Assignment #4: Keep Your Snails Happy

Introduction

For this week’s assignment, I was excited that we were going to focus on online retailers, as I am someone who greatly enjoys shopping online. I decided to go with a retailer that probably no one in the class has heard of before. Their name is My Happy Snails, and they are an online-only retailer that sells products such as pet snails, snail food, and terrariums. I have actually purchased from this retailer, myself. I currently own 40+ snails that I keep in a terrarium where I essentially raise the snail from a tiny egg to a full-grown snail. Caring for snails is fairly easy though there are a few special products that I need just for snails such as calcium powder and organic food supplements; which I purchase from retailers such as My Happy Snails. 

My Happy Snails

Upon first glance at My Happy Snails’ landing page, it is very much straightforward and easy to navigate. I do, however, notice very minor flaws in their web page development. Though it is not necessarily something that will impede the user from investing in their products, it is still something to take into consideration when critiquing their site. Aside from their site visuals, on their page navigation, they ensure to include the keyword “snails” on almost every tab. This is great SEO practice upon simply viewing their site. Additionally, they make sure to include the keyword “pet” which is also great SEO practice as they are mainly promoting their pet snails. 

SEO & Images

Another component of SEO that people tend to overlook is images. Including images on your site that are directly representing the keywords also aids in the optimization of a site in the search results. My Happy Snails does a great job of including many images of their products including the pet snails, their organic food, and their habitat. As someone who is very compelled by images, I appreciated this strategy that My Happy Snails took. I’m quite sure that many other users would appreciate this strategy as well since our society has become less and less attracted to text and more and more attracted to images (Stokes, 2018). 

Take a Deeper Look

Evaluating a website at first glance is definitely the important thing to do first, but doing a more thorough analysis with the use of data analytics is also very important. I decided to use additional SEO tools to take a deeper look into their site analytics. The tool that I utilized was the On-Page Optimization Tool. This tool further proved the visual observations that I initially made, along with a deeper analysis of the data within their site. As shown in the images below, the keywords that My Happy Snails has been optimizing are snails, pets, and animals. To add to this, they’ve optimized other keywords such as child and live. The ‘child’ relating to the fact that My Happy Snails has promoted their snails as “low maintenance pets for kids and adults.” The keyword ‘live’ is to distinguish the search results between ‘live snails' as pets and ‘frozen snails’ for human consumption. 

On-Site Optimization Tool

Taking a closer look at their heading and value, they definitely make good use of this. Their title tag of course includes their brand name as well as a short tagline for their brand which once again includes the keyword ‘snail.’ Their meta description is very much engaging because it includes a good usage of questions that all include the keyword ‘snail.’ Moving on to their internal links, they don’t have too many which is fine because they are a smaller brand after all. They include links that are not necessarily necessary for the brand but are certainly helpful. For instance, their page includes a compilation of interesting facts about snails and their other page teaches the viewers how to keep pet snails.

Finally, taking a look at their external links, they have included several of those. These external links mainly consist of their social media pages, including Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook, but primarily Facebook. This is actually good because Facebook is considered one of the major social media channels for marketing. In fact, many users are able to shop through the Facebook Marketplace. Therefore, to have Facebook as the primary external link on their site will certainly be beneficial for their reach and ultimately their sales. 

Strategies for Improvement

Now that both a visual and SEO analysis have been performed on My Happy Snails, it is now that any strategies to improve their web analytic efforts can be recommended. The approach they have been using thus far is great but there is always room for improvement. First, My Happy Snails could work on incorporating more pages within their website. Though they are a small brand and several pages may not seem necessary it could surely help to improve their SEO. The more usage of their keywords, the better. For an additional page, it could be something quite simple such as a guidebook for different snail species. 

Adding More Pages

Currently, they have a page titled ‘All Types of Snails’ but once you click on the page, it shows that it is still under construction. This would be the perfect page to highlight the different snail species while including many different keywords that a user might use in a search for a pet snail. Additionally, I believe that My Happy Snails should use more external links to their advantage. I initially discovered My Happy Snails through Amazon because they are a vendor there as well. I believe it would be beneficial to include their Amazon shop for those, like me, who prefer to shop on Amazon because of the Prime perks such as free and fast shipping. This would definitely generate more sales for My Happy Snails because currently, the shipping fee on an order from their website is $8; whereas on Amazon Prime the shipping is free. The shipping fee alone can be a big deciding factor for a user to invest in a product. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, My Happy Snails is doing great for the small business that they are. They’ve utilized the right keywords to improve their SEO and even incorporated a variety of images to their website. It seems that they are currently working on adding more pages that will improve their SEO even further. My Happy Snails should definitely highlight the fact that they are an Amazon vendor as this would increase their sales and thus further their success. 

References

My happy snails - your guide in pet snails world. My Happy Snails. (n.d.). Retrieved September 14, 2021, from https://myhappysnails.com/.

On-page optimization tool. (n.d.). Retrieved September 14, 2021, from https://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/free-optimization/.

Stokes, R. (2018). P.109. In marketing: The essential guide to marketing in a digital world. (Sixth ed.). Cape Town: Red & Yellow Creative School of Business.ences