Free Ride is a popular surf, skate and apparel brand with a large physical store in Henderson, Auckland, and an eCommerce store that services New Zealand’s skaters and surfers.
Free Ride is a stockist of specialist brands that power some of the country’s best surfers, but with a high number of surf/skate shops across NZ, they’re up against some tough competition. They needed a digital strategy that would ensure people not only visited their spot – but converted, too.
In the planning phase of any digital strategy, it’s important to check out what the competition is doing, but to focus on the client’s own goals for a tailored route to success.
We put some reporting tools in place by setting up Google Analytics and eCommerce tracking, and configuring Facebook pixel. We aimed to drive traffic via organic search and Facebook Ads, and to implement ways to maximise Free Ride’s conversion rate.
We laid out an SEO campaign to achieve that winning combo of tech and content. We kicked this off with in-depth market and keyword research, and a technical review of the site to identify inefficiencies and start to pinpoint ways to streamline the buyer’s journey.
On-page, we executed comprehensive keyword and URL mapping for a large number of categories, and launched an ongoing blogging campaign to deliver real value to the surf community.
Off-page, we focused on optimisation and quality link building. We also carried out ongoing keyword gap analysis so we could continue to identify opportunities for the brand.
Tapping into the social nature of surfers and skaters, we configured Facebook Business Manager, and set up Facebook Pixel and Custom Conversions.
We built a focused 3-layer funnel that would target new audiences at specific stages throughout their buyer’s journey, as well as retarget existing customers.
We continued to enhance our Facebook marketing strategy through ongoing media management, split testing and audience exploration.
With more interested shoppers visiting the site, we had to make sure we didn’t lose them. Enter Abstract’s tailored CRO campaign – driven by Hotjar and Google Analytics data to help us analyse the weak parts in the site that were not triggering positive eCommerce behaviour.
From this deep dive, we implemented design changes to product pages, to enhance the eCommerce experience and ensure we were presenting valuable, relevant information to users.
Free Ride Surf & Skate came onboard with Abstract Digital just over 12 months ago and already their website ranks for 650+ more keywords compared to when we began, including 75+ first page rankings. The client has seen an 89.47% increase in organic traffic, and a 479% increase in revenue from organic search demonstrates the exceptional quality of these leads.
Our Facebook campaign reached over 136,000 people and drove more than 65,000 clicks to the site. Overall, Free Ride achieved a 4x return on ad spend.
As the final piece of the puzzle, our efforts in CRO proved to deliver the outcomes we wanted. We saw a 42.3% increase in sessions with transactions for new users to the site, and more than a 51% increase in new users that added at least one product to their online shopping cart.
