Summer Internship Project Report On Identifying, adding and streamlining various digital marketing mediums on their amiability: focusing on Reach, Engagement and ROI. At Triveni Ethnics
In Partial Fulfillment Of PGDM – Batch XXV
Submitted To Prof. Subir Verma
By Avik Bal Roll No. 251147
FORE School of Management, New Delhi-16 June 2017
DECLARATION
I am, Mr. Avik Bal, Roll No. 251147, have completed my summer internship at Triveni Ethnics, Ethnics, 1018-1025, 1st Floor, Anupam Textile Market, Ring Road, Surat -, Gujarat 395002, and have submitted this project report entitled “Identifying, adding and streamlining various digital marketing mediums on their amiability: focusing on Reach, Engagement and ROI.” towards partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the Post Graduate Diploma in Management (FMG 25) 2016-18.
This report is the result of my own work, no part of it has earli er been comprised in any other report, monograph, dissertation or book.
Avik Bal
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CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that Mr. Avik Bal, Roll No. 251147, has completed his summer internship at Triveni Ethnics, Ethnics, 1018-1025, 1st Floor, Anupam Textile Market, Ring Road, Surat - Gujarat - 395002, and has submitted this project report entitled “Identifying, adding and streamlining various digital marketing mediums on their
amiability: focusing on Reach, Engagement and ROI” towards partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the Post Graduate Diploma in Management (FMG 25) 2016-18. This report is the result of his own work and to the best of my knowledge, no part of it has earlier comprised any other report, monograph, m onograph, dissertation or book. This project was carried out under my overall supervision.
Date: Place:
Internal Faculty Guide
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I sincerely thank FORE School of Management & Triveni Ethnics for giving me this opportunity to carry out a Project with an ethnic wear brand and get exposed to the ecommerce industry, e-tailing segment, textile category. It has been a privilege to work with Triveni Ethnics and I sincerely thank them for allowing me the privilege to work on their online marketing mediums. During the course of this project I have been involved in identifying the various online marketing communication channels, the industry norms and trends, the ecommerce industry as a whole and most importantly, the consumer behavioral attributes in online purchasing. I also thank Prof. Subir Verma who supervised me throughout this project. Without his esteemed help the project would not have been such a success. His coordinated suggestions has aided me in overcoming the barriers I faced while working on the project. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Arvind Saraf, Director, Triveni Ethnics, who was my mentor in the company for the project. His constant monitoring and guidance has been an essential ingredient of my project. The way he gave me the opportunity and confidence to go ahead in the project was truly encouraging. I would also like to extend my gratitude and humble regard to Miss Vitika Mehta, Marketing Manager, Triveni Ethnics for being a constant guide cum mentor in assisting me with her valuable inputs, not only about the digital marketing channels but also enlightening me about the textile industry and marketing outreach activities in ecommerce industry as a whole. I have learned a lot of valuable lessons from the industry experts. Working with them has been an immensely enriching experience which I believe, would help me a lot in iii
my career prospects. The company as a whole has helped me morph my nascent thoughts to a matured marketing knowledge base which I am confident to be able to put into valuable endeavors in future.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Topic
Page Number
Declaration ………………………………………………………………………………..
i
Certificate ………………………………………………………………………………….
ii
Acknowledgement Acknowledgement
iii
Table of Content ……………………………………………………………………….
v
List of Figures ……………………………………………………………………………
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Executive Summary
…………………………………………………………………
1
1 Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………..
3
……………………………………………………………………
1.1
Organization Background ………………………………………
3
1.2
Relevance …………………………………………………………………
7
1.3
Literature Review …………………………………………………….
8
1.4
Project Objective ……………………………………………………..
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2 Methodology
……………………………………………………………………………
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2.1
Project Design ………………………………………………………….
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2.2
Data Collection and Sampling ……………………………….
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2.2.1
Web Data Analytics …………………………………………..
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2.2.2
Web Performance Audit …………………………………..
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2.2.3
SEO Audit …………………………………………………………..
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2.2.4
Social Media KPIs …………………………………………….
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3 Results and Discussion ………………………………………………………
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4 Conclusions and Recommendations ………………………………
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5 Further Scope of Studies ……………………………………………………
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6 Annexure
…………………………………………………………………………………
40
Research Papers Reference………………………………………………….
40
Web Sources Reference
42
……………………………………………………….
