Liquid Barcodes – Marketing and Analytics Evaluation
Liquid Barcodes sells loyalty programs to businesses in the food service and convenience industries. Its business relies on generating connections from decision-makers in other businesses that are seeking a loyalty program for their own companies. Its website (liquidbarcodes.com) is meant to facilitate this process.
The company identified three important calls-to-action (CTAs) for potential customers to perform on this website: Book a demo, download an eBook, and consume the content housed under https://www.liquidbarcodes.com/resources/. These CTAs pertain to the larger business goal, which is to attract business from the two hundred largest convenience store chains in the United States.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - liquidbarcodes.com
If Liquid Barcodes’ business goal is to attract the top two hundred convenience store chains in the United States, then the ways in which the decision-makers in these companies are reaching liquidbarcodes.com is extremely relevant to using SEO to gain their business. About 86% of all traffic to liquidbarcodes.com comes from organic search (44.20%) or direct traffic (42.17%). Visitors from these two channels have a specific goal in mind regarding a loyalty program and have heard of Liquid Barcodes before. Because decision-makers in the top convenience store chains will probably reach liquidbarcodes.com through organic search or direct traffic, their intentions and level of knowledge align with those stated above.
The key is to merge these intentions into one that is profitable – namely, to make Liquid Barcodes central to visitors’ goal of obtaining or researching a loyalty program. Sound marketing and proficient UX can help achieve this goal, but there are search engine optimizations (SEOs) that can facilitate it, as well. Ultimately, better SEO will bolster Liquid Barcode’s rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs); if liquidbarcodes.com ranks higher, more people who are a part of Liquid Barcode’s consumer base will visit the website to complete more CTAs.
SEO rankings depend on the keyphrases on a website and the number of links from other websites that go it. If a webpage contains keywords that are related to a search term, that webpage will rank more highly. Every webpage on liquidbarcodes.com has the potential to meet the needs of a given keyphrase, but the most promising in this regard is the Resources section. This section is useful because its content demonstrates the positives of a loyalty program, and it encourages greater interaction with liquidbarcodes.com than any other page (40.98% bounce rate and 19.58% exit rate – both lower than the site averages). But from an SEO perspective, this section also contains the keywords that will bring interested viewers from SERPs to liquidbarcodes.com.
An analysis from Moz.com showed that the top five ranking keywords for liquidbarcodes.com all contain brand names, such as Fanta, Chevron, RaceTrac, and Sweetgreen. To capitalize on these keywords through related content should reap the greatest increase in relevant traffic and CTAs to liquidbarcodes.com. Consequently, more content that focuses on individual brands is the most likely to draw more traffic. A search function on the Resources page would also improve the UX for users seeking content on a particular company. Finally, featuring the improved Resources page more prominently on the homepage will drive traffic to it. Although it appears more intuitive to feature the Demo link first, the lower bounce rate of the Resources page means that users who go there first will ultimately be more inclined to stick around to book a demo or perform other CTAs.
Conversely, there are several dozen articles on liquidbarcodes.com, many of which already focus on a brand’s loyalty program. It is likely that not all of them draw the same level of traffic. Liquid Barcodes can strip away articles and other content that does not draw traffic or align sharply with business goals. Non-U.S branded content is less likely to appeal to the top two hundred U.S convenience store brands, whose business Liquid Barcodes is trying to attract. Overall, less content that is more robust is always better than a mass of content that does not draw attention, and a few popular articles about well-known loyalty programs will bring more value than several articles about obscure brands with minor loyalty programs.
When liquidbarcodes.com or its webpages appears in SERPS, the entry needs to display information that draws users in. Right now, the homepage’s meta-description is “Liquid Barcodes - Marketing technology.” This is a good start, but it needs an expanded description of what Liquid Barcodes does and what it wants a visitor to do (book a demo, download an eBook, etc.) Search engines are more likely to use such a description as a snippet in the SERP entry for the homepage, and this will do more to inform potential visitors of Liquid Barcodes’ purpose before they visit from a SERP.
Driving Calls-to-Action (CTAs)
One of the CTAs is for visitors to download Liquid Barcode’s eBook. Although the eBook is well-advertised on the homepage, for marketing and SEO purposes it will help to place excerpts from the eBook somewhere on the website, such as in the Case Studies section. This will make Google more likely to match phrases from the eBook with searches that match those phrases. This is not possible if the potential keywords are buried in a PDF or epub file on the site, rather than clearly visible on a webpage. Including excerpts will also do more to draw in potential readers/downloaders.
Referral traffic makes up an outsize portion of eBook downloads and demo bookings, but it only comprises 4.44% of all visitors to liquidbarcodes.com. It has a lower bounce rate and a higher average session duration than the organic search, direct and social channels. Considering these facts, any future increase in CTA completions will come about largely from an increase in referral traffic.
Right now, most referral traffic to liquidbarcodes.com comes from liveloyalty.com – owned by Liquid Barcodes – or various search engines. However, neither of these sources are always the best source of referral traffic: Visitors to other Liquid Barcodes sites are likely to visit liquidbarcodes.com anyway, and search engine referral traffic is often no better than direct or organic search traffic.
Instead, more branded content on other sites would provide a gateway for users on those sites to find and visit liquidbarcodes.com by referral. Guest posting on loyalty program blogs is one measure, as well as listing liquidbarcodes.com to relevant online directories. Businesses that read blog posts about loyalty programs, and search directories for loyalty products, are more likely than any other type of consumer to engage with Liquid Barcodes – but only if Liquid Barcodes appears in the places they look. More referral traffic will also raise Liquid Barcodes’ domain authority, since Google will see that more sites are linking to liquidbarcodes.com.
Keeping the value of the Resources section and its content in mind – as well as the point made above regarding the value of referral traffic – a picture of the ideal visitor to liquidbarcodes.com emerges: One who reaches the website through another site that already informed them of Liquid Barcodes in some way, followed by consumption of the content on the Resources page and other sections. Although a visitor does not need to follow this pattern to perform any of the CTAs, those who do follow this pattern are more likely to perform them. This type of customer is more likely to book a demo or download an eBook.
Restatement of recommendations
Encourage more user engagement and SERP visibility through more branded content on the Resources/Case Studies section. Data from the Moz.com report (p. 3 screenshot) can be a starting point in this direction.
Prioritize U.S brands in the Resources/Case Studies page.
Add a search function/search bar to the Resources/Case Studies page.
Remove or rework content that does not draw many views or contain popular keyphrases.
Feature the Resources/Case Studies page more prominently on the homepage.
Expand the meta-description for liquidbarcodes.com to include what the company does and what it wants visitors to do.
Place direct excerpts from the eBook on the website itself.
Try to increase referral traffic and domain authority by guest posting on industry forums and relevant publications.
List liquid barcodes to relevant online directories.