Web Analytics and SEO Case Study: Gym Shark

 

Gym Shark is well known by athletic individuals today. Their target audience is anyone willing to get their blood pumping by working out. Gym Shark began making fitness apparel in 2012. Francis, the 19-year-old who started Gym Shark, decided to show off his products by wearing them to a prime fitness trade show in Birmingham called Body power; just the next year the brand skyrocketed to 500,000 in sales. By 2017, they brought in $52 Million in revenue (Lavendaire, N.D). 

Influencer Marketing

Gym Shark had 5.13 million visitors in August 2021. Part of this is accredited to their aggressive strategy to give their products to influencers on all social media platforms. 34.81% percent of their traffic is from direct links, that the customers click from these influencers' pages. This causes people who are already interested in their product to search for Gym Sharks website or click a direct link to their website. On top of that, these people are being told to check out Gym Shark from their favorite influencers. How aggressive they are with this approach is why Gym Shark is as popular as they are today. Gym Shark uses website analytics they collect. Gym Shark simply looked at their awesome bounce rate of 38.62, an impressive amount of people clicking direct links to their website, and kept up with this approach. They use these analytics to know exactly what over a third of their customers want. They monitor the customer's wants because they know who they are. 

 On-Page SEO 

It appears that Gym Shark did well on, on-page SEO since 55.01% of their traffic was through search. There are keywords within their site. Some of their top SEO keywords include “gymshark”, “gym shark”, “gym shark Canda”. All these keywords are working well and are ranked well, with their top keyword for August 2021 being “gymshark”. Although, at this point, copious amounts of people know about their product as well. So, customers simply search for the brand online as well. This is because of their aggressive marketing strategy of advertising their product through influencers. On-page SEO then becomes not as important for Gym Shark because potential customers or customers already have them in mind when their fingers touch their keyboard to search. Gym Sharks knows of their awesome search traffic percentage, so they do not have to focus as much on keyword research and other on-page SEO methods. This is how they use their web analytics to adjust their approach to their customers. 

Data Collection 

Gyms Sharks on-page SEO are unclear in some ways. It can be inferred that much of their traffic is through search because of their brand awareness. Again, people search for their product once they see their favorite influencer wearing Gym Shark apparel. However, obviously, on-page SEO is included in their awesome traffic search percentage. So, on-page SEO can be hard to do when you do not know exactly how well your SEO keywords or other on-page SEO techniques are doing. Sure, there is a promising idea but on-page, SEO is not set up to facilize better data collection. 

What Gym Shark could be doing is surveying traffic. Once a potential customer is on their page a one-question quick survey should pop up. It should say something like “how did you hear about us”. This survey should prompt every user that ever clicks on their website forever. This would open doors leading to more sales and better data collection. If they knew more specific information about how potential customers got to their page, they could focus more of their efforts on what needs improvement. Things such as keyword density, keywords, publishing high-quality content, etc. How well the customer knows the brand is important and that is unclear too without proper clear data collection. Does the customer know about the brand because your keywords were excellent or do, they already plan to buy clothing because their favorite influencer is wearing Gym Shark apparel? This is important as well because knowing how much to educate or convince your customer to buy your apparel could be the difference between a sale or no sale. Also, data collection is not top tier. 

Website Design 

Gym Shark's website design is incredibly attractive. It is easy to navigate and has moving pictures as you scroll. There is not much to say about Gym Sharks web design except for a few things. Gym Shark is making a mistake with the pictures they show on their website. Gym Shark tends to focus on showing off their apparel to only “fit” people. What a mistake this is because they are losing sales. “Fit people” or “skinny people are not the only people working out. This is due to Gym Shark not knowing the weight of their potential and already paying customers completely."  This is a data collection method they should improve on to further sales. 

Moving on, Gym Sharks United Kingdom website and the United States website is the same with a few exceptions. This is because of a lack of complete data collection. People in the United States and the United Kingdom have different cultures. Perfecting the website completely when considering the culture will increase sales and lead to a better understanding of the customer. This allows Gym Shark to monitor traffic better. Customers want to feel good and understood. They want to see familiarity as well. Things like variation in style or again more images of a variety of body types wearing their apparel. 

Conclusion

It is incredibly clever how gym Shark grasped social media to their benefit. Gym Shark prioritized brand awareness and what better way to build brand awareness than to reach hundreds of thousands of people to millions through one person! Gym Shark knew the world lived online and will now enjoy the benefits of having that knowledge. Although, Gym Shark can improve on clear data collection, culture awareness, and clear website analytics. Overall, Gym is a tremendous success. How they use web analytics and SEO to monitor visitor traffic or customers is by knowing who their customer is. Although again, they do not know exactly how all the customers look only in a general sense and that is their biggest issue! 

References:
Lavendaire. How Gymshark Grew by 200%+ Year On Year and Hit £41M in Sales (Updated 2021). Retrieved from: https://beeketing.com/blog/gymshark-growth-story/