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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Indian 1: Indian Textile and Apparel Industry Figure 2: India's 2: India's Apparel Exports Figure 3: E-tail 3: E-tail and Retail Market Share Breakup Figure 4: Percentage 4: Percentage Share of E-tail across world markets. Figure 5: Category 5: Category Split of E-Commerce in India, *Includes footwear, Bags, Belts, Wallet, Watches etc. Figure 6: Percentage 6: Percentage Contribution of Men, Women and Kids category in Apparel and lifestyle E-tail. Figure 7: Web 7: Web Traffic Sources (or channels) in a Day. Traffic Data for 24 April 2017 Figure 8: Performance 8: Performance summary for website www.triveniethnics.com as retrieved from pingdom.com web analysis tool. Figure 9: Content 9: Content Size and Requests by content type for website www.triveniethnics.com as retrieved from pingdom.com web analysis tool. Figure 10: Facebook 10: Facebook Insights Page showing the times of the day when the fan base is mostly active. Figure 11: Engagement 11: Engagement levels during Bahubali and Mother's day facebook contest. Figure 12: Engagement 12: Engagement levels of Facebook Page as measured from the Reactions, Comments, Shares and Likes Metrics. Figure 13: Facebook 13: Facebook Share of posts and sentiments during t he Mother's Day Campaign. vi
Figure 14: Traffic 14: Traffic sources and demographics during the Mother's Day Campaign. Figure 14: Web 14: Web Data Summary for triveniethnics.com for April 2017, retrieved from Google Analytics Figure 15: Web 15: Web Data Summary for triveniethnics.com for May 2017, retrieved from Google Analytics Figure 17: User Demographics Demographics - Gender and Age Group
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
My project in Triveni Ethnics started with a brief introduction ot the textile industry, sales and marketing aspects in ecommerce space, a short stint in cold visits in Surat localities with a goal to generate leads, build a corporate rel ationship and prospecting for “ethnic wear day celebration” in collaboration with Triveni Ethnics.
The technical activities involved aiding changes in website user interface design, modifying the user interaction appeals, monitoring web traffic volume, their sources, mediums and behaviors on triveniethnics.com website. During the project, I was also assigned to develop a website for their corporate partnership program called “Officially Ethnic”.
The design activities involved planning, composing and designing email newsletters, graphic designs for advertisements that went live on website, online mediums like social media and paid media channels. The writing activities involved composing the Wikipedia page. During the tenure of the project, I was responsible for composing and creating the Wikipedia page for Triveni Ethnics. Additional writing activities involved creating content for blog posts, social media posts and email newsletters. The digital marketing activities comprised of auditing the website, Search Engine Optimization (improving the webpage ranking), Keyword Research for Adwords, Backlink Building (listing Triveni in different directories), Affiliate Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, SMS Marketing, Whats App broadcasting, and Online Reputation Management. Analytics has been a major aid in all these activities to decide on the ROI of different channels and managing the online advertisements
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expense and consumer front communication levels accordingly. Based on the performance data, we have planned the various marketing activities scheduling like the frequency of promotional mails, WhatsApp and SMS broadcasts and social posting. The marketing outreach activities involved identifying different online portals (Video bloggers, Fashion writers, Fashion Show Organizers and industry inf luencers), select them on their relevancy and value proposition in order to collaborate or partner with Triveni in barter terms.
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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1
Background
Triveni Ethnics is a like a microcosmic m icrocosmic India – a long lived system, blended in with new elements, now being thrust through a culture of change. Triveni was established in 1985 by Mr Giridhar Saraf in Surat, the rapidly growing textile hub of India. He started with a manufacturing facili ty “Sakambari Silk Mills” which produces synthetic sarees under the brand name Triveni. TriveniSarees.com (now triveniethnics.com) was setup in 2011 – to take the fabulous Triveni collection worldwide, online. 'Iness' took our learnings with designer wears with the aim of creating a viable online market for them, and 'Hues & Vibes' is Triveni's foray in home & kitchen linen. Wish Book was setup in 2015 to share Triveni's learnings about technology innovation for SMEs & e-Commerce e -Commerce to a wider audience. Vision: (We envision) A world where grace, dignity and identity are expressed through
the vibrancy of ethnic apparel. Mission: To enable & inspire every individual to experience, understand, respect and
explore cultures through personal experiences of ethnic apparels.
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Marketing Outreach Activities: Institutional
Triveni extends its activities in various educational institute campuses with an aim to create brand awareness, boost the employer branding factor and select brilliant talents for job offer. The target institutes primarily includes the Design Schools and Management colleges. The various programs are listed below. I.
Campus Live Projects & Contests
II.
u-Design Contest @ Triveni
III.
u-Design Contest 2016
IV.
Triveni Case Challenge
V.
Triveni @ Campus
Relationship Marketing Initiatives
Triveni aims to partner, collaborate and/or sponsor with various external influencers and valuable stakeholders through their various Engagement Programs. The programs they are currently having are listed li sted below. I.
Marketing Partners: Tapping coupon sharing websites to list Triveni
products. They are mostly partnered in pay per conversion basis. II.
