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February 9, 2021Shark Tank Case Study
What happens to traffic, sales, referrals, leads and SEO when you get on ABC's Shark Tank? In this client case study, we showcase the Shark Tank effect.
In this Shark Tank case study of NightCap, we discuss the following:
+ NightCap: A Case Study + Shark Tank impact on website traffic + Shark Tank impact on backlinks + Shark Tank preparation + Site speed and mobile usability + Conclusion
What is the Shark Tank Effect?
The Shark Tank Effect is the impact on immediate and long-term business growth as a result of showing up on ABC's Shark Tank. Here we discuss some of the specifics with our recent client example, NightCap -- The Drink Spiking Prevention Scrunchie.
- Shark Tank has an immediate impact on site traffic. As one might imagine, appearing on prime time national television will have an immediate impact and lift to your site traffic, which creates a bandwidth problem for the unprepared. It also creates a massive opportunity.
- Site traffic from exposure on a show like Shark Tank drives a massive spike in eyeballs, but an equally and more meaningful impact to business sales. That was certainly the case here.
- National television appearances can create a coattail wave of other benefits, including SEO and link building. In this brief case study, we will discuss how Shark Tank brings backlinks and SEO benefits gallore.
- Shark Tank helps with branding and long term sustainability and awareness. Apart from initial "pop" that occurs, there is a long term awareness and brand loyalty that comes from the thousands who might visit a brand's website when they first appear on Shark Tank.
What is NightCap?
NightCap is a drink-spiking and date rape prevention product that combines the functionality of a woman's hair scrunchie with a friendly alcoholic beverage cover. The company is a client of SEO.co and appeared on ABC's Shark Tank on February 5, 2021. The company received funding from Lori Greiner.
Shark Tank Impact on Backlinks & SEO
An appearance on Shark Tank has an immediate media frenzy coattail effect on links, rankings and overall SEO. Just prior to airing, we worked with the client to pitch as many local and regional media outlets as possible (including online, print and television) to make sure we capitalized on the coattail promotion effect and buzz this event would stimulate. These efforts helped to amplify the SEO impact of the event in a major way.
In the first 48 hours before the launch, we started to see some initial buzz and backlinks. But, the real spike hit after the premiere on ABC. In addition, a local news station in West Palm Beach showed up to cover the event with co-founders Michael & Shirah Benarde.
SEO.co CMO Samuel Edwards, celebrating the Shark Tank premiere with Michael and Shirah
SEO Backlinks
Not surprisingly, Ahrefs started registering original and syndicated backlinks from high authority sources starting 24 hours before, during and for the several days following the live event. Bloggers references and mentions also followed.
Shark Tank Preparation
Prior to Shark Tank, the company was using Wordpress as a CMS, including Woocommerce for the cart and hosting at WPEngine. Upon learning of the upcoming Shark Tank appearance, a reassessment had to be made, a site redesign commenced and several factors had to be considered, including: improved branding, traffic load and bandwidth, improved mobile usability and improved site speed.
eCommerce Functionality
Scalability
Future Growth
Site Speed & Mobile Usability
As any good web developer with a keen eye for SEO knows, beauty in design can be killed by ugly in user experience. This was the case here. That's why after a complete site overhaul, we implemented an on-site strategy focused on Core Web Vitals including desktop and mobile site speed as well as mobile usability.
Before Site Speed Alterations
After the initial move from Wordpress to Shopify was complete, most of the team were happy with the design results, but any good SEO understands that winning requires looking under the hood. We didn't like what we saw. The results from GT Metrix and Google Page Speed Insights were terrible, especially when you're talking about the potential of thousands of visitors in only a few minutes. We had to do better.
After Site Speed Alterations
After our site speed implementations, we saw fantastic results on both Google Page Speed Insights and GT Metrix on both desktop and mobile, including results that ranged under 1.5 second on full meaningful content paint. We were more comfortable for prime time TV with these types of results!
| Redirect Reduction |
|---|
| Minimize HTTP Requests |
| Reduce Server Response Time |
| Defer JavaScript & JavaScript Loading |
| Enable Compression |
| Enable Browser Caching |
| Minify Resources |
| Optimize Images |
| Optimize CSS Delivery |
| Optimize Fonts |
| Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources |
| Minify JavaScript & CSS |
| Prioritize Above the Fold Content |
| Shove Scripting Below the Fold |
| Lazy Load External Scripts |