Is Your Business Ranking For Alternative Product Names?

You might sell products that your buyers refer to by a different name. Sometimes these are nicknames for things, and sometimes they’re brand names that have just stuck, like Velcro or Hoover (there’s an article on more if you want to read).

The question is, do you know what your customers know your product as, and can they find it using the lingo on your website?

“Caddy Straps, Short Ones Not The Long Ones”

I’m no electrician, but I am having some electrical work done, and the electrician sent me to get some materials for the first fix.

He need X amount of this cable, that cable, some screws and “caddy straps, short ones not the long ones”.

I was reading this in a text message whilst at Screwfix, where I thought I’d try my luck.

Screwfix had no clue what a caddy strap was, and the electrician wasn’t answering his phone for me to ask.

I then drove to TLC where I had similar luck, although the guy did show me a picture of a product and suggest it might be what I was after. but I didn’t want to risk getting it wrong, so I drove back.

On route home I got a call from the electrician so I explained my issue to him. He said that he had some in the van and would use what he already had, but I was intrigued to understand exactly what a caddy strap was.

Google Will Know The Answer

When back at my desk, I typed “Caddy Straps” into Google, and the product imagery gave me a vague idea of what they look like.

Although, as a non industry type, I still had no clue what they are actually for or what a short or long one is.

I clicked on one of the products in the search results, and the longer product description became my next thing to search. ‘Walraven style’, as if Walraven are the main brand associated with the product, like Hoover in the vacuum industry.

Rapid Sliding Wall Brackets Or Britclips

This led me to the Walraven website, where they list these as RSWB, or RAPID SLIDING WALL BRACKETS.

So now we know some of the industry lingo, but there is still no mention of caddy straps.

But they do show a photo that shows the product in use, and that really helps me understand what the electrician was actually asking for.

Telescopic Stud Brackets

From the Google Shopping listings, I came to understand that these products are also referred to as telescopic mounting brackets. So when I popped onto the TLC website, I tried searching for Walraven, RSWB, and also Rapid Sliding Wall Brackets all with no success.

But I was successful when searching for Telescopic Stud Brackets.

So What The Heck Are Caddy Straps?

On the day my electrician arrived we had a joke about the caddy straps and he showed me the box. They were by a brand called NVent Caddy. The irony is, that searching Google, shows their website in position 2 in the results, but it doesn’t display the same product.

Better still, they don’t even call them Caddy Straps! They call them Telescopic Screw Gun Box Straps.

If You’re Still Wondering What These Clips Are…

For anyone reading this, a Britclip, Caddy Strap or Telescopic Stud Bracket, is all a piece of metal with pre-drilled holes, that fits between wooden studs in construction. It makes it super easy for electricians/plumbers to fix metal sockets or pipes to, and keep them all perfectly in line. It is tidier and quicker.

I’ve never seen these before and we’ve had several electrical refurb products, but I’d recommend them moving forward, the builder loved them too.

Hope that helps.

So What’s To Swipe & Deploy?

• Do you know what people call your products?
• Do you know what your customers call your competitors products?
• Are there nicknames, or does a certain brand dominate your industry with the most well known product on the market?
• Are there regional differences in how consumers refer to your products?

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself once you are aware of all the various terms your customers might use.

→ Are you using paid ads to present your products for those terms (where you can, avoiding trademarks etc)?

→ Are you trying to rank in organic search for those terms?

→ Are you showing your products when users type those products terms in to the search fucntion on your website?

This is the key takeaway.

If anything, the journey to find these Caddy Straps has taught me that there can be so many names for a single product. It’s important to try and understand all of the terms that might be used by someone searching for your product, so you can make sure that it appears for those searches.

Even the brand that is most associated with these products in this example (Walraven), is not appearing for some of the common terms used by potential customers searching, and that’s the opportunity.

Last of all, for a good user experience, we should present products (and services) as if we are trying to sell them to someone with no prior knowledge on the subject; in this instance it was me. Providing this educational information ensures that you are making it more assessable to a wider potential audience, and you are also less likely to have buyers returning products which they have mistakenly purchased.

Don’t expect your users to know what the products are and what they are used for. Some even my builder had never come across before. These are people that could become repeat customers if additional information or photos of the product usage were shown.

As soon as I saw what they were for, I understood why he needed them or at least where they were going.

That’s a wrap for Swipe & Deploy 066 this week. Join me next time where I will share another insight or inspiration piece from around the web. 

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