Vendor Program: Onboarding new vendors to sell their products in Triveni
portal. The Triveni Ethnics Ecommerce website lists products of multiple other renowned vendors along with Triveni’s sarees so as to offer more varieties and range of selection for consumers flocking to Triveni website. III.
Affiliate Program: Creating a network of affiliates incentivizing with sales
based commission.
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IV.
International Partnership: Triveni Brand Ambassador in international
borders. They are similar to affiliates, who act as an intermediary between Triveni and its international customer base. V.
Corporate Partnership: Collaborating with corporate houses to celebrate “Ethnic Wear Day” where Triveni act as a gifting partner and power sponsor
supporting the event. VI.
International Distributor: This is similar to international partnership
program, except that in this case, textile dealers, wholesalers and agents from international borders are added in the Triveni Distribution network. Potential distributors are contacted telephonically and proposed to become an agent or whole seller with Triveni in their country of residence. VII.
Triveni Vivah: This is one of the new initiatives from Triveni where the
wedding sarees are offered at offer prices and customized designs. Interested bride and grooms are suggested with “wedding wardrobe”, a
collection of wedding glamour. VIII.
Wholesale Buyer Program: This is aimed to attract wholesalers from
across the country to join the Triveni distribution network. IX.
Campus Ambassador Program: This is Triveni’s initiative to reach out to
campuses, especially design schools like NIFT and NID. A student from a campus represents triveni’s products, creates a buzz around the new
designs and fashion trends. They receive free gifts, merchandises and commissions on the sales occurring through their network. X.
Get Ethnicized: This is an initiative to tap bloggers and fashion trend
setters. Triveni gifts them new designs which they put in their reviews and recommendations.
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XI.
Writers Ahoy: Fashion Writers, Design Critics, Celebrity bloggers are invited to write on Triveni’s blog or include Triveni in their personal portals. They are also provided with Triveni’s products for free as per their choice
with a condition that they will feature the product in their social networks.
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1.2
Relevance
Triveni Ethinics brand name is backed by a 32 year experienced textile manufacturer Sakambari Silk Mills Ltd. Owing to manufacturing as its core competency coupled with a string distribution network and market reputation, the firm aimed to foray in to the ecommerce space in 2011 to make its products accessible to international markets. This initiative is further strengthened by its subsidiary Wishbook Application which is a B2B networking application facilitating communication between retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers. This subsidiaries of the business are supported by a accumulative sales network and marketing outreach activities. Three popular brand names and multiple micro websites like Hues and Vibes (featuring Home Décor), Silpakala (Featuring new Artisans and their work) and inness (featuring new designs in textile industry) together make the overall brand presence in the online space highly noticeable. Being successfully operating the online sales through its ecommerce marketplace triveniethnics.com and being present in 8 other ecommerce websites, the online sales network has grown to huge figure. Growing step by step with online sales is the online reputation, user engagement and digital branding via its social networking channels and blogging network of influencers. This makes Triveni Ethnics highly in the forefront of the need to create a brand value proposition online and redefine the online purchase criteria. Online marketing communication channels play a preeminent role in influencing consumers buying behavior .
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1.3
Literature review India is world’s second largest textile fibre producer, the largest cotton and jute
producer. FY 2015-2016 witnessed a staggering nine million tonnes of fibre production. Currently India also possesses the second largest textile manufacturing capacity in the world. India accounts for 18% of world's spindles and 9% of world's rotor. India owns a 5% share in global textiles and apparel trade. More than 50% of Denim production in the world is from Asia. India has the second largest number of Denim mills after China in the world.
Figure 1: Indian Textile and Apparel Industry
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Textile is one of the oldest industries in India. Although mostly unorganized and run by family promoted business, the textile sector contributes around 5 per cent to India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and 14 per cent to overall Index of Industrial Production (IIP). The Indian textiles industry, currently estimated at around US$ 108 billion, is expected to reach US$ 223 billion by 2021. A revolutionary change has been brought up in textile consumption consumption and export with the advent of online retailing. Textile brands today have more visibility, buzz and engagement in the online space. With the foray of fashion focused apparel ecommerce portals like Voonik, Myntra, Jabong, Limeroad, the accessibility and visibility of brands increased tremendously. Medium and large retailers in the textile business followed the suit with them stepping into the ecommerce apparel selling spreading into both B2B and B2C.
Figure 2: India's Apparel Exports
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The next revolution in the textile industry would be the shift in consumer ’s purchase criteria. With the introduction of fashion suggestive applications, fashion bloggers, on web customization and clothing prediction algorithms, the textile shopping is about to face a paradigm shift in the way consumers interact and perceive an apparel brand.
