Retro Football KitsA Case Study
Where passion for the beautiful game meets nostalgia and authenticity.
Retro Football Kits is the leading curator of 100% genuine retro football shirts and other sporting accessories. Established in 2019, their collection has been a testament to the timeless style and nostalgia that only classic football shirts can evoke. Sporting selections of original football shirts from now and the yesteryears and sourced from across the world, Retro Football Kits lets you get your hands on football memorabilia from clubs like Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, and international teams!
The people behind Retro Football Kits aren’t just entrepreneurs. They’re true avid fans on a mission to bring the golden era of football to every football enthusiast’s wardrobe.
In 2020, Retro Football Kits enlisted SEO Premier's help to promote their brand and do key on-page and off-page optimisation activities for its website. Through careful analysis and rigorous solutions design thinking, we recommended the following initiatives:
Search Engine Optimisation
By using Keyword Research and delving into the demographics of Retro Football Kits, we were able to tease out the keywords and phrases they likely use, ultimately laying for us the bedrock for all optimisation tasks necessary to promote the brand, including content creation, backlinking, paid ads campaign, web redesign, and analytics for monitoring and tracking their campaign’s performance.
Technical SEO
The activities involved auditing the website, detecting poor site architecture elements, duplicate content, and incomplete/poorly-written meta titles and descriptions. The goal of a technical SEO audit is to identify and fix underlying technical issues on a website to improve user experience and improve the site’s visibility (better rankings and increased organic traffic!) in search engine results.
Competitor Analysis
We benchmarked Retro Football Kits’ competitors to identify and evaluate the brand’s strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. It allowed us to fine-tune our roadmap and understand deeply their competitors and trends in the market.
Content Creation & Link Building
From there, we rolled out our Content Creation campaign and did outreach and Link-Building. The highlight of this was the launch of the Football Shirt Stories - an assortment of inspiring stories about football fans and their relationship.
Backlinking
The backlink strategy we crafted for Retro Football Kits was one that’s focused on acquiring healthy and quality links from various types of high-authority domains, including business, arts, entertainment, shopping, telecom, and travel.
Retro Football Kits Gained...
New Backlinks
Additional Referring Domains
Monthly Organic Traffic
What these key measures indicate is the role that SEO Premier performed in the success of Retro Football Kits in just a short amount of time. The consolidated efforts from on-page optimisation (technical audits & keyword ranking) to off-page optimisation activities (content marketing and link-building) all paid off. In every step of the way, SEO Premier provided regular and accurate reporting to measure and track Retro Football Kits’ growth.
Creatives & Web Design
In designing the current look of the website, we particularly paid attention to basic principles of design such as visual and information hierarchy, relevant imagery and graphics, generous of white space for readability, responsive design for both mobile and web, clear and eye-grabbing call-to-actions, and presence of branding elements like logo, hero images,
SEO Premier added the following UI/UX recommendations to the Retro Football Kits website:
Slideshow Banner
While carousels or slideshow banners virtually have zero impact on SEO, its presence has a universal appeal on users. In this case, we carefully curated hero images for sections on the website we wanted to highlight like the Classic Kits, New in Shop, Modern Bangers, Randomizer, Gift Cards. The slideshow banner provided easy access and navigation for specific landing pages we targeted to optimise.
Easy Navigation for Menu and Collections
We recommended a seamless navigation for Retro Football Kits’ menu and collections to increase the website’s ease-of-use, reduce bounce rate, and improve conversions.
Update Product Imagery
The old photos were flat and only featured the merchandise. Retro Football Kits then moved to a more dynamic, more vibrant image featuring real people wearing football shirts.
Addition of 'Next Day Delivery' Counter
We added a Next Day Delivery counter to propel customers to place their orders immediately and receive their package the next day. Retro Football Kits’ ability to do next day shipping is truly a competitive advantage over rival stores and is a testament that our client has optimised its logistics well enough to deliver the orders quickly. Plus, its addition to the website greatly reduced cart abandonment rate especially for time-sensitive purchases.
