Digital Audit - Kate Morelli Digital Resume and Portfolio

Briana Martin
Kate Morelli
Chelsea O’Hern
Amanda Swan
Lauren Williams
Charlotte Burns
Trader Joe’s Digital Audit
Overview:
Trader Joe’s began as a small chain of convenience stores in 1958 under the name Pronto
Markets. Today they have over four hundred stores around the United States. Trader Joe’s does
not generate any online sales, so the goal of their digital presence is to drive customers to their
stores to make purchases. Trader Joe’s maintains a website consisting of announcements,
recipes, a store locator, a flyer about their products and more. They use a simple white
background paired with bold colors on the products to draw attention to them. They also
maintain social media accounts, but they do not use them to advertise their products. For
instance, they have not tweeted from their official Twitter account since 2012. Trader Joe’s does
effectively maintain an email newsletter, and it is very easy to sign up for on their website. Their
website can be easily found through search engines, and loads completely in about three seconds.
They have a higher number of pages visited per customer than their competitors, which
demonstrates the effectiveness of their content and links. They could benefit from improvements
to their social media and digital marketing ads.
Site Marketing Performance:
Trader Joe’s website is very up-to-date and easy to navigate. There are eight categories at
the top of the screen, such as store locations and announcements, to make navigating much
easier. Also included at the bottom of the page are questions, contact information, legal matter,
lists for specific diets, and newsletter sign up. Also, there is a sitemap that consists of all the
categories and subcategories; they are all put on one page which avoids confusion and speeds up
the navigation.
There are a few things on the website such as upcoming store openings, recalls, contests,
a how-to guide, and information updates for customer use that are not updated too often just
because there is no need for it; recalls, store openings, etc. are not happening on a regular basis.
However, the rest of the content on the site is updated frequently. Contained is a list of new
products that is updated about every other day along with announcements, recipes, and product
stories.
Trader Joe’s has a blog on their website that goes by the name of “Dig In” at the top of
the screen along with other categories to choose from. The blog is not always updated every
single day, but the posts are consistent. For example, there were eighteen posts in the month of
March of this year. What they do is they choose a product for each blog post and go into detail
about that product. It also lists the ingredients, the price, and any additional notes. They might
talk about how to make that particular food, but they do not give a special recipe on the blog
because they have another category just for that called “Recipes” right beside “Dig In”.
The site does not contain any case studies or “white papers”. However, as already
mentioned, there is the blog that talks about the foods in thorough detail to promote their
products which is very similar to “white papers”. Trader Joe’s does have a video on the website
called “What We Do That Makes Us Trader Joe’s”. However, the company does not have a
YouTube or Vimeo channel.
Trader Joe’s does not have live chat available on the website. To get in touch with Trader Joe’s,
there is an address and phone number for each store location. There is also e-mail available for
personal messages or customer inquiries, as well as FAQs.
Key Calls-To-Action:
Since trader Joe’s does not complete any sales online, their ultimate goal from the
website would be getting a website visitor to come into their brick-and- mortar location to make
purchases.
Trader Joe’s has few direct calls to
action on their home page. Their
main call was a store finding button
in the top right hand corner of the
page. A zip code is entered and it
brings the customer to a landing
page featuring a map with all the
Trader Joe’s locations near the
entered zip code. It also includes
any relevant information for that particular store location including hours of operation, any
holiday closings, and their phone number.
o Across the site Trader Joe’s uses action verbs like Find (store), Read (more), and
View (flyer/announcements/recipes). The actions all
seem fairly week as far as guaranteeing a purchase
go. The recipes and newsletters did however call for
Trader Joe’s ingredients and tell you why and how they should be used.
They get the reader’s attention by giving a small preview of each possible landing page
with a picture to draw the eye. The photos and captions are definitely enticing enough to draw
the reader into the next page, giving Trader Joe’s an average of 4.29 page views per visitor on
Alexa.com. At first glance, 2.50 minutes may seem like a short time for an average daily visit per
customer. However, it must be remembered
that Trader Joe’s website is not a
purchasing site. Its main purpose is to get
the customer into the store and it only takes a very short amount of time to use the store finder. If
a customer is staying after that, they are likely reading the newsletter content or picking out a
recipe to create with Trader Joe’s ingredients.
Compared to other similar store’s websites like Earth Fare and The Fresh Market, it is
hard to tell who is better at customer engagement on their website. The Fresh Market and Earth
Fare both have bounce rates around 30%, 10% less than Trader Joe’s. Conversely, Trader Joe’s
has a higher number of pages visited per customer. Trader Joe’s calls to action follow through in
the sense that they bring the customer further into the site which is shown by the average number
of page views. However it is very hard to tell how many of their calls to action result in a
purchase since the purchasing is not done on their website .
Ranking and Traffic Estimations:
According to the ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index), Trader Joe’s is tied with
Wegmans for the most preferred supermarket among the large supermarket chains when it comes
to in-store environment, customer service, deals, etc. While Trader Joe’ s may be dominating the
large supermarket chains with consumers in person, how does their online presence with
consumers rank among their competitors?
To see how Trader Joe’s online presence was ranking, we decided to first look at their
estimated website traffic. By looking at Trader Joe’s estimated website traffic, we could gain an
understanding of where their website traffic ranked relative to other sites. Currently, Trader Joe’s
website traffic is ranked 3,403 in the US and 14,492 globally in comparison to other sites
according to alexa.com.
A
s you can see in the figure above, Trader Joe’s estimated website traffic is improving in ranking
globally relative to other sites, but the amount of traffic to their site seems to be dissipating. This
information drove us further into wanting to gain an understanding of where Trader Joe’s
website traffic was being generated
