All brands, but especially e-commerce brands, need a powerful SEO strategy if they’re to succeed and grow. Just consider the fact that something like 50% of all shopping journeys start with search. Some sources say 44%, while others say it’s more like 51%. Wherever you want to pull a piece of data from to back up your argument (what’s that line about lies, damned lies, and statistics again?) I think we all know, just from our own experience, that search is a major part of how we discover, research, and buy products. 

Andrew Lang once said statistics are used as a drunk uses a lamppost: for support rather than illumination. The analogy also works with those who’d naysay your use of data: they use them like a drunk uses a lamppost: for urinating on. But, consider that 74% of in-store shoppers also use search as part of their journey. Whether you want people to buy from your e-commerce website or visit your bricks and mortar store owning search is critical. 

Now let’s stop all this leaning on data (or pissing on it, depending on your stance) while I make a bold statement:

If you just focus on SEO to win in search, you’re losing the battle. 

Why? 

Because you need search experience optimisation (SXO). And here’s why.  

Why you need SXO not just SEO 

Don’t think for a minute that SXO is in opposition to SEO. It’s simply the right way to approach search if you want performance in the short term and robust growth over the mid to long term. 

If you’re not familiar with search experience optimisation, here’s the TMLI5 version:

• SXO combines SEO, UX, and CRO to create a holistic approach to search performance (at Organic we also include paid media as vital in this mix, helping to enhance overall performance through the funnel).
• This end-to-end view of the customer journey considers user needs as well as what search engines are looking for from your site.
• It creates a virtuous circle of driving high volume, high-quality traffic, to a compelling website experience that meets user needs and is optimised to get them to conversion quicker. 
• The end result is supercharged search performance, happier customers, and more growth.

Here are the most compelling reasons to go for a search experience agency as opposed to your garden variety SEO agency.

SXO sells more now, and in the future

SXO is the ultimate way to capitalise on immediate demand and build marketing that continues to deliver growth over the long term. High-quality SEO will help you create content that increases traffic numbers, quality, and search visibility. Improving your site experience means that the traffic that arrives gets what they need to move closer to purchase. Laser-focused CRO makes that purchase faster, simpler, and much more likely. Add high-performing paid media activity into the mix and you basically create an end-to-end search journey that leads the customer inexorably towards conversion. 

And this creates the virtuous circle mentioned above. Sites that are well-optimised for search gain traffic and visibility. When that traffic arrives at a site designed closely around user intent not only does the customer have a great experience but positive signals back to search engines tell them “this site is what people want”, so search performance is enhanced. And when your CRO is on point the sales mount up and people keep coming back. 

SXO builds competitive advantage

You can build a distinctive experience for your customers by harnessing the power of SXO. While just focusing on SEO might build your visibility and traffic, it could all be for naught if that traffic ends up on a dreary, cookie-cutter e-commerce site with nondescript product images set against a stark white background. 

A recent white paper by True Digital contains the first signs that there’s a real reason to change to a more emotive experience. And that this shift can yield competitive advantage that yields commercial gains. 

Their study reveals that in their words: “Emotive design techniques sell. They elevate the experience, increase usability and make brands more memorable. But they need to be paired with fundamental usability principles to make an impact.”

Over the mid to long term these types of incremental differences compound into something much bigger. If you can establish, through your e-commerce experience, an emotional and compelling brand experience that is coupled to solid best practice UX principles, you will stand out from competitors and grow your business. 

It’s just like Les Binet and Peter Field’s seminal work on long and short-term activity in advertising and marketing. You need both to truly grow and succeed. And so it is with SXO. You need SEO, UX, and CRO. You need best practice, emotion and creativity. 

Phew. I hope your bladder is coping with all these lampposts we’re stopping at. My shoulder is killing me, that’s for sure. 

SXO helps you deal with that capricious mistress: Google

Nobody knows what the next moment brings with Google’s algorithm. We’ve seen big changes rolled out that have decimated businesses that were carefully following tactics that helped them rank better in search. And not always black hat, game-the-system type tactics, but the sorts of recommendations diligent agencies and even Google themselves have provided. 

How can SXO help you manage it? The unremitting focus on the end-to-end user journey and user needs means that you’re always closely aligned with one of Google’s most important concerns: what searchers want. 

It also means that when big changes do come, your teams are ready to work together to solve issues in a rapid fashion. 

SXO unifies separate teams behind shared goals

All teams in a business have their own targets, jobs to be done, and concerns. What feels most important on any given day can be making sure you’re proving that your team is hitting all of its targets. This is natural of course, nobody wants to seem to be failing at their tasks. But problems arise in this siloed approach. 

Firstly, all the efforts of any team should support the main business objectives of the brand, whatever they may be. Sometimes that isn’t so much the case. SXO brings SEO, UX, and CRO together to solve commercial problems. 

Secondly, decisions might be made by one team (whichever one has the whip hand on any given project) that negatively impacts the other and consequently causes issues in achieving these wider objectives. We’ve seen it happen many times. And it really doesn’t have to. SXO fosters closer relationships between teams which helps reduce these issues. 

SXO also helps teams realise that sometimes a decision that isn’t optimal for them might be right for the greater good. It could be that sacrificing a little bit of optimising content on a page results in better alignment with user needs, leading to customers spending more time on the page and being more likely to convert. It could be that the change CRO wants to make to the positioning of a button hacks a user’s behaviour just enough to improve the conversion rate while not being optimal for a purely “user-centred” UX. And that brilliant way of helping users get to specific content by the UX team might have to be binned if it causes search engines a real issue and hampers rankings. 

There’s got to be some give and take. And SXO is the ideal approach to make all teams open to this, instead of fiercely protecting their fiefdoms. 

SXO is the only way to really think about search going forward. Just focusing on SEO isn’t going to be enough, nor is trying to optimise the living hell out of your site’s conversion points. 

Ready to move beyond a siloed approach and drive growth? Drop us a line. We’re experts at Search That Sells.