Soccer, search engines and sales

The UK has been gripped over the past couple of weeks with the European championships in Ukraine and Poland, and here in the Direct Commerce office, we’ve received plenty of emails from retailers promoting their latest footy-related offers (We particularly liked SportsDirect's effort, below, which landed in our inbox just moments after the final whistle).

But in a blog on its website, Heiler, a Germany-based content management system provider, points out many online retailers could be missing a trick by failing to optimise their website for topical searches.

Heiler highlights that during the 2008 European Football Championship, Germany manager Joachim Low wore a special shirt during the tournament in Austria and Switzerland. The piece of clothing received huge attention and became known as the “Shirt of the Nation” with supporters searching on Google using phrases like Jogi Low Shirt because nobody knew where the shirt had come from.

The shirt turned out to be from Strenesse, a German apparel retailer, which then had to work hard to ensure it was getting the conversions from Google searches for Jogi Löw Shirt—as well as ensure it was online and in stock.

While England manager Roy Hodgson may not be as dapper as his German counterpart, retailers will have to keep a close eye on other talking points emerging during the games in order to maximise sales opportunities. The faster retailers set up the right keywords and assign them to their products, the more they will sell online and the more revenue will be generated.