Case study on out of stock products (NewLook.com) | SemDays 2015

Redirecting out of Stock product pagesSEO case study

Fran Kavvadia & Jack Norell SEO Manager & Senior SEO Consultant

Contents

⁄ What are out of stock (OOS) product pages?

⁄ Handling out of stock product pages in e-commerce

⁄ OOS product redirections on the New Look website

What are out of stock (OOS) product pages?

Definition of out of stock product pages (OOS)

⁄ OOS pages are product pages for temporarily or permanently unavailable products in an online store

OOS are low value content pages

⁄ OOS represent low-value, poor quality content, which is disengaging for users

Panda penalty

⁄ With thin out of stock product pages, sites are running the risk of a Panda penalty (Panda 4.0 update)

OOS product pages convert poorly

⁄ OOS have a negative impact on sales and overall user experience ⁄ High bounce rates & low conversions reported ⁄ Increased risk of harming search organic performance & brand reputation

E-commerce fail when dealing with OOS

Example Mistake #1 OOS notifications are difficult to spot

⁄ Unchanged product page when product goes out of stock ⁄ Sites use fine print to inform the user when the product goes out of stock

(sometimes difficult to spot)⁄ Skin care shop ‘b-liv’ in the example below doesn’t clearly show that the product is

out of stock

Example Mistake #2 OOS notification making users confused

⁄ Even when clearly highlighting that a product it’s out of stock, it can go wrong, as in the example below (Mamy Sugarcraft)

⁄ OOS notification indicates the product is out of stock⁄ But availability shows it in stock⁄ So what now? Is it available or not?

Example Mistake #3 Thin page content issue

⁄ Easy to spot – it is surrounded by borders⁄ Still worthless for Google as users can’t find a product⁄ No alternative product options ⁄ Thin page content⁄ Risk of receiving a Panda penalty

Outline of New Look OOS product issue

⁄ Before the project started we discovered over 25,000 OOS pages within Google UK

⁄ We scraped all 25,000 pages and redirected a sample of 4,200 OOS pages to 150 parent category pages or relevant product pages

OOS decreased CTRs and revenue

⁄ OOS pages have low click through rates and damage a domain's competitiveness as its ranking power decreases

⁄ These pages resulted in an 11% overall drop in revenue per page across the whole site in the given period

Handling out of stock product pages in e-commerce

Strategic choices: How to handle OOS product pages

⁄ Strategy #1: The OOS product pages return a custom 404 page error

⁄ Strategy #2: Redirect the OOS pages back to the parent category or relevant product page

⁄ Strategy #3: Use “unavailable after” meta tag to indicate from when the product is unavailable

⁄ Strategy #4: Leave the page as it is, for pages with important information for users

Strategy 1: Custom 404 page error

Strategy 1: OOS page returns 404 error code & product overlay

⁄ Size: Recommended for smaller ecommerce sites with > 100 pages⁄ Using custom 404 pages with dynamic product overlays provide better user

experience with a potential of back orders & returned visits ⁄ E.g. Mod Cloth informs costumers about unavailable product using a product

overlay & suggestion alternatives

404 custom pages: Advantages

⁄ Higher chance for the visitor who lands on the page to convert ⁄ A custom 404 page can include a pre-filled search box based on the URL

where the problem encountered (e.g. ASOS) or include links to relevant category pages (Heinz)

⁄ Alerts search engines for errors on the site ⁄ Waste of crawl budget when crawling & indexing these pages ⁄ Do not pass link equity to relevant product or category pages

404 custom pages: Disadvantages

Strategy 2: Redirect to relevant page

Strategy 2: Redirect OOS pages to the parent category page

⁄ Redirect OOS pages to the closest parent or a similar product page (following internal structure or breadcrumbs of the site)

⁄ Recommended solution for most scenarios

Redirect OOS pages: Advantages

⁄ SEO value will be passed to the relevant product page⁄ Dynamically-generated messages can be used to customise and enhance user

experience⁄ Note: Retains link equity if the product page has gather external links

Dibor Home Accessories redirects user to an out

of stock product URL offering product

alternatives

⁄ Not recommended when product coming back to stock⁄ Confusing user experience where the customer – instead of seeing the

requested product lands on a different category or product page⁄ Site speed: Redirects can increase page load time, particularly for mobile

devices⁄ If server can’t handle redirections: Redirect only the OOS pages with more

external links & keep the rest as a 404 page⁄ With some e-commerce platforms it is difficult to automate

Redirect OOS pages: Disadvantages

Strategy 3: Use the “unavailable after” meta tag

Strategy 3: Use the “unavailable after” meta tag when product is unavailable

⁄ “unavailable after” can be used to inform Google when page is no longer available

