Case Study: Wine Enthusiast​

WineExpress.com is an exclusive shopping extension of the Wine Enthusiast network. The online store sells unique, limited, and highly coveted wine by the bottle and wine gifts to eligible states throughout the U.S.

An SEO and UX partner, Wine Enthusiast approached Trinity to manage the platform migration for WineExpress.com as a project separate to our ongoing engagements. The ask was for SEO support in migrating from a homegrown system to a NetSuite SuiteCommerce Advanced platform, and from an m-dot to responsive site.

Goal

Our task was to ensure a smooth platform migration that minimized short-term performance decreases while maximizing long-term organic visibility.

This ambitious project required several moving parts that had to be executed concurrently:

  • Migration to new eCommerce and CMS platforms
  • HTTPS migration
    Migration from m. to responsive design
  • Overhaul of the information architecture
  • Simplification of the URL structure

Results

0 %
organic traffic increase
0 %
organic revenue increase
0 %
increase in total ranking keywords

How we accomplished this​

Working closely with the Wine Express and SI teams, Trinity Insight developed and executed a 7-month schedule that addressed a range of requirements, including:

  • Constructing a modified site architecture, based off partner needs and search demand
  • Generating a comprehensive URL map, guided by keyword research
  • Strategizing a plan for redirect mapping based on impact and productivity. The end result included a mix of one-to-one and pattern-based redirects for the main domain, mobile site, and subdomains
  • Writing optimized, user-friendly content to enhance category and informational web pages
  • Generating new XML sitemaps to monitor indexation health and point search engines to important new pages
  • Crafting metadata by page type: some were written by hand, guided by keyword research; others were completed programmatically, using concatenation Schemas
  • Completing multiple rounds of QA testing for the new website as it was being built, where we addressed technical elements including
    • Robots.txt file
    • Canonical tags
    • Breadcrumbs
    • User generated reviews
    • & more
  • Providing support – pre-launch, come launch time, and during post-launch, including thorough QA of all redirects, and ongoing monitoring of traffic, rankings and indexation

Analysis & Summary

Trinity and Wine Express achieved extraordinary results through careful planning and collaborative communication. The Wine Express team were thoughtful in their questions, open to our recommendations, and committed to the implementation of those tasks that made the new site so SEO-friendly.

Trinity is always transparent about risk vs. reward when it comes to any type of site migration. It’s common to see short-term performance decreases of 10-30% following a platform migration, and with so many changes at once, this was expected.

The fact that WineExpress.com saw positive growth – both immediately following the migration, and in the months following – is a testament to our partnership with Wine Enthusiast, who were proactive in their approach to SEO in all aspects of this project.

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