Figure 3: E-tail and Retail Market Share Breakup Source: TECHNOPAK ANALYSIS, www.techno www.technopak.com pak.com
The Indian fashion retail market has witnessed several significant changes in recent years, which indicates country’s evolving fashion retail market. One of the significant changes is advancing online retail or e-tail of fashion products across the country. The current online retail (FY 2016) accounts to about 4 percent of total retail market. E-tailing (or online retailing) took-off around 2007 driven by advancements in quality of internet access, payments and computing on mobility platforms that dramatically changed consumer behaviour towards internet consumption. This ecosystem creation has altered the consumer behavior of a sizeable consumer
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mass (referred to as active internet user base). This active internet user base is the key consumer of online retail.
Figure 4: Percentage Share of E-tail across world markets. Source: TECHNOPAK ANALYSIS, www.techno www.technopak.com pak.com
The e-tailing opportunity in India is expected to unfold as per the two Scenarios in 2020: e-tail at 4 percent of retail (USD 43 billion) or e-tail at 6 percent of retail (USD 65 Billion).
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Figure 5: Category Split of E-Commerce in India, *Includes footwear, Bags, Belts, Wallet, Watches etc.
Figure 6: Percentage Contribution of Men, Women and Kids category in Apparel and lifestyle E-tail.
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The e-tailing evolution started in India with books and media as a key category. Electronics got adopted next and apparel, lifestyle gained acceptance at the next level. The other categories that have found traction include baby care, home and living, etc. E-tailing market at present is led by electronics category with a share of 45 percent followed by apparel and lifestyle that contributes 30 percent of the market with the rest being captured by others. The category split of e-tail is projected to remain same in 2020 with electronics contributing to 44 percent of the total e-tail market in India followed by apparel and lifestyle at 30 percent. Currently, menswear dominate the fashion and lifestyle space with contribution of 52-54 percent followed by women contributing to approximately 38-42 percent and contribution of kids ranges from 5-10 percent. However in light of increasing women in the workforce with more financial independence, the share of women in e-tail is expected to increase to 45- 48 percent, whereas men’s segment is expected contribute 45- 47 percent, with kid’s section remaining constant around 5-10 percent.
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1.4
Objectives
The primary objective of my project was to study the performance of the various components of Triveni’s online presence. Analyzing the consumer’s journey in Triveni’s portals, the barriers to purchase decision, defining the consumer’s
behavior from the micro and macro activities, product listing and pricing, social media engagement, identifying and establishing new marketing communication channels and managing online reputation. The ulterior goal being creating an influential brand online and boost ecommerce sales.
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CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY 2.1
Project Design
The project can be categorized in three parts. First, auditing the current performance and proposing a digital strategy. Finding the loopholes and suggest changes in the digital marketing initiat ives. Second, managing digital marketing communication channels which involved creating blog posts, social media content, email newsletters, monitoring web traffic and optimizing different web traffic sources and study user behavior, graphic design for website banners and Paid Media Advertisements. The work also involved developing a new website for one of the marketing campaigns named “Officially Ethnic”, Google Business Map listing and creating Wikipedia Page for Triveni Ethnics. Third, as a part of improving online presence and increasing visibility, I was responsible for improving search engine ranking with effective Keyword Research and Search Engine Optimization Strategy, Identifying and adding new channels of Triveni’s
online presence. This initiative of adding new channels involved listing Triveni in various business directories, connecting to influencers like fashion bloggers, celebrities and media production house, managing online reputation on various review-recommendation portals, cross posting in social media channels and Question & Answer Forums, affiliate networks and price comparison engines.
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2.2 Data collection and sampling
The performance of the current digital marketing initiatives can be analyzed by studying the different channels used. The web analytics data, the website performance and SEO Audit data, the social media key performance indicators. I have listed the data collected while examining the channels followed by an explanation of the data analysis . 2.2.1 Website Data Analytics
Google Analytics is a powerful tool to measure, monitor, and analyses and take strategic decision about the web metrics and dimensions. When a user visits a website, he undergoes a series of activities like navigating through web pages, browsing product listings, saving to cart, sharing on other platforms etc. All these activities are termed as micro activities and the occurrence of the ulterior goal of the website like performing a monetary transaction or subscribing to a digital service etc. are termed as macro activities. The accumulated metrics of a user’s micro and macro activities on a website reflects broader information about the consumer’s behavior,
purchase pattern and user interaction and user experience level. Google Analytics Data shows real time data like right now how many users are browsing your website and they are on which page, the audience demographics like Gender, Age group, Device, Browser, Location (Continent, Country, and City). One of the major metrics is the traffic volume, bounce rate, session duration data (pages viewed per session). The consumer acquisition dimension can be traced from the metrics like source and mediums of the traffic, their navigation pathway tree, their activities on the webpage, the drop off page and transactions. 16
In case of Triveni Ethnics, Organic search is the major driver of web traffic followed by direct. Which indicates the majorly users are either coming from search results or they are already acquainted with Triveni and hence directly flocking to the website via direct domain name search. Referrals (from affiliate websites and price comparison sites) and social media is notoriously uneven while paid search has been a incessant underperformer. On studying the tree map (the users navigability), it was observed that the web architecture is vertical in nature. The deepest of the pages are reached in as high as 7 clicks. So it was suggested to go for a horizontal web architecture, a more f lattened linking of web pages where the maximum clicks to any page is attained within 3 clicks. This horizontal architecture also helps in SEO. The link juices are passed from one page to other through the search engine crawlers. The deeper the page, lesser the link juice passed, lower is the page rank. Secondly, mobile devices has been a major source of traffic. The current website is not mobile friendly (As per the AMP test conducted). It is suggested to create accelerated mobile pages for the website. Search Engine Google now uses mobile friendliness as a direct criteria to rank websites .