⁄ Deadline to tell Google when to stop indexing page⁄ Often used in auction sites⁄ Google usually removes the content 24-48 hours after expiration

“Unavailable after” meta tag: Advantages

⁄ Part of official Google recommendation⁄ Fast removal of pages from the index after they reached the specified

deadline (treated as a removal request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tz7Eexwp_A

“Unavailable after” meta tag: Recommendations

⁄ Effective only when an expiry date can be set for the page⁄ Useful for auction pages or websites that products are replaced or updated

frequently⁄ E.g. Craigslist

Strategy 4: Leave the OOS product page as it is

Strategy 4: Use page as it is for user information

⁄ Keep page as it is for product pages that are rich in content & contain information that are useful to users

⁄ The page should recommend rich information, reviews and alternatives for the product or page to increase conversions and improve user experience

Leave the page as it is: Advantages

⁄ Best solution for temporary OOS products⁄ Suitable for high traffic quality & evergreen content or trade mark products ⁄ Strongly recommended to include a message to inform user that product is

discontinued & use JS overlay suggesting similar products

Leave the page as it is: Customised message

⁄ Incorporate keyword-targeted internal links to drive traffic & increase user experience

⁄ Old real estate listing that still brings traffic to the site, as users are interested in sold properties & market landscape

Leave the page as it is: Disadvantages

⁄ Old pages that don’t enhance the value of the site ⁄ Waste crawl budget on thin pages that are not unique, fresh, or valuable⁄ Risks lower conversion rates ⁄ New products contain same content as previous product page, causing

duplication ⁄ Recommendation: Show related products & additional user generated content

Retain seasonal product pages (esp. fashion retailers)

⁄ Many fashion sites leave seasonal pages permanently on the site (e.g. Xmas Jumpers)

⁄ Link equity is accumulated over the years which gives the site competitive advantage

OOS overlay and redirections are the most common solutions

Dibor Home Accessories redirects user to an out of stock

product URL offering product alternatives

Mamy Sugarcraft informs customers about unavailable products without

redirections

Why redirection is the preferred SEO solution: Advantages

Pros

⁄ Authority will be passed through to other areas of the website

⁄ Customisation can be applied to enhance the user experience via dynamically generated messages

Why redirection is the preferred SEO solution: Disadvantages

Cons

⁄ Usually not recommended when the product is expected to come back in stock

⁄ In the case of seasonal products, redirecting to relevant product pages is not possible

OOS product redirections on New Look

Scraping OOS product pages

⁄ Scraped the SERPs to uncover all OOS seasonal product pages⁄ Used importXML query for all ATG seasonal pages combining every colour &

“out of stock” identifier

⁄ Alternatively use Screaming Frog for on-page text assuming that the OOS indicator is contained in the HTML code

colourOut of stock identifierATG page

How we solved the problem

⁄ Given the scale of New Look’s website, redirecting OOS to relevant category provided the largest overall benefit

⁄ A sample of 4,200 permanent OOS product pages were collected to run the test before the full roll-out

⁄ The OOS pages were redirected to 150 category landing pages that could provide the best user experience

What we did: Link equity flow chart

Women’s dress OOS

Women’s Dresses

Category PageHomepage

Flow of link equity from product pages towards homepage via inter linking

Redirections from OOS pages to category pages

Women’s top OOS

Women’s Tops Category Page

Women’s shoe OOS

Women’s Shoes Category Page

Women’s bag OOS

Women’s Bags Category Page

Results after 7 days

⁄ Forward3D could see that the number of keywords OOS product pages ranked for dropped by 15% over a week and were largely replaced by the category page URLs

⁄ Category pages visibility increased by 11.19% over the same period. These consisted of existing keyword rankings as well as entirely new keywords

⁄ Within these 7 days – these category pages gained 7.14% more visits and revenue figures improved by 4.5%

⁄ Bounce rate improvements are not known because they couldn’t be measured accurately

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One week after the redirections were im-plemented, the nm-ber of keywords cat-egory pages ranked

for increased by 11.19%

Redirections were implemented

One week after the re-directions, the number

of keywords prodct pages were ranking for dropped by 17.71%

Number of keywords category pages are ranking forNumber of keywords product pages are ranking for

Significant improvements were seen on NewLook.com

Conclusions: Consensus on handling OOS pages is unlikely

⁄ Based on the case study, it is proven to be highly effective to redirect OOS pages to relevant category level pages with the aid of an overlay explaining the redirection to the user

⁄ The actual number of keywords that these pages ranked for increased significantly, resulting in an uplift in both revenue and visits

⁄ However, a consensus on handling out of stock product is unlikely, since previously sold products can be attributed with value other than their physical ownership (such as the generation of on-site product reviews)