from.
According to alexa.com, only
25.30% of Trader Joe’s website
traffic is generated from search
engines. As you can see in the graph, Trader Joe’s website traffic has had a steady decline in
visits to their website generated via search engine. Since Trader Joe’s percentage of website
traffic generated from search engines is so low and has had a steady decline, we decided to
analyze Trader Joe’s top ranked keywords to ensure they utilized their <title> tag within their
current keywords they used to generate traffic to their website.
Through using searchmetrics.com, we were able to obtain Trader Joe’s top 10 ranked
keywords they used to generate website traffic from search engines. For their top 10 ranked
keywords, Trader Joe’s used the following: trader joes, trader joe, traders joe, traderjoes, traders
joes, trader, trader joes locations, recipe, dinner, and recipes. As you can see from the list above,
Trader Joe’s utilized the SEO guidelines extremely well for keywords and made sure to include
their <title> tag in them. Since they performed well in their top ranked keywords, we decided to
look at Trader Joe’s Google PageRank to see if that may be the cause of their low website traffic
via search engines.
Google PageRank is extremely important for one’s website not only because it
determines the page’s importance, but also determines where your page falls within their search
engine results. The higher your PageRank, the higher your page appears on the results page. To
obtain Trader Joe’s PageRank, we used prchecker.info. According to prchecker.info, Trader
Joe’s has a PageRank of 7 (out of 10), while their top competitors, such as Wegmans,
WholeFoods, Publix, have a PageRank range from 5-6. Therefore, this showed us not only is
Trader Joe’s ahead of their main competitors, but they also have more links available to lead
traffic to their website. However, Trader Joe’s still may want to look into their current SEO plan
to gain a better PageRank score, which in turn will generate more traffic and possibly their ecommerce.
Finally, we looked into Trader Joe’s number of inbound links. Inbound links are
extremely important because they can generate website traffic back to your home page and create
a stronger online presence. Therefore, the higher number of inbound links one has, the higher the
chance you have at generating more website traffic to your home page. However, you want to
ensure the inbound links are from a website consumers trust. To obtain Trader Joe’s number of
inbound links, we used majestic.com. According to majestic.com Trader Joe’s currently has
219,682 external backlinks (inbound links). In the graph below, you can see the number of
external backlinks for Trader Joe’s that have been reviewed over the past 90 days.
A
s you can see from the graph, the number of views varies of their current inbound links. We were
also able to obtain the breakdown of Trader Joe’s types of inbound links, the ratio of inbound
links followed, and the amount of inbound links live at the last crawl.
As you can see from the data above, Trader Joe’s overall inbound links are mostly text
links followed by images and have a high follow through rate.
Overall, Trader Joe’s ranking and website traffic estimations seem to be mostly
successful. The only problematic sections were their low percentage of website traffic generated
via search engines of 25.30% and dissipating website traffic in the US provided from alexa.com.
In order to better their performance, Trader Joe’s may want to re-evaluate what they are trying to
accomplish with their online presence and define what metrics measure their success to achieve a
higher online presence ranking and better traffic estimations.
Search Engine Friendliness:
The Trader Joe’s website was found easily using Google, Yahoo! and Bing. After
searching the phrases “trader joe’s,” “trader joes” and “trader joe” on these search engines, the
first result each time was always the Trader Joe’s main website. However, while searching
“trader joe” on these search engines produces accurate feedback, using the URL
www.traderjoe.com does not lead to the Trader Joe’s website or any other webpage related to the
company.
Overall, Trader Joe’s website operates quickly. Whether a visitor reaches the webpage
through search engine results or by entering a URL, the Trader Joe’s homepage loads completely
in three seconds or less. Six of the seven links at the top of the homepage also redirect visitors at
a fast pace. The “Stores” webpage opens the slowest but is able to maintain visitors’ attention by
loading in less than seven seconds. This short delay is likely caused by the webpage
automatically tracing a visitor’s location and listing stores in his or her area.
It is possible to access the Trader Joe’s website from a variety of mobile devices,
including iPad and iPhone. When accessed on a smaller screen, such as an iPhone, the Trader
Joe’s website appears in a mobile version, making navigation easier.
When accessed on a tablet, such as an iPad, the Trader Joe’s website does not appear in a
mobile version.
iPad:
Computer:
There are four primary apps in Apple’s App Store that can enhance the mobile experience
on iPhones and iPads. However, none of these were created by Trader Joe’s and are not formally
affiliated with the company. The top result when searching “Trader Joe’s” in Apple’s App Store
is Store Guide for Trader Joe’s, created by Jovanna Brooks. After making an account on the app,
Store Guide lets users search for Trader Joe’s products and recipes, write reviews, find store
locations and create shopping and favorites lists.
Digital Marketing Performance:
Overall, Trader Joe’s does not use many digital marketing tactics. There are no banner
advertisements on the company’s website, and there are few, if any, located elsewhere on the
Internet. Trader Joe’s has profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn, but the company does not appear
to advertise heavily on these websites. Finally, Trader Joe’s uses limited pay-per-click ads.
According to searchmetrics.com, the most effective pay-per-click keyword is “trader joes.”
It is possible to receive Trader Joe’s newsletters through email. These emails are
effective because they are not sent too frequently and contain large amounts of useful
information that is communicated in an appealing way.
Trader Joe’s digital marketing performance is average due to their limited use of
advertising through technology. According to alexa.com, the Trader Joe’s homepage ranks
3,403 among the most visited websites in the U.S. There are 223,879 external backlinks and
15,152 referring domains for traderjoes.com. Trader Joe’s received a 49 out of 100 rating on
marketing.grader.com, and a seven out of 10 from prchecker.info.
Traderjoes.com also struggles to capture visitors’ attention. The website has a 42%
bounce rate, and on average, visitors spend two minutes and 50 seconds looking at an average of
4.27 webpages.
Social Media Performance:
Facebook:
 Official Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Trader-Joes/112272705454627?fref=ts
o 157,992 likes