Figure 7: Web Traffic Sources (or channels) in a Day. Traffic Data for 24 April 2017
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I am not authorized to share direct screenshots or data figures of the web analytics data as it’s an internal backend data, crucial to company’s strategic decision making.
So I will be sharing only screenshots of the monthly Web Analytics summary as retrieved from Google Analytics Console. Further information regarding the web performance is shared in the Website Performance analysis and SEO Audit section that follows. 2.2.2 Website Performance Audit
Web Performance is one of the key drivers of digital performance. User interaction levels and engagement extent depends on the kind of user experience a web front offers its users. This two facts depicts the importance of site performance: I.
Websites with optimal loading time are are crawled crawled more thoroughly and consistently than those which loads slow. Crawlers have a limited time allocated for each page crawl process.
II.
Every second counts. Web Visitors have attention span in milliseconds. So a slow loading website can directly impact your conversion rate. Walmart increased their conversion rate by as high as 2% by improving their website performance by 1% (According to a case study by Web Performance Today, April 2014).
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Pingdom, an online web performance auditing tool is used to get a detailed list of response time from all the website elements and an overall website loading time. These results help us spot exactly which elements in the website needs to be optimized for an overall performance performance improvement. Performance grades greater than 50 are considered good. 1.5-2 seconds shall be your target loading time on an average. Google Search Engine considers the page loading time to be a prominent factor in optimizing for search results. The summary of pingdom website audit result is shown below.
Figure 8: Performance summary for website www.triveniethnics.com www.triveniethnics.com as retrieved from fr om pingdom.com web analysis tool. tool.
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Figure 9: Content Size and Requests by content type for website www.triveniethnics.com www.triveniethnics.com as retrieved from pingdom.com web analysis tool.
A low performance grade figure indicates the website to be of low quality in terms of user experience, user value, navigability etc. The load time is 3.42 seconds which is significantly higher than the optimum load time of 1.5-2 seconds. The website is faster than 47% websites only. Images take up the maximum load time ti me and HTTP requests. So analyzing individual pages and URLs of the website is required to point out exactly which images are not optimized and taking up maximum load time and find URL (or hyperlink) errors if any. This is done using a software named Screaming Frog SEO Spider. The results of the crawl test is elaborated in the SEO Audit section that follows.
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2.2.3 SEO Audit
Audit is the most important step in your full-blown Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy, to demystify how exactly your website is performing in the battle field of organic search rankings and garnering the click from the right customer. The SEO Audit Analysis is broken down into five sections: I.
SEO performance Profiling.
II.
Accessibility Assessment.
III.
Index-ability Verification.
IV.
On-Page Ranking Factors
V.
Off-Page Ranking Factors
The current SEO Score of the website can be inferred from a crawl test. A crawl test helps us understand the accessibility levels, index ability factors and find out the individual performance of all factors encompassed in the website like the content, images, videos, script codes, internal and external hyperlinks etc. Screaming Frog SEO Spider software has been used to run a crawl test for the Triveni Ethnics website. The below figures shows the list of parameters tested.
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The first and foremost analysis that we can infer from the crawl data are: I.
Are the count of internal and External Links proportionate? Spiders crawl the first 150 links only. And more the number of links, more is i s the link juice dissipation. Strike a balance. Maintain an optimal quantity of links.
II.
Which links are erred? Rectify the broken Links.
III.
Which are the harmful redirects? Change their redirection status.
IV.
Which of your web pages are restricted from being indexed? Which images are taking time to load and needs to be optimized?
V.
Which pages have disproportionate H1, H2, H3 tags?
VI.
Which Meta Description or tags are exceeding the word limit? Which ones are cluttered with obsolete focus keywords? Replace them with the newly searched keywords (Keyword strength changes with time and search trend).
