I love SEO. There, I said it. 

I’ve been involved in SEO for a long time now and it’s continued to be interesting, challenging, and fulfilling, but lately, it just isn’t enough. There’s been a varying degree of disconnect between SEO and revenue over the years. If someone were to count the number of articles, webinars and talks about how to prove ROI for SEO that number would be high. That is why we’re now talking about SXO!

You don’t have to be around marketers long before you hear the words “silo”, “marketing mix”, or maybe even “holistic approach”. These are all well and good, but all too often these things are only talked about and not really used as a catalyst for change. This is where the SXO approach comes in. Search Experience Optimisation is the holistic approach, it is the mix, and it is the silo-buster that e-commerce needs. There are three key components that are fully focused on improving experience and driving revenue:

1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Reaching the right audience
2. User Experience (UX) – Giving the audience the best experience when they interact with your website
3. Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) – Improving the number and value of conversions

These three disciplines require specialisation to do really well. Trying to excel in all three as a generalist is challenging. That said, there are so many crossovers between them that it makes no sense to do them in isolation.

The SXO Approach

SEO

This is my favourite bit. We can use SEO to make the website as good as it can be in terms of both technical performance and relevance. SEO gives us the power to optimise the speed and efficiency of the website so that it loads as quickly as possible and is stable for users. People love a fast site that is easy to use, and so do search engines. SEO also helps us understand exactly what people are searching for, when they search, and what their preferred device is. With this knowledge, we can craft hyper-relevant, engaging content that is helpful and informative.

There are already ways that SEO seeks to improve UX through metrics like Core Web Vitals, where we are focused on fast landing pages that are stable when they load (when you try and click something, it doesn’t suddenly move). Also, through the optimisation of on-page content and images, we’re seeking to improve accessibility and the experience of those who use the web differently. Optimised content will have a clear heading structure and the content will be written to flow naturally and thematically. Image ALT text should be written to allow those who can’t directly see an image to understand its meaning. 

UX

Understanding users on a deeper level is the essence of UX.  By eliminating barriers and enhancing journey flow (usually, we’ll be working on the one you already have), we create logical and intuitive website experiences. Through continuous testing and analysis, we identify and rectify pain points, ensuring a happy satisfying user journey.  However, as is much more likely to be the case, we’ll be working on the one you already have. Through the application of the core principles of UX, we aim to understand the user on a deeper level and to know what they want and how they would most like to get there. Removing barriers, improving journey flow and making every element of the website logical in both form and function help to do this. By studying user behaviour, testing new ideas, and measuring everything along the way we can know where frustration can occur. Eliminating pain points and unnecessarily convoluted journeys with too many steps, blind alleys or broken pathways smooth the way to a satisfying experience.   

CRO

Conversion rate optimisation is where we move more towards the sharp end of e-commerce. Product views should lead to baskets being filled and on to the checkout for a completed purchase and after-sales email. SEO and UX find the people, give them a great experience and lead them straight to the product they want. From there on though, the risk of basket abandonment comes in to influence the likelihood of a purchase being made. Every abandoned basket may feel like a failure, but the old cliche is never more true here because that failure is just an opportunity to wear a bad hat. Every time a person bails on their purchase they are giving us data. That data can be used to form insights into what is going wrong and what to target in testing.

It may be something simple, like the delivery options being confusing, a problem with the address lookup, or the shipping costs getting calculated at the wrong point. Whatever it is that prevents that final click to confirm a purchase can be mapped, tracked, changed, and tested. From that test, we can determine the changes to be made to increase the conversion rate and fully capitalise on all that new traffic.

But we do some of this already!

Having separate teams for SEO, UX, and CRO is common practice. You can certainly see improvements by focusing on any one of these areas independently. For Instance, implementing SEO without CRO may boost traffic and revenue, despite minimal impact on conversion rates. Similarly, prioritising UX alongside a bit of CRO can enhance user experience and drive more conversions from existing traffic. 

Have an in-house or agency team that does SEO? Another that does UX (or did UX when the site was built)? One more to cover conversions? Well, great. Quite frankly, you absolutely can do any one of these in isolation and see improvements. SEO without CRO? You’ll get more traffic, roughly the same percentage of that traffic will buy something, and your revenue will increase. Doing UX and a bit of CRO? Cool. Your existing level and quality of traffic will remain about the same and more of those people will have a good experience, buy something, and be more likely to come back in the future.

But what if one team did it all? One team that works together day in and day out socialises regularly and knows how to get the best from each other because they all know each other’s personality quirks and preferred ways of working. That’s when it becomes a joined-up, integrated approach to optimisation.

Why SXO for e-commerce?

People who say SEO is a marathon not a sprint have clearly never seen Eliud Kipchoge run a sub 2-hour marathon. Try running just over 13 mph and tell me you’re not sprinting. It just means you may get some success from the start but the real wins come after prolonged, sustained effort. Well, SXO is a sprint, a 10k, a 10-mile trail race, a marathon, and a 200-mile ultramarathon through the desert. It encompasses all lengths of time and can start to yield success quickly. It will also continue to improve outcomes by iterating, testing and learning, and always seeking to make the digital experience more rewarding for everyone involved. 

This is, of course, without taking the Coca-Cola-style approach of reducing everyone down to stomach space (seriously, this is how Coca-Cola execs talk about you). It’s the truly holistic way of going from discovery to purchase to returning customer to brand champion. Yes, we want to increase revenue, but we’re not reducing people down to their Average Order Value. We’re putting the person at the centre of everything and creating a digital experience that is refreshingly simple yet engaging. 

We’re creating streamlined processes that will get them to where they want to be in the fewest clicks possible. 

We’re creating an optimised search experience that turns strangers into lifelong friends (aww).

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