Creation of Randomizer
The randomizer feature on the website helped undecided customers discover potential items that they may like. The whole concept increased user engagement by providing an unpredictable yet dynamic browsing experience and it greatly improved the discoverability of unknown merchandise from the store. Not to mention, it introduced an element of surprise which contributed to improved customer experience and brand loyalty.
Addition of 'Football Shirt Stories' Blog
To further humanize the brand, we suggested an approach for regular content creation whose chief focus was to highlight the stories behind owning football memorabilia, fan experiences, football team favourites, etc.
Retro Football Kits Website - Before and After
Paid Advertisement
Drawing lessons from the low performance of the previous cold campaigns, we tested out a new strategy which was to test the new audiences for the next Cold Sales Campaign. We hit some speed bumps along the road, more specifically that the football audience is massive and targeting felt like casting a wide dragnet of all audiences. But with a combination of new audiences, SEO Premier was able to optimise the proper targeting of the audience in a sports-related business like Retro Football Kits.
After 4 months, we started to yield very positive results.
Parallel to the cold sales campaign was the running of the Remarketing Campaign. During the analysis, we noticed that there are a lot of prospects falling to the wayside of the sales funnel. To stanch the spill, we created a remarketing campaign that directly targeted the people at the middle of the sales funnel.
The result was extremely affirmative.
Retro Football Kits needed a boost in engagement for their socials so SEO Premier ran a Page Likes Campaign. The primary challenge faced by our client was a relatively modest number of likes and level of engagement on their social media, which contributed to a limited organic reach of their content. To remedy this issue, SEO Premier segmented the audience, created compelling social media creatives, and A/B tested elements of a video ad campaign. The results floated around £0.60-0.90 GBP per like, but through the evolution of our creatives (from photos to new videos), we dropped the cost to around 60%.
Our campaign didn’t only focus on increasing page likes, but also to attract our target demographic, which are people passionate about sports and genuinely interested in sports merchandise. After the page likes campaign, Retro Football Kits’ socials saw a boost in overall brand awareness, engagement, and conversions.
Since the Beginning of the Campaign...
New Users Acquired
Increase in Engagement Rate
Additional Page Views
Increase in Sessions
Analytics
Analytics is a crucial element of Retro Football Kits’ marketing strategy. By accurately tracking and measuring user behaviour, the brand gained valuable insights into what products and content are resonating with the audience and where there are opportunities for improvement.
Data Driven Marketing
Throughout our engagement with Retro Football Kits, we kept analytics in mind and made sure we used data to inform all aspects of our strategy, from keyword selection to content creation to email campaigns. SEO Premier made data-driven decisions even in the most creative and subjective aspects of our campaign.
E-commerce Tracking
To gain those valuable insights, we implemented e-commerce tracking to understand user journeys and identify areas where customers were dropping off. This information was then used to make improvement recommendations to the checkout process and increase conversion rates. E-commerce tracking also enabled us to identify new product opportunities and categories that would be of interest to its audience.
Attribution
SEO Premier used analytics to measure the impact of marketing campaigns. Through attribution, we were able to track conversions across all channels. It informed us which domains are driving the most traffic and which channels or paid ads are driving the most conversions, giving us valuable insights into optimising ad campaigns and improving ROI for Retro Football Kits.
Analytics and Tracking Helped Acheive a...
Increase in Organic Traffic
Reduction in Bounce Rate
Increase in Conversion Rate
How Retro Football Kits can continue to Use Analytics to Grow its Business
Use Analytics to Identify New Product Opportunities
By tracking customer demand and trends, Retro Football Kits can identify new products and categories that would be of interest to its audience.
Use Analytics to Personalise the Customer Experience
By tracking user behaviour and preferences, Retro Football Kits can personalise the customer experience by recommending relevant products, content, and offers.
Use Analytics to Measure the Impact of Marketing Campaigns
By tracking conversions across all channels, Retro Football Kits can measure the impact of its marketing campaigns and identify which ones are most effective.
