Trek Picked Their Perfect Line: How Aligning Search Intent to Device Generated 58% of Traffic from Organic Search

Key Takeaways

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Trek garnered 58% of traffic from organic search from June 2021 to May 2022. Here’s how:

Cross-Device Usage

• Deduplicates: represent 18% of Trek’s audience, indicating high stickiness cross-over from desktop to mobile. 
• Desktop: acts as an in-depth place of research once buyers are already aware of the brand with 42% of web traffic.
• Mobile: acts as a discovery medium for visitors, with 58% of web traffic, who then move on to explore more on desktop. 

Search Intent

• Transactional: terms indicate that customers are ready to buy a bike, this drives top organic traffic for both devices.
• Informational: terms indicate customers are interested in learning more about specific products from Trek.
• Commercial: terms indicate broader searches for products such as “bike” that generate more traffic on mobile devices.
• Navigational: terms indicate broader branded searches such as “trek” that generate more traffic on desktop devices.

Ranking Content

• Local Searches: such as ‘bike shop near me’ rank high for Trek due to an interactive local bike shop finder on the site.
• In Depth Info Pages: rank in searches looking for how to get started with products such as Trek’s ‘new to ebikes’ guide.

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From June 2021 to May 2022, Trek saw 6.4M average monthly visitors worldwide. Across all devices, Search makes up 58% of incoming traffic. 

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From March 2022 to May 2022, website traffic increased +35% period over period. Within that period an average of 18% of Trek’s global audience were deduplicates*, visiting the website across devices. This indicates a high stickiness of users who start their journey on one device and continue on another device.

Desktop and mobile play two different roles in the Trek journey for customers. From June 2021 to May 2022, mobile made up 58% of incoming traffic to the website.

1. ‍Desktop. Mobile acts as a discovery medium for Trek visitors. Less time is spent on the mobile site before switching over to do more research on desktop. More importance is placed on the main domain rather than visiting subdomains in the initial time of discovery.
2. ‍Mobile. Desktop acts as an in-depth place of research for Trek buyers once they are already aware of the brand. This leads to higher average pages visited per session and more distribution across Trek subdomains explored.

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In their user journeys, Trek customers visit an average of 5 pages per session compared to mobile at 3 pages per session.

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Shopping for bikes on desktop provides a smoother experience for the user which leads to more pages visited on desktop than mobile. See the Madone SLR product page on desktop and mobile where accessing the product specs takes up a whole page on mobile.

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The top subdomains for Trek include the Electra e-bike, the archive page for older model manuals, the racing news page and blog. The main domain of trekbikes.com sees the majority of traffic (94% on desktop and 96% on mobile). However, the two percent discrepancy leads to more visitors from desktop exploring the remaining subdomains. 

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A range of customers’ search intents are covered by content existing on the Trek site, enabling the chance to rank across any customer journey, organically.

• Transactional. Customers are ready to buy a bike and are starting to lookup search terms that will help them take the next step in their purchase. Search terms: "bike shop near me", "bicycle shop near me"
• Informational. Customers are interested in learning more about specific bike models or product lines from Trek. Search terms: "trek mountain bikes", "trek marlin 5"
• Commercial. Broader searches that indicate commercial interest in a specific product type but not necessarily a Trek product. Search terms: "bikes", "e bike"
• Navigational. Broader searches within the lens of Trek. Customers search less for specific products and more for the brand itself. Search terms: "trek", "trek bikes"

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In May 2022, Transactional and Informational search intent drove the most traffic for both desktop and mobile devices. Desktop sees more Navigational traffic from searches such as “Trek Bikes” compared to mobile, which sees more traffic from Commercial searches such as “Bikes” which is a broad discovery term.

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Trek’s robust “Find a bike shop” page ranks consistently for people looking for nearby bike shops. It uses an interactive map that shows exactly where in stock bikes can be purchased. An integration allows them to show available stock at local shops creating a strong outbound and inbound backlinking strategy which in turn increases organic ranking positions. Trek’s bike shop pages generated 8% and 21% of organic traffic in May 2022 on Desktop and Mobile respectively.

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Trek’s “New to e-bikes” page ranks for customers doing informational, navigational and commercial searches. As a robust e-bike guide page, it provides a variety of content that helps the reader learn about the different uses and segmentations of e-bikes from mtb to city commuting.