The detailed analysis of the SEO Audit of Triveni Ethnics Website is described below:
I.
Link Profiling: Out of the 488 links tested, 4 were HTTP and rest all were
secure with an HTTPS extension. The 4 HTTP linkes were SSL certified to make the full website SEO friendly. Google prefers HHTPS over HTTP while ranking a webpage. II.
Link Saturation: Distribution of internal and external links on webpages were
found optimal and hence no changes were made. III.
Harmful Redirects: Few links were broken and returning 3XX errors. The 302
redirects were changed to 301 redirects. Google considers 301 redirects safe and hence indexes the page for Search Engine Results Page Ranking.
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IV.
Accessibility of Webpages: Using robots.txt blocking to certain webpages we
can inform search engines to exclude certain pages from ranking and displaying in search results. Pages like cart, sitemap, authors, and web admins etc. that are of no use to consumers are blocked from indexing. The full list of webpages unindexed can be seen by visiting www.triveniethnics.com/robots.txt V.
Usage of Header tags: Header tags has a significant impact in search engine
indexation. Along with letting readers know about the article (or any kind of web content like images. GIFs, Videos, flash etc.), headers also indicate search engines what the article is all about and against which keyword the content or webpage shall be indexed. 122 web elements had 122 duplicate H1 tag, 2 had no H1 tag and 4 had H1 with more than the optimal character limit of 70. These were rectified to desire so as to make the webpages search engine friendly. VI.
Web Elements: Individual images were crawled and analyzed for their load
time, file size and hyperlinking. Since ecommerce websites have a majority share of images, primary concern was to make the website stunning and helpful with good quality images and at the same time keep the webpages light to load. Images with more than 100 KB file size was sorted and crunched to sizes lower than 100KB, the recommended file size for web images. VII.
Keywords: Non performing keywords were identified and replaced with
valuable keywords. The contents were categorized as per the buyer’s journey – Awareness Stage, Consideration stage, Decision Making stage. Keywords
were branded as per the consumer’s intent and buying journey stage, thereby influencing their perceptions of purchase criteria. Keywords act as an element of strategic advantage for ranking for any online venture. So I am not authorized to share the keywords currently used.
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2.2.4 Social Media KPI
Social Media analytics helps us in identifying which and what type of campaigns are effective in engaging consumers and drive traffic from social channels. Social media measurement can be categorized in two types: Ongoing Analytics – Traffic involvement and activity figures over the period of existence or for a certain duration of social media activities. Campaign specific metrics – It helps in analyzing the effectiveness, the success and return on investment statistics of a campaign push . I was involved in two social media campaigns – “Bahubali Contest” and “Mother’s Day Selfie Contest”. These two campaigns were majorly driven on Facebook p age. The
insights are shared below.
Figure 10: Facebook Insights Page showing the times of the day when the fan base is mostly active.
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Based on this insight, we have picked two favorable times of the day and day of the week for launching our campaign and posting major announcements. 11 AM and 9 PM were the peak times when most of the fan base were active. Bahubali Contest: Social Media engagement was weak due to a monotony in the
content sharing and the consumption of content was poor. An analysis of the social media fan base showed, most of them were seasonal buyers and not an active shopper, so engaging them needed some programs that invoke a suriosity for a surprise. Bahubali contest was designed to drive user engagement. Ten questions related to the film f ilm was posted on consecutive days. Winners were declared and offered free silk sarees. The campaign triggered web traffic traff ic by 3.3% and social reach by 260%. Mother’s Day Selfie Selfie Contest: The products featured were categorized for
mothers of all ages. The contest involved sharing selfie images of mother-child duo on Triveni’s Facebook page with a desired caption. The winning participant were gifted a
saree and a discount coupon for next purchase on Triveni T riveni portal.
Figure 11: Engagement levels during Bahubali and Mother's day Facebook contest.
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Figure 12: Engagement levels of Facebook Page as measured from the Reactions, Comments, Shares and Likes Metrics.
Figure 13: Facebook Share of posts and sentiments during the Mother's Day Campaign.
Figure 14: Traffic sources and demographics during the Mother's Day Campaign.
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Suggestions: Predetermine a social media goal. Draw your plan as per the campaign’s target group.
Stick to an ultimate goal, whether it’s to drive brand awareness, or boost social media engagement or drive sales through social channels. Defining the key performance metrics according to the ultimate goal. metrics like volume, reach, exposure, and amplification are used to measure awareness level buzz, metrics around retweets, comments, replies, and participants depicts engagement level, URL shares, clicks and conversions indicates the traffic driven. Social Media is the black sheep of marketing. It has the power to build a brand as well as destroy a brand. So a sophisticated usage of social channels is crucial.
