Over the past few weeks we’ve been following the launch of the new Officeworks web site. I’ve personally been critical of the business in the past due to poor website usability issues and have shared my thoughts with others at conferences such as adtech and Search Engine Bootcamp. While I don’t like to point fingers or cause unnecessary embarrassment, the learning opportunity in this case will benefit others from falling into the same traps and also contributes to improving the poor state of ecommerce in Australia.
The long road of eCommerce
As the largest supplier of office supplies in Australia, Officeworks has had an ecommerce presence online for the better part of five years. While the company’s online path has not been without problems (the last website suffered from a number of usability and technical issues due to a poorly built SAP ecommerce system), Officeworks has never the less, made inroads where other large Aussie brands have failed to venture.
Improved Website Usability
On a positive note, the new design is leaps ahead of the old. Most notably, the new website features:
- A crisp look and feel with plenty of whitespace – The information is easy to read.
- Clean, simple navigation – The menu structure does a good job of breaking down the large product base into four clearly defined categories followed by multiple sub categories.
- Naming conventions that reference common office-related terminology making the site easier to navigate.
From all accounts, the new website would appear to be a blazing success. However, there are a number of troubling issues lurking beneath the surface that if left to fester, will negate years of previous effort and investment.
Spotting Trouble – Page Not Found
I first noticed a problem after conducting a search on Google for “pvc chair mats.” From the organic search results, I clicked on the first of two Officeworks links shown below:
Expecting to end up at a page about PVC Chair Mats, I was instead taken to an error page telling me that the page no longer existed.
As this result was less than satisfactory, I clicked the back button to return to Google and then clicked on the second listing for Officeworks (a typical response when I encounter a page that no longer exists). Unfortunately though, I ended back at the error page. But before I had a chance to return to Google, I was redirected to the home page where I noticed the new look and feel.
Slow Load Times & Plenty of Drop Outs
From there, I ran into slow load times and numerous drop outs (each time receiving a message that the site was down for maintenance).
Intrigued, I decided to dig deeper. While I was not able to determine the true reasons for the drop outs (I’d hazard to guess though it was related to lack of testing prior to launch) I did uncover some unrelated but troubling issues.
Yikes, No Migration!
Specifically, I found that Officeworks did not migrate the old pages to the new ones and the steps put in place (i.e. using a 404 error page to redirect me to the home page) to transition visitors to the new website were rudimentary at best.
A much better solution would have been to redirect visitors to the new PVC Chair Mats page on the new website using a 301 redirect (a 301 redirect tells the search engines the old page no longer exists and to focus on a new page).
Note: As of 13 May 2009, I noticed that the link on Google for PVC chair mats was now redirecting to the main Furniture page using a redirect to: http://www.officeworks.com.au/retail/products/Furniture.
The problem I experienced is not limited to Officeworks. It is unfortunately, a common occurrence for almost every business that goes through a redesign or changes their domain name. Typically, the effort goes into redesign with little thought given to migrating the old content.
How to Spot Migration Issues?
One way to spot migration issues is to type ‘site:http://www.officeworks.com.au’ into Google’s search bar and then click through to some of the links. When I first did this for Officeworks, I found that the 7,000 plus pages in Google’s index were left as is – meaning there was no redirect in place to divert visitors to the new content. The following screenshot shows a sample of the 7,250 old pages in Google’s index at the time.
Most of the links on the Offieceworks website serve up an error page and redirect users to the home page using a ’meta refresh,’ an outdated redirection technique search engines consider spam.
Improper Redirects
Occasionally, the site did redirect users successfully to a new category level page (i.e. furniture); a much better outcome for users. Surprised, I checked the HTTP header information of one of the successfully redirected pages to find a 302 redirect! A redirect causes browsers to automatically forward the user from the old location to the new one seamlessly (the visitor will likely never even notice the switch).
A 302 redirect tells the search engine that the move is temporary and leaves it up to the search engine to decide whether to keep indexing the old page or replace it in its index with a new one. If the search engine retains the old page and then finds the new page under a different URL, it could index the second page with the result being two URLs with the same content which could lead to duplicate content issues.
302 Redirects can lead to Duplicate Content?
While the new furniture page has yet to be indexed, we can already see that Google has pulled the new page Title and Meta description from the new Furniture page, but kept the old URL.
If Google is able to find the new page (http://www.officeworks.com.au/retail/products/Furniture) via some other link (or XML sitemap submission), there’s a good chance the information will be suppressed in the index due to duplication concerns. In addition, the use of the 302 redirect means that it will likely take months for the old pages to be cleared from the index and make it more difficult for Officeworks to receive credit for the new pages.
The Officeworks Solution
So what can Officeworks do to fix the slide? The quick and dirty solution is to setup a blanket 301 redirect to direct all visitors who click one of the old .shtml pages through to the home page (this means also changing any current 302 redirects to 301 redirects).
The preferable solution is to identify the remaining indexed pages and setup 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones. While this second option is more time consuming, the extra effort will help Officworks migrate the old pages left in the index and make it a bit easier for potential customers to reach the right product. The 301 will tell the search engines that the old page has moved (permanently) to the new location and help the search engines transition their index much more quickly. It’s a win for Officeworks, the search engine and the customer.
301: A Better Redirect
Leaving the search engines to do the heavy lifting on their own means it can take months for them to rid their database of old pages and it may take even longer to index new ones. Using a 301 redirect is the best tool to help the process along and ensure visitors and the search engines know where the new content resides.
While this doesn’t solve all of Officeworks’ migration troubles (we’ll share some of other findings in another post), it will help salvage some of their past investment and perhaps turn those who fix the problem into SEO rock stars.
Website Migration is Vital for Online Businesses
For large companies like Officeworks, a website migration plan is as important as a moving plan to move to a new office or warehouse. Moving a business without a plan is asking for trouble. A few days offline for could easily result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
Migrating Your Website – Beware!
Without the right migration plan, you will likely suffer significant indexing issues on search engines like Google. In addition, if you’re business already has strong organic search rankings, your organic search traffic (and your online sales) could suffer mightily.
Recovering from a poor physical move could take days or weeks. Overcoming a bad online migration could take months or even years and prove very costly.
Update: On May 29 we noticed that the few product pages still remaining in the index were now using a 301 redirect to direct visitors to the correct product page on the new website. Kudos to Officeworks for getting on top of this issue.
Disclaimer: Amplify provided once-off consultation for Officeworks in 2006.
