Trick Shot

A Web site redesign helped PoolDawg.com increase online conversions by 27% and improve its search engine rankings.

PoolDawg's original site went live in 2003. But by last fall, says marketing director Mike Feiman, traffic was getting to a point where there were stability issues. The site sometimes crashed, especially when high-profile advertising — such as event sponsorships on ESPN — drove increased visits. And from a search standpoint, the site wasn't as visible to engines as it should've been. To address these matters, the company began using Netconcepts' GravityMarket 2.0 e-commerce platform.

There are two primary groups of customers for PoolDawg, which via a catalog and the Web site sells everything a player needs, from pool cues and billiard balls to accessories like billiard gloves, chalk and bumpers. One audience is league pool players, who participate in games run by organizations like the American Poolplayers Association and the BCA Pool League. The other is home recreation users, who usually have a table in their game room.

Billiards is a fairly blue-collar sport, and the customer base is 88% male. The season runs from about September to April — when the weather is warmer, Feiman says, PoolDawg customers are outside golfing or playing softball, rather than inside at their tables.

The average purchase varies, depending on the type of customer. For example, PoolDawg sells cues that range in price from $20 to $1,000 depending on cue construction or things like turquoise inlays in the butt of the stick. “League players especially know what they want and recognize the difference in quality, and they're willing to pay for that,” Feiman notes.

As for which keywords work best for PoolDawg, Feiman says “pool cues” helps reach the primary audience. Indeed, the site has the top spot on both Google and Yahoo! for that term. But is the term too general? Not according to Feiman. “We're not general enough to drive ‘looky-loo’ type traffic.”

Different brand names are highlighted, including Action, Lucasi, Meucci and Viking. “The goal is that if somebody types in a search for ‘Viking pool cues,’ we want to be visible for them, because someone who's searching for a Viking cue is going to be further down the purchasing funnel than someone who's just searching ‘billiards.’”

With the site's old version, only about 30% of the pages were getting indexed by search engines.

“This was a huge problem and disadvantage for us competitively,” says Feiman, who adds that search engine traffic has gone up about 300% since the revamp. Overall conversion has hit close to 27%.

The site needed to be search optimal at a structural level, according to Hershel Reese, Netconcepts' vice president for e-commerce. The Gravity Market system was used to “bake in” search engine optimization best practices, including dynamic and unique title tags, unique header tags and clean URL structures.

And Reese points out, “We also use optimal cascading style sheets, which allow spiders to gobble up rich content and focus efforts on prominent locations.”

The checkout process was streamlined in the redesign as well.

“We'd played around with a one-page checkout and found we needed to go back to a simple three-step checkout,” Feiman says. “Feedback from customers was that it was too much information to get through on one page. When it was broken up over three pages it was easier to handle.”

A three-page format also helped alleviate the “sticker shock” factor of customers suddenly being presented with shipping and handling charges at the same time they were being asked to enter their credit card number.

No upselling is done at checkout, although related products are offered throughout the sales process. “Once they're ready to check out, we want them to feel comfortable going through that process, rather than getting hit with point-of-sale offers,” Feiman says.

Besides online promotions, e-mail blasts usually are sent about once a week. Some spotlight products or brands, while others are purely informational, giving tips on things like how to care for your pool cue.

The company also sponsors nationally televised pool events and advertises on ESPN channels and Google.

PoolDawg does one annual catalog mailing, sending out about 50,000 to 75,000 copies in the autumn. Fill-in mailings are done approximately every two weeks. The 60-page slim-jim format book is seen primarily as a way to get people to the Web site, Feiman says.

Most of the 2007 catalog is devoted to a wide selection of cues, organized by brand. Products such as T-shirts, cue holders and cue cases are interspersed with the cue listings. In a bit of cross-sport promotion, a midbook spread plugs a line of cues and balls featuring Major League Baseball and National Football League logos. The remainder focuses on pool accessories, tools and repair items like chalk, cue-cleaning wipes, racks, cue extensions and pool-related books.

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