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CHAPTER 3 Results and Discussion
Triveni Ethnics web portal receives a monthly visit of 70 thousand users on an average. On seasonal sales periods like October to January, the web traffic volume almost triples on an average. The conversion rate for the month of April was 0.53% and for May it improved to 0.56%. The unit sales value averages around 850 INR. Bunce rate of 44.77% was concerning, which further increased to 46.60% in May. The primary reason was the web performance and a poor quality mobile website. On studying the bounced traffic behaviour in detail, it is found that users from organic search had maximum bounce and the drop off occurred within 6 seconds of them landing the webpage. The reasons could be a poor loading time as most of the traffic from organic search were relevant (from the fact that they were organically visiting product pages and waited for 6 seconds). Bounces that occurs within 2-3 seconds of visit are termed as irrelevant traffic. traff ic. In Triveni’s case, users were looking for f or the page content but was impatient to wait for the longer loading period and product scroll.
Figure 15:12 Web Data Summary for triveniethnics.com for April 2017, retrieved from Google Analytics
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Figure 16: Web Data Summary for triveniethnics.com for May 2017, retrieved from Google Analytics
Figure 17: User Demographics Demographics - Gender and Age Group Group
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Studying the web analytics data, the consumer behaviour reflected some concerning factoids as discussed below. User Demographics:
Most of the web visitors were females contributing to 69.6 % of the total sessions. The sarees and Lehenga category received maximum web sessions and conversions. The 30.4% male traffic also hovered over female apparel pages. This indicates, Triveni as a brand is presumed and considered by consumers mostly for women apparels although it also sales Men’s wear and Kids wear, Jewellery and Ladies bags on its online portal. Majority of the users are from the age group 25-34.
Traffic Sources and Mediums:
Organic search traffic and direct traffic tr affic drove in 70% of usage. The geographic regions of northern India and western India showed maximum engagement. Globally United Kingdom and United States had maximum ma ximum engagement. The traffic from international int ernational borders were mostly referral from T riveni’s ambassador programs and email marketing newsletters. Social Media and Whatsapp broadcasting contributed the least traffic volume. User Behaviour:
The website macro and micro activities performed by the users are t raced in the user flow dashboard of Google Analytics in the form of a treemap. The user navigation showed majority of the users are spending time in “saree collection” category, “Lehenga” category and “sales” offer pages. The sessions are
well contained with multiple micro activities but tremendously fails to attract a macro activity like transaction or subscription to emails. Most of them added products to cart and dropped off. 33
As a method to understand this problem, abandoned cart list was created which involved dropping an email to all those who left their products in the cart without performing the purchase. The mail was shoot 24 hours after they left the cart dormant, asking for issues they faced in an attempt to know why they dropped off without purchasing. A coupon discount of 20% on their next purchase was also shared. It was found that consumers are conducting a lot of research, taking considerable time in looking for same and similar products in all likeable li keable ecommerce portals, comparing prices and product features. Triveni’s portal has a non -refundable but replaceable
policy which acted as a serious barrier to sales. Consumers wanted more freedom and is looking for easy going order or der processes and friendly lenient services. Second, threat to sales was the product attributes. Textile industry is highly saturated with sellers and prone to design imitation. So similarities among the products are so huge, brand effect subdues as price sensitivity takes over in case of mid-range apparels market. So the sales focus was mostly revolved around personal and corporate selling (telephonic cold calls), offline channel partners or endorsers and referral cum affiliate affi liate networks to drive online sales. Interestingly, Triveni’s core product being saree, the other product categories are hardly considered in buyer’s purchase criteria. User Type: Around 50% of the traffic are new users and they are performing an
average of 5 sessions per visit. This indicates the search appearance is convincing, users are finding the meta description and heading relevant to visit the website. They are spending good amount of time in the website but majority are finally dropping off without purchase.
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To understand this situation, the pricing was changed by offering custom option of stitch (you can get you blouse piece stitched while purchasing the saree with an option to choose it by paying an additional amount). This reduced the prices of the saree as blouse was separated. In my short tenure of 2 months, the impact of this change was not noticeable in scale. Other policies like No refund, but replacement policies are also impacting the purchase decision. A strategic revamp of these stringent policies are being thought of. Pricing and return policy appeared to have the maximum impact on sales drop. So, I have proposed a pop up window that flashes up as the user attempts to close the website. The pop up window would ask the users two questions. One, trying to know consumers purchase criteria and understanding the target group with questions like “What is your price range? ”, “What is your shopping budget? ”, “Which brand/design/product you mostly purchase? ”
Second, trying to know the reason of them leaving the website with questions like “What is one thing that you would like us to improve”. Providing check boxes can help
in get more answers.
