The project brief
Picnic Wicker specialised in luxury hampers with quintessential British charm. Disappointed by the inferior quality of foreign imports, the Spurrs switched to hampers grown and crafted in Somerset. To support this new direction, they decided to revamp their website.
I was recommended by web developer Lucy Davies of Websites By Lucy to their web designer Catherine Livsey of Warmbread to help with navigation, web content and to lead a search engine optimisation boost (SEO).
Solution
Collaboration
When it comes to SEO, a copywriter can only control web content. But page speed makes a huge impact on Google ranking. Fortunately both Lucy and Catherine are talented web design and coding professionals. Catherine labelled images to include recommended key phrases, and kept image sizes compressed. Lucy’s elegant, succinct web code meant quick page speeds. And she also implemented all the ‘unseen’ SEO elements I’d written from meta descriptions to image alt tags.
Search Engine Optimisation boost
In such a crowded market, we needed to be specific with our key phrases.
Catherine had access to a SEO software programme, and said she’d share the key phrases it came up with. It was a bit of a disappointment that it only managed some generic phrases such as ‘picnic basket’ and ‘picnic hampers UK’.
After some intensive Google research, I improved them by adding words like ‘luxury’, ‘fitted’, ‘willow’, and ‘double-lidded’.
The finer details
Featuring ‘The finer details’ section to an online shop’s product description gives a place to expand on any USPs (Unique Selling Points). For Picnic Wicker, I delved deeper by asking the geographical sources of components. The Spurrs had worked hard to source their materials from quality suppliers. So why not share that the leather in the straps is from a Northamptonshire tannery and the tweed backboard is from Scotland?
Results
- 1 week after launch: ranked 5th in Google for the key phrase ‘British made picnic hamper’, not including ads
- 4 weeks: Reached 2nd place, despite tough competition from Etsy, Amazon and established suppliers
- 2 months: Dropped to 3rd place, probably because of aggressive summer season marketing by competitors
- 3 months: Achieved 1st place in Google
Update: the Spurrs have now retired, and so has Picnic Wicker. But it’s such a fascinating example of SEO fluctuations, that I’m keeping it as a case study.
A website that truly reflects our aims
“From concept, through copy writing to site build and go live we have received incredible advice and support leading to a website that truly reflects the aims of our company.
It is so nice to have a group of advisers in such an important area of our business who get us and what we are trying to achieve.”
Graeme and Karen Spurr, Picnic Wicker founders commenting on the team behind their website