When migrating an existing (print) brand or product to an online platform, be careful to assess the competitive landscape. These products are usually already successful and established (hence the online migration), so sales and marketing teams tend to feel they have a handle on how to proceed. However, online competition is usually very different to traditional print competitors and marketing reference sites can be a challenge. Here are a few observations:

• Done correctly, an existing brand migrated to an online platform can enjoy a healthy initial growth due to the existing customer base. This early growth can ‘mask’ weak search performance and search relevance issues.
• Often, this early growth may stagnate over time unless the site has been optimised for search and traditional, offline (print) sales and marketing strategies have evolved.
• Since the initial customer base migration will usually ensure a functioning segment of direct and even referral traffic, the issue for this site type is how to get new customers – the ‘new visitor’ segment.
• A reference site optimised for search will often find that search traffic is its biggest source of  ‘new visitors’ (new customers) to the site.
• Direct and referral traffic tend to reflect sales and marketing efforts which, while delivering valuable traffic (in terms of site conversions), can seldom match the ‘new vistor’ traffic volumes generated by search engines.