Our 2022 Alcohol Salience Index is the leading digital benchmark of the UK Alcohol industry. DrinkSupermarket is a standout performer this year, growing 52% Year on year and securing a place as the industry’s 5th most visible brand online.
“Visibility” refers to a metric produced by Searchmetrics: a yardstick measurement of organic share of voice.
Below are some aspects of their campaign you can apply to your own:
Organised navigation – Find your favourite drink
Ensuring your site is organised and easy to navigate is great for both Google and user experience. Give your users clear paths to take. Make sure you’re taking a strategic approach to your Navigational Menu.
Here we can see within DrinkSupermarket’s Mega Navigational Menu the depth of category granularity:
DrinkSupermarket organises its site through categories such as drink type, what’s new, big and miniatures, gifts, brands, and sales.
Doing so immediately breaks down what people are looking for. It’s further organised and broken down into subcategories. Let’s take a closer look at the drinks menu:
They break down each alcohol type into its own subcategory, such as whisky into the different types of whisky they offer, gifts, and even shop by price. The other subcategories are broken down similarly, whereby some include popular brands, such as the beer, cider, and ale subcategory.
Another way you can organise your site and aid in navigation is through Product Landing Pages (PLPs). Where DrinkSupermarket achieves this is through filters on the PLPs which break down each page further so the customer can move through and find their desired product. They also include a ‘Best In’ category which instantly offers users the most popular products straightaway.
This approach makes it incredibly easy for users to navigate the site and find exactly what product they are after, whether that’s by drink type, flavour, size, brand or price.
Targeting brand terms
When asking someone what their ‘go-to’ drink is, most people will answer with alcohol type or flavour, such as ‘wine’ or more specifically ‘white wine’. But many customers go straight to the brand they favour, since they are well-known, popular, and dominate the market more than just generic types. Examples might include Jack Daniels whisky, Malibu rum, Absolut vodka, and more; these brand names have more power and outweigh the respective drink type in terms of search volume.
Here we can see the trend with Absolut vodka in blue, compared to generic Swedish vodka searches over the past year. Overall, the brand Absolut holds a strong 8.7K search volume in the UK.
Like DrinkSupermarket, signposting popular brand pages through the Mega navigation such as in the aforementioned example, or through the Homepage below, is an excellent of helping the user find what they need. But also, this can help Google find exactly what brands you have on offer quickly, supporting your site to rank higher for branded terms.
Through these brand pages, DrinkSupermarket has a mix of Product Landing Pages that include brand information and products, but they also have brand spotlight pages for the most popular brands. For example, the Absolut brand page has a great layout that combines a PLP with a mix of information, imagery, and video, matching the brand colours and look. They also include some recipes for mixing and making your own drinks:
These pages have excellent UX design for customers, a broad range of content, and clearly signposted engaging carousels. These are an excellent means of targeting branded terms.
For example, DrinkSupermarket’s Absolut brand PLP currently ranks on page 1 for the keywords above, which are all high in search volume, and low in difficulty. The campaign has picked its battles well and the results prove the value of this work.
Homing in on user intent with gifting pages
Giving alcohol as a gift is a great go-to, no matter the occasion. The trend of buying alcohol as a gift or alcoholic gift set is rising. The Salience Index found that the keywords with the most opportunity are through gifting.
Alcohol ‘gifts’, ‘gift sets’, and ‘miniature’ terms have been targeted by DrinkSupermarket. We can see great signposting and navigation through the gifting terms first through their mega navigation:
They then break down gifts by price, occasion, and type. They also signpost their special gifts, including gift packs, bottle engraving and more, on their homepage immediately below their main banner:
This, along with their approach to signposting miniatures, which is growing in popularity for gifts, makes finding the perfect gift effortless.
DrinkSupermarket’s approach to gifting is one that other alcoholic sectors should look to emulate since it has the most opportunity to grow your visibility, which explains why DrinkSupermarket has grown so much this year.
In Summary
With a well-designed site, organised navigation, and content around alcohol types, brands, and gifting, DrinkSupermarket is moving upwards and succeeding in the market. With search rankings to back it up and diverse keywords, this brief analysis tells you all you need to know about their tremendous growth in performance over the past year.
While there are some tips to follow here, there is much more to discover in our 2022 Alcohol Salience Index. Or, if you want to know the key to getting similar results, contact our team today for a free personalised audit of your site to see the best opportunities and strategies to succeed online.