GO RUCK SEO

In June of 2017, I was introduced to GORUCK, with the gift of my first Ruck Sack, the Echo. GORUCK was founded by Green Beret, Jason McCarthy out of his expertise and desire to prepare himself and others for survival. Some of you may be familiar with the idea behind a “bug out bag” or “go bag”, the birth of the term, GORUCK was born out of rucksack(backpack) and the necessity for action and purpose. GORUCK offers gear and apparel for the courageous men and women who serve our country, law enforcement officers, first responders, government employees, outdoorsmen and woman, weekend warriors, physical fitness guru’s, students and business professionals.

There are three pillars that influence the GORUCK way of life and how they construct and promote their Gear, Apparel and Events.

1.     EXCELLENCE

2.     TOUGHNESS

3.     ADAPTABILITY

Of the three pillars, adaptability is the best illustration of how they operate as an ecommerce retailer. In 2017, GORUCK converted from the customizable cloud commerce platform of Mozu to the usability centered software of BigCommerce. According to GORUCK’s founder, he prefers this software as it allows his company to focus their limited resources on telling their brand story. He reinforces this idea by saying, “BigCommerce isn’t going anywhere, it’s proven as a good and simple to use ecommerce platform. It doesn’t offer or promise a lot of bells and whistles, the lack thereof forces simplicity upon our team. That’s a good thing btw.” (GORUCK, 2017).

As GORUCK transitioned to a new web platform, they allocated time and resources to their web analytics of monitoring their web visitors and customers. Their first order of business lies with the transparency of their consumer data collection as it is one of the tenets that GORUCK lives by. GORUCK collects personal information* about their customers during their shopping process so that they can better serve their customer during future experiences with their brand.

Customer information collection may be obtained:

·       At the time of customers purchase

·       Create a customer account

·       Upon Newsletter sign

·       Customer opt in for GORUCK news, offerings, and savings

In Return, this information is used by GORUCK for:

·       Customer Service purposes

·       Fulfill and track orders

·       Access order history

·       Communicate GORUCK news, offer and promotions to customers

·       GORUCK.com uses cookies to serve Google Ads based on a customer’s past visits to their website (https://www.goruck.com/privacy-policy/)

*GORUCK promises to never sell their customers private information to third parties (GORUCK, 2018).

Other orders of business included their On page Optimization of their Site Map, Customer check out issues and Redirects. 

SITE MAP
GORUCK has attempted to make their website straightforward to navigate, browse and start and complete the buying process. I have highlighted a few of the key elements of a positive buying experience from a snapshot of their homepage.

1.     Search Bar

2.     Navigation Menu

3.     Account login

4.     Cart

5.     Banner scroll of ideas or information to assist in your web search for information or products

6.     Instant web support

7.     Reviews

To better serve their web customers, GORUCK has taken a closer look at the images they place on their site. They have revisited both the image files and their content. For example, GORUCK sited that, “We scrubbed a lot of pics and turned them into squares, which is a better use of space on your browser whether you’re on your phone (increasing hugely) or on your desktop at work, not working.” (GORUCK, 2017).

CUSTOMER CHECK OUT AND ORDER FULFILLMENT
My personal checkout journey was transparent as GORUCK intended. The shipping email that I received from info@goruck.com hinted that they have partnered with Newgistics as their gear distributor. As a fairly new company, GORUCK does not attempt to hide the fact that they are not order fulfillment enthusiasts, which has led to inefficiencies along the way. The hope and intent with Newgistics was to streamline and automate shipping operations. I believe this to be true as my personal timeline for order confirmation and shipping was as follows:

1.     Order confirmation: 2/22/18. Received from GORUCK <team@goruck.com>

2.     Shipping confirmation: 2/23/18. Received from GORUCK <info@goruck.com>

a.      To check the delivery status of your package at any time, please visit the Newgistics Enhanced Tracking Portal with the following URL: http://shipment.co/tracking/

I unfortunately had to return the items as they were intended as a gift and did not fit the recipient. I shipped the items back to GORUCK with the prepaid return label and received an email from team@goruck.com that the order had been received and that I should expect a refund of the intended amount. I enjoyed receiving this email as I found comfort in knowing that they value my piece of mind and transparency. In my opinion, this small automated action added to their credibility.

