Woolworths online – is back up! (Almost)

Jon — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:33:52 +0000

As regualr readers will know, we reported recently that the Wooloworths website and online store seemed to close very prematurely (before the high street stores) in mid-November, despite our claims that it was probably one of their prized assets.

However, news out this morning states that Woolworths’ online , and the brand name, has been given the kiss of life and more energy filled supplements than you’d find in a large bag of pick n mix.

The move brings the famous brand and URL under the control of Sir David and Frederick Barclay, famous for owning The Telegraph and a large house on their Island next to Sark in the Channel Islands.
Shop Direct the UK’s largest shopping retailer, which also owns brands such as the Littlewoods catalogue, plans to launch Woolworths online in the summer following the deal to buy the brand for an undisclosed sum.

But Shop Direct, which has also bought Woolworths’ childrenswear brand Ladybird, said it was confident that the store would “stay at the heart of British retailing” as an online presence.

However, in a strange bid to sell exactly what people want – the old holding page has been replaced by a new Questionnaire, asking “what you liked or disliked about Woolworths” – looks like the branding people will have a lot on their hands. Watch this space.

Woolworths Online Going Down

Jon — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:18:31 +0000

Woolworths – Company Focus. Woolworths has obviously had a bad time of things lately.
With the company going into administration and the 1000s of employees facing unemployment just weeks before Christmas, it’s not been happy reading. Woolworths Decline.

However, one shining light for the Woolworths brand over the last 12 months has been their online presence. Whether or not they have been selling products through their website is another discussion, but their positioning in the search engines has been good –

and for certain keywords, it has been excellent.

But then this happened:

The Reason: Woolworths Website holding page throughout the site

This appears on every page linked to. So all the readable content has gone, all meta and all internal links. This blank page is all Google sees. Furthermore bounce rate is therefore 100% and we all know what that means.

Woolworths' keywords fell off a cliff in mid November in Google UK

Previously Woolies was in the top five SERPS for “Toys” “Outdoor Toys” “camp Rock” and many other children’s related purchases. At Christmas, these would be searched millions of times and the purchase rate is for many retailers better in December than for the rest of the year put together. So why did they take the site down?

As you will see above from our Keyword line tracker Woolworths.co.uk the effect of the maintenance page is stark. Woollies online has now taken the same hit as its fellow High Street Stores have – and fallen off a cliff.

Is there a way back?

The Woolies site was getting some very good positons, and closing it down like this, before the business has properly shut-up shop, seems premature. Furthermore, the site itself had a PageRank of 5, certainly a sellable asset to anyone in retail.

But what we can conlude from this is that links, by themselves, will not get you good results.

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Woolworths online – is back up! (Almost)

Woolworths Online Going Down