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CHAPTER 4 Conclusions and Recommendations
Online marketing communication channels not only bring in sales but also help in building a brand image and project its value propositions to it s customer base. Textile, one of the traditional industries of India is gradually evolving from its unorganised form of manufacturing and traditional sales & distribution channels to online channels to reach out to its potential target group. Apparel brands are finding the digital platforms to prove to be an effective medium in influencing customers buying decision. With the advent of technology, brands are now more visible and accessible to the customers, so is the volatility of the market m arket rivalry. With consumers having access to wider range of varieties, broader choices to select and more options to purchase, the competition is fierce. Digital branding aids a company to influence its customer’s perception and hence the buying decision. Consumers are no more restricted to the traditional sales funnel. Today the focus is more on the downstream activities like shaping consumer’s perception, changing
purchase criteria, building trust and harnessing the network effect to spread the online word of the mouth. The importance of harnessing the power of online mediums to drive sales and brand building can be further understood by the following f ollowing statistics.
90% are not certain of the brand they want to buy from. They are looking for
relevant information so as to narrow down to a particular decision. Your online presence has the power to acquire new customers by altering their Brand Loyalty. It all depends on the micro moment experiences you provide them in the very first impression.
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82% use their phones to check on prospective in-store purchases. Mobile
searches are handy, localized and a fingertip away (ease of accessibility). Mobile is the next big thing. Google is now separately indexing webpages for mobile search ranking. Voice search is the new interaction behavior.
65% look for the most relevant information to their query, regardless of the
company that provides the answer. Referring to multiple sources before actually arriving to a decision is the trend. t rend. So value proposition and user experience is the key to consumer acquisition and retention.
51% have discovered a new company or product while searching on their phone.
Your online presence can get you a wider reach and potentially larger consumer base to tap, with no geographical constraints.
33% have purchased from a different brand than the one they had in mind,
because of the information provided. Content Converts.
91% of smartphone users turn to their phones for ideas and solutions when they are struck in the middle of a work. Google Search is the new 24x7 guide. With search features like rich r ich answer snippets (direct conversational answer boxes) and knowledge graphs, users can now find answers directly in their search results without actually having to visit webpages.
These data figures are sourced from Google Consumer Barometer Survey 2014/2015 which clearly indicates, you need to be fast, precise, and valuable for your users. If you are not appearing in their relevancy (search context), urgency (delivering the solution in least possible wait time) and immediacy (adding value with the most relevant and helpful answer), you are nowhere in the business of generating web traffic and conversions. 37
Users flock to a brands online platforms like website, application, blogs etc with intentions like I-want-to-know, I-want-to-know, I-want-to-g I-want-to-g o, I-want-to-buy, I-want-to-buy, and I-want-to-do I-want-to-do moments,
backed by a purpose, a context, and an immediacy. This parameters sets
the rules and guidelines of the online battleground of brands.
The strategy to identify, evaluate and effectively use the online communicating channels can be defined in four steps: Step 1: Discovering the right channel : Identifying the inbound and outbound
marketing channels that is relevant and looks promising to drive brand awareness and sales conversions. Step 2: Evaluate: Test the market, gauge the industry rivalry and bring in best
practices, redefine strategy and create an influencing factor to make your presence in that particular niche. Step 3: Measure: Analytics shall be a constantly running parallel to each and every
activity you perform, understand the audience and analyse the return on investment to determine the effectiveness of the activity. Step 4: Repeat the best: Sort out the proven ones, and re-run the successful
strategies. Explore and exploit the win-win channels.
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CHAPTER 5 FURTHER SCOPE OF STUDY Triveni’s core competency is their in -house manufacturing expertise, strong
distribution network and rich industry experience. But this alone not necessarily the most convincing factor to influence infl uence consumers purchase purchase decision. The current online marketing model is limited in tapping all aspects of brand communication. Online activities needs a collaborative support from offline marketing activities. Both the online and offline activities shall go parallel in order to address all the touch points in a consumers consumers buying journey. journey. The communication shall shall shift from a push model to a pull model and encourage two way communication between the brand and consumers. It is the age of outreach of consumers to marketers unlike the traditional model of marketers outreach to consumers. The online marketing front shall focus more on consumer driven marketing activities like online reviews, online word of the mouth recommendations, past experience sharing via blog articles etc. This shall be further aided with a sophisticated support in the initial consideration and post purchase phases of a consumer’s association with
the brand. To get more consumer centric, aligning the mark eting activities with consumer’s journey is crucial. Integrating all the consumer facing activities and providing personalised targeting is the need of the hour. Shaping customer’s perception,
reducing their costs and risks associated, building new forms of customer value and creating a brand differentiation factor on customer’s front is the key to form a loyal
customer base. Consumer loyalty is a real competitive advantage that reaps over time.
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