch furniture. The local results here are completely different businesses to the ‘main’ paid and organic listings, but do give local businesses a place to shine. Perhaps some of the bigger companies could offer local warehouses etc. to wade into this space?
It makes sense to see some offline here, too. While we’ve done alright as an agency from the general shift towards online, furniture remains one of those purchases where there is a benefit to seeing the product with your own eyes before committing to a purchase. You’d want to look, see, smell, measure, test the piece before committing to the price and the hassle of getting it inside your home. Buying furniture is a big consideration purchase and should be respected as so. More on this later…
What can the pure online businesses do to combat this? Offer a hassle free returns policy in case customers don’t actually like the product? Delivery quickly and easily? Help with installation? Remove old furniture? Offer Klarna? Paying for furniture in installments has been around way before Klarna, so it only makes sense to bring the two together….
Only at this point do we get to see…
Organic listings
ShabbyStore.co.uk’ claiming to be ‘The UK’s No.1’ is fairly click-worthy. As is the reference to help from ‘a team’, Choosing furniture can be tough! It often requires the help of a stylist, or a personal touch.
While Melody Maison is lucky enough to get some sitelinks here, neither it, nor Homesdirect365 have very compelling reasons to click through to either site from the organic results. Could do better to attract that click.
Longer-tail product specific searches
After some initial research, a customer decides on a full length mirror, so searches again. Perhaps this is weeks or even months later.
We’ll look at a product range stocked by all retailers. A ‘shabby chic full length mirror’. In this instance, as the customer moves closer to a purchase, those clicks become more expensive. At £1.72 CPC, you’d better be good.
Google Shopping
MelodyMaison has a great placement here.
Pipped by Homesdirect365 with a cheaper item, and marginally better product photography. Their title doesn’t specify a size, which is disappointing, though the image frames it well, and better than Melody Maison. Reviews for Wayfair really draw the eye, as would a promotion extension, perhaps. ShabbyStore is absent. Likely because, despite offering floor mirrors as a top-level navigation category, there are no products within. Poor experience, even to a casual browser.
Search Ads
Melody Maison owns the coveted standalone position #1 here, though their ad is a generic branded ad. Obvious room for improvement here, messaging about their range of mirrors, why they’re the best choice, the real USP, and whatever else will nab the users attention, and the click.
For context, Wayfair.co.uk has a much more specific ad, mentioning sale prices, delivery, and reviews. If this ad were more prominently placed, it’d be much more likely to attract a higher CTR.
Image Search
An often forgotten tactic — Melody Maison also see very strong coverage here, though less so in the organic listings. Furniture is an incredibly visual product, and it makes sense that a buyer would glance at Google Images at some point.
Organic results
Finally, Melody Maison has a strong organic showing, with highly relevant keywords within the meta description, though perhaps no compelling reason to click. However, the other two brands don’t appear at all, which will be costing them a huge amount of valuable traffic. Interestingly this SERP is dominated by known brands — Amazon, eBay, Dunelm, but the #1 spot is a mirror specialist, exclusivemirrors.co.uk. Which would get your click?
Once you’ve committed to a click…
Let’s imagine one of the three brands we’re looking at has captured our click. How is the on-site experience? Does it make a user want to buy? Or is it a wasted £1-2 of a click?
ShabbyStore
If you were looking for shabby chic furniture, shabbystore.co.uk sounds like a good place to be, doesn’t it. Points for the name already.
The simplicity of the homepage really shines. The speedy and well laid out menu means you’re clicking deeper into the website before you even realise what’s going on.
Simplicity and speed of this site is clearly the name of the game here, however the product imagery lets the site down. Take this image for example..
Literally just the table, from one angle, on a white background. Nothing else. Customers want to see a range of shots; close up shots of some of the details in the piece, that beautiful herringbone and the detail on the legs. Imagine lifestyle shots — the table set up in a living room, an image for scale perhaps next to a dog or a toddler, capturing some of the realness of the product.
Not all of the product images are this basic, the sheraton bed (product now removed), for example at least shows the bed set up within a bedroom. The marmo coffee table (product now removed) is a little better still, but again could be better.
Made.com offers excellent examples of showroom and detail shots alike.
Homesdirect365.com
That’s not a great brand name for me, it doesn’t mean anything. As a consumer now, we’d rather buy from places we know, and a sense of mission and purpose place pretty highly on the requirement for a brand these days.
Homesdirect365, it’s just a bit lifeless, a little bit soulless perhaps.
But they are ranking number two for this juicy keyword, they must be doing something right.
They’ve clearly taken this keyword very seriously and targeted it with a specific collection page. Take a moment to read the descriptive content here, they’ve managed to wedge the word “shabby chic” in THIRTY SEVEN times. That’s 37.
That sort of repetitive writing would certainly upset your secondary school english teacher but Google have taken kindly to it, and Home Direct 365 will be seeing lots of traffic here! Collection Page SEO doesn’t get enough air time from the SEO industry.
It’s an excellent way to target middle-of-funnel customers, who just need that extra little bit of encouragement. These customers are the kinds that can really accelerate a brands growth.
Keyword stuffing like this might be working A-OK today, but when Google takes a closer look, you’re gone.
There’s a pretty solid blogging strategy going on with Homesdirect365 too, and if you’re super keen, this quick read about different types of wood is a good read. Which has probably been written to improve their internal linking structure.
Melody Maison
Offers, particularly in the homepage banner, can be incredibly divisive.
Landing on the homepage, you’re greeted with this huge offer. And yeah, it’s great. 62% off is weirdly specific and it certainly does enough to get a customer to stick around and invest more time on the site.
Is the 62% off stuff just the items that are clogging up the back of the warehouse that they can’t get rid of though? Is the genuinely desirable stuff on discount at all? And if so, how much?
You have to be careful with offers like this, of course this will entice more customers, but if you come across as disingenuous upon further inspection, customers are going to lose some goodwill,.
Melody Maison are doing the best in terms of delivery too, offering this in prime position on their product pages:
Customers do not want to be left guessing when it comes to delivery. It would be a nightmare if you were to miss delivery of such a big item, knowing exactly what day and when your item is going to be delivered is a big, big plus.
Ao.com take this idea a step further and offers time slots to customers for this exact reason… And what’s an extra £25 when you’re already forking out a few hundred for whatever you’re buying.
So what can we learn from the above?
Even with a seemingly simple keyword like ‘shabby chic furniture’, there’s a lot to digest and dissect. We’ve hardly scratched the surface here.
Within search, visibility is everything! Customers have a limited number of options to browse, and if you’re not one of them, you won’t even be part of the consideration process.
- Ensure your product feed is well optimised for generic searches as well as product specific searches
- Adopt attractive meta titles and descriptions to stand out in organic results
- Search like a customer — are there missed opportunities like local map packs, or placement within Google Image Search?
Once you’ve got that critical first click, how can you keep a customer’s attention.
- Entice customers with a genuinely great offer straight off the bat, the first “sale” is for you to convince the customer to spend their time on your website.
- Great product images to sell on emotion. You’re not really selling a table here, you’re selling the great dinner party that you’ll host. You’re not selling a bed, you’re selling a great nights sleep in a cosy room…. You get the picture?
- It’s not just about the product, returns and delivery are important in any industry but they’re are VITAL in furniture, where they can make the difference between a sale and not.
If this sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is! Dominating any given keyword is difficult, never mind the hundreds or thousands your product range might cover. That’s what we do, so get in touch below and we’d love to share some deeper insight and expertise.
