In this week’s teardown, I analyze a 26-year-old eCommerce website, AllegroMedical.com. The site receives 50k organic traffic (Ahrefs estimate).
The website states that they have been online since 1997 and they claim to be the first company to sell medical products online. Despite its early mover advantage, it appears to still be a relatively small company.
Medical supplies are a growing market as more than 10,000 Americans turn 65 each day. According to IBISWorld, online medical supplies sales in the US reached $12 billion in 2023.
However, there are challenges in this niche. Google wants to show trustworthy sites to people seeking information about medical products as it could affect their health (a “Your Money Your Life” topic).
In this teardown, I examine what this site does well and easy wins that could help it increase traffic and revenue in the short and long term.
This is what I cover in this report:
- Website overview
- Major highlights
- Competitor overview
- Easy wins to increase revenue and/or traffic
- Actionable takeaways you can apply
Let’s get into it!
✅ Website Overview & Highlights
Website traffic has been up and down slightly but overall traffic is up slightly over the past 2 years.
The domain has strong link authority for a medical supplies e-commerce site, which helps it rank for many healthcare supplies related keywords (46k keywords).
The website’s domain has been active since 1997 and the site has evolved over time into the modern version it is today.
Here is what the site looked like in 2001, from one of the earliest Archive.org snapshots available.
Allegro Medical was acquired in 2011 by Scrip Products Corporation. It does not seem like the business has been growing recently as it has a poor reputation online on Yelp and its Google Business Profile. I could not find LinkedIn profiles of any current employees.
A header banner offers free shipping on orders over $79 but requires a coupon code. Requiring a coupon code for free shipping could cause friction during the checkout process. Instead, they could automatically apply the free shipping and display a progress bar to show the amount needed to add to cart to qualify for free shipping.
They use popups for collecting emails for a newsletter and a phone number for text alerts. They offer a discount to customers who provide their information.
They have added assessability features to the website to help visitors with disabilities or other impairments to be able to use the website. This improves the user experience for their target audience, which includes many older adults. The text size on the website could be enlarged to make the content easier to read.
The website design is well done but with room for improvement as it looks slightly dated.
Highlights
- Over 2,600 referring domains
- Over 6,000 pages in Google’s index
- Some high authority links from Vice, Buzzfeed, Gizmodo, Glamour, etc.
Why is this site winning?
- A very long history of being online (since 1997)
- Strong link authority compared to other medical supplies online stores
Top 3 Competitors
Here are similar competitors targeting many of the same keywords.
- VitalityMedical.com – One of the leading online sellers of medical supplies with 79.2k organic traffic (Ahrefs).
- MedicalMonks.com – An online medical supplies seller with a more limited set of products and 64.4k organic traffic (Ahrefs).
- Exmed.net – A similar medical supplies eCommerce site with 50.2k organic traffic (Ahrefs).
Let’s get into the easy wins to grow this specific website.
🔥 5 Easy Wins To Grow This Website
There are opportunities to significantly grow this brand. I break down the following easy wins:
- Improve product pages
- Improve the Google Business Profile
- Solicit reviews for product pages
- Add upsells, add-ons, etc to increase average order value (AOV)
- Add more content guides
Let’s get into it!
➡️ Win #1: Improve Product Pages
This site uses product descriptions from the manufacturer on its product pages which means it has the same text content on product pages as many other medical supplies websites.
Writing unique and useful descriptions will help it stand out from other online stores and give product pages a better opportunity to rank highly in Google.
If thousands of pages need unique content, using AI to write the descriptions and then editing them for accuracy may be a cost-effective option.
Their competitor, Medical Monks, uses unique descriptions on its product pages so the content is not duplicated on other sites.
Another way the site could differentiate from other sites is to take original photos of the products if the manufacturer allows it. They could also collect customer photos when asking for a review.
Finally, they could add more question and answer (Q&A) content to the product pages. This could be based on questions with decent Google search volume or actual questions asked by customers who call customer support.
➡️ Win #2: Improve the Google Business Profile
When some customers are checking whether they should buy from an eCommerce site they may look at the Google Business Profile by searching Google for the name of the business.
In the case of Allegro Medical, their Google Business Profile is lacking in several areas. It has a 2.4 average rating and only has photos of an industrial building.
Asking customers to leave a review is allowed by Google’s guidelines and could improve their average rating significantly. Google suggests sending a link to the Google Business Profile in thank you emails and receipts.
Additionally, adding photos of real employees will help increase trust with potential customers.
They could also add employee photos to the About Page which currently has very basic information and no photos.
➡️ Win #3: Solicit Reviews for Product Pages
Reviews on product pages are an effective way to increase the confidence of potential buyers. Visitors are more likely to convert into customers when they see evidence of other people having a positive experience.
Many of the product pages have no reviews or only have reviews from several years ago.
Often, the unhappiest customers write reviews on product pages to share their frustration about a negative experience. However satisfied customers often don’t take time to leave a review unless asked.
To encourage more reviews from satisfied customers they could follow up with customers via email to check if everything turned out well and offer an incentive for leaving a review on the product page. The incentive could be a coupon for a future purchase or free delivery on the next order.
Some apps automate the gathering of reviews such as Yotpo for Shopify and Big Commerce sites. Yotpo has a form that lets buyers write reviews in the body of emails that are sent to customers.
➡️ Win #4: Add Upsells
Upsells within the shopping cart, checkout page, and post-purchase is THE quickest way to increase Average Order Value (AOV).
This site is missing these features. I’ve highlighted 3 different locations where the owners can add product suggestions:
➡️ Win #5: Add More Content Guides
One of the site’s top traffic pages is a guide about finding the right size for a type of medical product and receives over 1,000 visitors per month from Google.
Education is important in the medical supplies niche because some of the products need explanation or instruction to use correctly.
Publishing more guides on medical products that need education such as patient lifts, hospital beds, mobility scooters, and other medical devices will help provide valuable content for prospective customers.
The blog doesn’t have any new articles posted since August 2022 so publishing useful articles more frequently can help increase traffic from Google for keywords that potential customers are searching for.
Additionally, many of the product guides are too short in terms of content length. For example, a random article with the title “Use and Care of Reusable Solid Gel Stimulating Electrodes” is less than 500 words. Articles that are too short risk appearing as “thin content” to Google and typically rank lower than a more comprehensive article.
👉 Actionable Takeaways
Here are actionable takeaways that you can apply to your niche website today:
- Rewrite manufacturer’s product descriptions to provide unique content on product pages.
- Solicit reviews to improve the Google Business Profile for customers that check the reputation of the business before buying.
- Use tools like Yotpo to automate the gathering of customer reviews to boost conversion rates.
- Add upsells and add-ons. Increasing AOV is critical and this is a surefire way to do so.
- Publish useful product guides to attract potential customers searching for help on Google.