This week, I received an email from noreply-goruck@bazaarvoice-cgc.com . Bazaarvoice helps retailers connect to the voice if their customers. The intent of the email was to ask for product review/customer service as noted in the customer data collection section of this blog. Questions were geared to identify customer engagement and conversion such as:

·       Demographics: Age, gender and location

·       Brand Engagement: How do you use the product and/or have you completed a GORUCK event

·       Quality Control: Rate the quality/value of product and would you recommend to a friend

The integration of ecommerce platforms, order fulfillment centers and voice of customer programming expands sales opportunities and saves hours of manual data entry. However, the recent Bazaarvoice email did leave me with a question, as I had returned the products. Why did they send me an email about a product that I returned? This may mean that the overlap in software’s has led to the oversight in their customer management systems.  This may be an area for improvement for GORUCK.  

REDIRECTS

Lastly, the on page optimization that GORUCK has set their sights on is making sure their URLs (new and old) go to the right spot. As we have learned, healthy URLs lead to higher Google search rankings and Search Engine Optimization. With rebuilding their website, about 80% of their URLs have redirects in place. The other 20% were cited as “either too complicated/unpredictable to account for or not worth it to dig around every sitemap we’ve ever had in existence across all our platforms, ever.” (GORUCK,2017).

This example is a good indicator of the importance of Vanity URLs as discussed in Web Analytics 2.0. Rather than printing a full or complicated URL to your website, print ad, radio ad or promotion email. Prepare an easy to remember vanity URL (Kaushik, 2010). The importance of these vanity URLs is that they assist in capturing incoming traffics data by the assigned campaign ID. The campaign ID is associated with the promotional or marketing strategy (radio, print, email ad). Tracking parameters within these URLs assist with computing conversion rates.

In closing, the GORUCK founder said it best, “In order to focus on the front end of what you see, the stories we tell, the back end has to be as beautifully boring and so-called perfect as possible, meaning it’s supposed to just work and then a team of non-coders has to be able to manage it, not just a wizard with magic code dealing the only antidote to chaos.” (GORUCK, 2017).

These words are a great illustration of selecting the right software that fits your business needs. GORUCK has made the switch from a customizable software (mozu)to a user friendly software (BigCommerce) as their company does not have the IT strength to handle the analyses tools. They would much rather allocate their limited resources to marketing their brand story and image. For being a relatively small, new business with a developing IT team, they have done well with diving into integral starting points for on page optimization and SEO. For example, they have focused on making their website user friendly by focusing on its transparency, site map, customer service and navigability.

References

Bazaarvoice, Inc. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bazaarvoice.com/

BigCommerce. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.bigcommerce.com/

GORUCK. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.goruck.com/privacy-policy/

GORUCK. (2017). New Website Behind the Scenes (warning: long and boring) [News Blog Post]. Retrieved from http://news.goruck.com/from-hq/new-website-behind-the-scenes-warning-long-and-boring/ 

GORUCK. (2017). State of GORUCK 2017 – Sunshine & Scars in Florida [News Blog Post]. Retrieved from http://news.goruck.com/from-hq/state-of-goruck-2017-sunshine-scars-in-florida/

GORUCK. (2016). Business Behind the Scenes: Why We Partnered With Newgistics for All Our Gear Distribution [News Blog Post]. Retrieved from http://news.goruck.com/gear-news/business-behind-the-scenes-why-we-partnered-with-newgistics-for-all-our-gear-distribution/

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, Inc

Mozu. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.mozu.com/enterprise-ecommerce-platform

Newgistics. (2018). Retrieved from https://newgistics.com/about/