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Trader-Joes/120104204672420?nr
o 15,766 likes / 6,865 visits

Groups: facebook.com/groups/TraderJoes
o https://www.facebook.com/groups/48607495981/

Hashtags:
#TJs
#AskTJs
#TraderJoes
Twitter:
 https://twitter.com/traderjoes2
o Followers 2,564 / last tweet 2012

FAN BASED: https://twitter.com/whatsgoodattjs
o 5,440 Followers / 1,650 tweets / tweet or RT at least once per day
o http://www.whatsgoodattraderjoes.com/

FAN BASED: https://twitter.com/traderjoeslist
o Followers: 58.2K / tweet once almost every day / 8,674 tweets
o They have a facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Trader-JoesList/154561395906
o Website: http://www.mytraderjoeslist.com/

Hashtags: #TraderJoes #TJs
Instagram:
 Employee: https://instagram.com/traderjoesinsider/
o 12.9K followers / 478 posts / Avg. 400 likes / Avg. 20 comments

#TraderJoes
#TJs
Pinterest:
 https://www.pinterest.com/whatsgoodattjs/
o 5,597 followers / 2,320 pins

https://www.pinterest.com/traderjoeslists/
o 5,193 followers / 225 pins
LinkedIn:
 https://www.linkedin.com/company/trader-joe%27s
o 33,214 followers
o 6,977 employees on LinkedIn
o last post: 7 months ago
They had an App but unpublished it in October of 2014. http://www.traderjoes.com/app.asp
Conclusion:
Based on our analysis, we recommend that Trader Joe’s improve their search engine
traffic to their website. We also recommend that they start utilizing their social media accounts
their drive people to their stores. They could use their Facebook and Twitter pages to advertise
new products, run specials and gain general awareness. They could also take advantage of the
online communities that have been created by others and leverage their brand loyalty. Trader
Joe’s should also continue their email newsletters and keep us their website since those are
already proven to be effective.
Sources cited:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/traderjoes.com
http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php
https://majestic.com/reports/siteexplorer?q=traderjoes.com&oq=traderjoes.com&IndexDataSource=F
https://marketing.grader.com/report/traderjoes.com
https://majestic.com/reports/siteexplorer?q=traderjoes.com&oq=traderjoes.com&IndexDataSource=F
http://suite.searchmetrics.com/en/research?acc=149979&url=traderjoes.com#filter={%22filter_h
ome_chart%22:{%22fxch%22:%22organicpaidvisibility%22}}
https://majestic.com/reports/siteexplorer?q=traderjoes.com&oq=traderjoes.com&IndexDataSource=F
http://traderjoes.com/