This past Sunday I did some research on the websites of Australia’s ten biggest retailers. I wanted to see how easy it would be to find out if store hours were changing due to the ANZAC Day holiday. Amazingly, four of ten gave no indication whether their hours were changing, or even if they were open at all. I wonder how many people who searched for this information didn’t want to chance disappointment by venturing out to what could be a closed store?
As I was searching, I noticed some other interesting stuff. For example, this is what appeared in the Google search result for Kmart:
Kmart HomeHoliday_Kick_Off,The_Ultimate_DVD_Sale,Spring_Arrival;Kmart_PhotoCentre; Gift_Cards;Kmail_tile;Latest_TV_Ad_tile;WhereGoodTimesStart_tile.www.kmart.com.au/ - Cached - Similar
Kmart probably spends a fair bit managing its website, but sometimes small but important tasks like optimising meta descriptions can fall through the cracks. (I wrote about this in an earlier post called Sweating the Small Stuff).
My Google searches also reminded me how critical top navigation items are. Since popular sites’ entire main menus are included in Google sub-links, this text really needs to be short and sharp. The Myer.com.au main menu does this well, with concise and tangible nav items like "Catalogues" instead of something vague like "Latest In-Store News and Offers"). Google adds analytics smarts to the sub-links mix, by supplementing top nav items with sub-links to popular pages outside of the main menu, like "Job Vacancies". Bunnings' use of cookies is also helpful. If you've been to Bunnings.com.au before, the store locator cookie not only ensures you see a local catalogue, it also means local store information is just one click from the homepage, and two clicks from Google.
Only one retailer's site had a "two clicks from Google" path for any site visitor. Like their bricks and mortar shops, it wasn't a pretty experience (you have to sort through some serious text links) but when it came to accessing up-to-date local store hours with the fewest clicks from Google, JBHiFi gets the gong.
A bit of friendly disclosure: Myer and Bunnings are clients of DTDigital.