Case Study
Old Toy Stuff
Tom had been running a successful vintage toy buying and selling page on Facebook but had reached a limit on reach and turnover. He knew he needed to add a website but was unsure of how best to approach it. Having been recommended to speak with Moving Pixels, Tom made contact and explained his situation.
The main issue was that Tom didn’t need to sell anything online. He just wanted to be able to buy other people’s vintage toys so the type of internet traffic he was interested in required a lot of consideration.
What we did
The first thing we asked from Tom was which keywords he thought would generate the right type of traffic. We used these as seeds to make discoveries about similar keywords, the best ranking websites for those keywords, and what type of traffic numbers these keywords achieved in different territories. After a lot of analysis, we produced a report that clearly showed where the SEO opportunities were, which keywords were worth optimising for, who the online competition was and a simple wireframe indicating how we could set out the website for best SEO practices.
A discussion about our findings followed after which we started to think about what the website should look like, what its features would be and most importantly, how we could ensure enquiries would be made and tracked. It was at this point we did what most people do first, think about a domain name. Like everyone, Tom wanted something similar to his Facebook page name “Vintage Toy Collector”. If you’ve ever tried registering a domain name you’ll be familiar with the idea that not every domain name is available or suitable. Furthermore, brand new names have the added disadvantage that because they’re new, search engines have no prior knowledge about them which puts them on the lowest run of the ladder from an SEO point of view. Instead, we searched for expiring/expired domains that had a history and backlinks from other domains. Of course, we need to find something relevant and in the end, went with oldtoystuff.com – an old toy collectors website that went defunct in the early 2000’s but whose domain had been well established and renewed. This was the springboard from which the website grew.
Tom wanted to keep the website fun and playful, simple to use with an emphasis on getting people to make contact and particularly, send him photos of their toy collections. We did this by going big on WhatsApp links as well as a simple web form.
Advertising
After the website went live, we put together a Google Ads campaign to boost the initial uptake. Setting this up was easy because we’d already completed the keyword research in step one. Due to Tom’s niche, keywords are very cheap and a modest budget of £5 per day was applied. There was instant traction, with up to a 10 enquiries per day. There were some teething issues. We discovered quickly that a lot of people made assumptions Old Toy Stuff bought any old toys, and this was a problem for Tom. He was interested in specific toys from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Through further refinement we managed to mostly eradicate unwanted enquiries. This freed up more budget for desired traffic.
01/03/22 > 30/11/23
Outcome
By developing a website for a specific audience and function, Tom has more than quadrupled his business size. The website ranks 1-5 for over 150 desired keywords, with impressions and clicks growing month on month since launch. There have been some noticeable big deals struck off the back of website enquiries, requiring trips to the US to make collections in person (the items were too valuable to send), the set up of a US office not to mention the many satisfied sellers who managed to find a buyer for their old toys.
Testimonial
When the time came for me to grow my business from a simple Facebook page I was recommended to speak to Edo from Moving Pixels. What was paramount to me was that whoever I’d be working with understood my business goals and objectives. I didn’t just need a website, I needed it to perform specific tasks. After an initial conversation with Edo, I knew we’d be able to make it work together.
Following our call, Moving Pixels provided a research paper outlining the challenges and opportunities associated with my special requirements and also a plan of attack to implement the suggestions. Hereafter came the website build itself, which was a very smooth process, with ongoing dialogue and on-the-fly amendments without any hassle or fuss.
I was over the moon with the final results and the subsequent marketing support and problem-solving is second to none. If you are looking for someone who’ll do more than build a webpage, Edo is your guy.
Tom Scaife, Old Toy Stuff