Quiksilver's Website Optimized for the Best

Business Objective and KPI’s

Quiksilver’s website exists solely for the purpose of making sales and completing transactions for their clothes and other merchandise. Therefore, the amount of monthly revenue made through this website is by far their biggest KPI. Another KPI can be a certain number of items sold each month. Quiksilver sells a lot of variety of clothing and other merchandise so I think it’s important that they not only look at total revenue or total number of items sold, but to also break that number down by category. They should analyze buying trends for different categories of clothing for different times of the year. For instance, the amount of mens bathing suits sold in the winter is different than the number they sell in the spring or the summer. They can set goals for the amount of “sale” clothing they sell monthly as well. Basically, they need to dissect their entire website and set goals and KPI’s in sales and items sold for each category. Set a goal for men’s clothing, kids, clothing as well as “surf” and “snow” items. Dig deeper and set goals for new arrivals, men’s jackets, accessories, everything. Google Analytics makes it so easy to track everything so you can find what items are selling strong and which ones aren’t, and this will be addressed in more depth in the “analytics” section of this assignment. All in all, they should be using revenue and items sold as their main KPI’s for this website.

Target Market

The target for Quiksilver and their website is millennials who are interested in surfing, snowboarding or are just into the lifestyle that comes with those activities. Their consumers are definitely very outdoorsy and live a laid back lifestyle. When they visit the website, they are definitely looking to ultimately buy a product from Quiksilver. The website looks very modern, which I think is very important to millennials. They make it very convenient to find products their consumers are looking for as well. To satisfy those consumers who are very into the surfing and snowboarding, they feature “explore” and “community” sections under the “surf” and “snow” tabs. These areas give consumers an in depth look on what’s going on those communities, including bios on different athletes, videos of performances and different events and competitions going on. They also have a blog that features similar information. I think this part of the site is set up in a good way. It’s pretty easy to find for those that want it but it doesn’t take away from the main goal of selling their products.

Usability

Quiksilver’s website follows a pretty standard online retail format. They have a drop down menu at the top of their site labeled “Mens”, “Kids”, “Collections”, “Surf”, “Snow”, “Blog” and “Sale”. They have a horizontally sliding header that goes through different deals and products they sell and as you scroll down you can click on different images for different styles of clothing. Their website is also very mobile friendly. There is a dropdown menu icon in the upper left hand corner as well as the same menu when you scroll down on the home page. You can log into your account and see your cart in the upper left hand corner and all of the items on the site are optimized for mobile viewing. The only thing I would suggest to change is the information about their current sale. On both their desktop and mobile site, they have a thin header at the top that says “Extra 30% Off All Sale Styles”. It’s very had to see and to click on. I think they should advertise that sale in their big rotational header instead, this way it’s easier to see and click on for the user.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Using the website Spyfu, I was able to look at how Quiksilver drives traffic to their website both organically and through paid search. 98% of their clicks come from organic search and the other 2% is from their paid search. They have an estimated monthly adwords budget of $5,200 and have 1,175 paid keywords. Some of those paid keywords include quicksilver, men’s swimwear, board shorts and wetsuit. They have a total of 1,704 keywords that rank them on the first page. The biggest flaw I see in their SEO is the keywords they rank for organically. They rank 27^th for “surf” and there’s no information on how they rank for “snowboarding”. They put a lot of emphasis on those two communities throughout all of their advertising and I think it’s only right that they try and optimize their website for searches related to those topics as well.

Analytics

Google Analytics is such a great resource to use for analytics. You can track every click that happens on your website as well as every click that leads users to your site and every click that leads them off of your site. Quiksilver should be using this tool constantly. They can track the entire path that users go through on their site. There are a few different ways for users to get to different spots on their site, so they can use Google analytics to see which icons users are clicking on most frequently to get to certain parts of their website. If certain icons aren’t getting clicked on as much, they should further optimize those icons to make them look more appealing. For instance, there’s a set of 5 giant rotating pictures on their home page. Each picture leads to a different part of their site. Using Google Analytics, they can track which of those are getting clicked on more than others. However, to me, the biggest thing to look at for Quiksilver is the last page users are visiting before they leave the site. In an ideal world, a purchase confirmation page should be the final page 100% of the time, meaning the user purchased what they wanted and are now moving on. Anything less than that is underachieving. So, Quiksilver needs to view what are pages are turning users off of the site, that way they can change those pages to help create a purchase. They can also view which items users are viewing but not buying. Maybe there are popular articles of clothing that are looked at, but not purchased. This can be insight as to what either needs to be changed about that item of clothing or the way its displayed on their website. All in all, Google Analytics is an essential tool for optimizing Quiksilver’s website to its full potential.