How Interspire Shopping Cart Helped HoodiePeople.com Rank Top 10 on Google

The Internet is the perfect platform for businesses which sell one thing and sell it really well.  Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson calls this concept the longtail.  Instead of going after everyone, pick a specific niche as your market and focus on giving that niche everything you've got - a great product, great customer service and great support.

One such business using the longtail concept and Interspire Shopping Cart to sell into what some would consider a crowded niche is HoodiePeople.com. By focusing on youthful hoodies from brands such as Zoo York, Marc Ecko, Atticus, and Harajuku Lovers, Hoodie People built both an audience and decent search engine rankings to boot. 

I caught up with Hoodie People owner Hasan Luongo to discuss what it takes to be a successful online store owner in a niche market.  Here's what he had to say...


As a small bootstrapped started we knew we needed to hit a niche.  Tee shirts are the #1 selling apparel category online and hoodies are very similar with higher price points and gross margins.  Hoodies are very popular and are represented across almost every lifestyle fashion category such as surf/skate, urban, casual, athletic, even couture. We also really like hoodies which is important.
We reviewed a lot of top retail sites and included some key design elements from them.  Overall we wanted the homepage design to grab the customers attention then give them very clear and easy navigation. We started with a simple Interspire theme and tweaked it to our liking. We are also in process of a implementing a bunch of U/I changes that will hopefully make it easier to navigate - the site is a constant work in progress.
It's all SEO - we use a lot of images and wanted to make sure everything was getting indexed.  Anchor tags get indexed well in search and are easy to do.  We were excited to discover that we broke through page one of Google search results for "hoodies" last week.
In terms of engagement we spend a fair amount of time identifying people with related interests on social networks and inviting them. We also participate a lot and push out a lot of content across these social sites.  In terms of traffic, Facebook in the 4th top referrer of traffic, and Twitter is 6th.

The web is social and we really wanted our customers to see a human face in our business.  Conversions are not huge from these sites but awareness is key for a startup and we will continue to work hard to produce interesting content and engage with people across key social sites.
Right now we are really in fall prep mode but next year we will likely add limited edition t-shirts to the product mix so we don't face the seasonal crunch.  We also think hoodies are a key item for summer adventures (beach, travel, bbq's etc.) and sales have held fairly steady going into summer.

Finally, why did you choose Interspire's Shopping Cart?

One of the main reasons we selected Interspire was that it gives us source code access so we can continue to customize design and layout as the business evolves.  What we have been most surprised with is the built in SEO functions, which have allowed us to quickly and consistently rank highly in our key search terms.

Hasan, thanks for taking the time to speak with me and congratulations on breaking the first page of Google!

Learn more about HoodiePeople.com and Interspire Shopping Cart

Visit HoodiePeople.com to see Hasan's web site or learn more about Interspire's online e-commerce solution, Interspire Shopping Cart, including video tour, online demo and features overview.