Karina Rocco is a proud owner of Gioia to Play, an online store of hand-crafted sensory play kits. She is a loving mother of two beautiful daughters and an artist at heart. In the midst of the Covid crisis, Karina sought a way to entertain her daughters. With an academic background in Fine Arts and Art History, she turned to creative, meaningful play ideas to keep her kids busy. She witnessed her daughters enjoy hours of educational, sensory play time and decided she wanted to share her unique sensory kits with the outside world. She launched Gioia to Play in November 2021 with the aim to bring playful sensory toys to homes, schools, and therapy rooms.
The Goal: From Skeleton to Website
Karina had a skeleton of a website. She had a domain and a few basic pages that were set up haphazardly. Additionally, Gioia to Play has a successful Etsy store. She wanted to activate a WordPress WooCommerce store to allow locals to shop and pick up without the shipping costs. Our Goal was to create a website that educates about sensory play kits and is easy to shop. Additionally, we wanted to infuse the website with search keywords. Lastly, we wanted to add a Google Business Profile to help with local searches.
The Solution: Gioiatoplay.com
Gioia to Play planning started with SEO research. We researched all the relevant keywords for sensory toys, types of education that promote sensory play and supporting terms like Waldorf toys. Once the keyword list was ready, we started planning the website and products around it. We renamed the products and categories accordingly. Additionally, SEO keywords were added to all images. We invested in a blog section to explain the benefits of sensory play on brain development and strengthen search keywords. On the back end side, we found a plugin to manage the inventory on both Etsy and Woocommerce from one place.
Only a few weeks after the website launched, we saw a 35-position drop on one of the focused keywords “sensory kits” going from 76 to 41.
In Addition, we see the defined search terms starting to get organic impressions in google searches.
We are happy to see immediate results on the analytics side of the site and continue to monitor.
Project ID:
Website: https://gioiatoplay.com/
Platform: WordPress.com
Notable plugins and Integrations:
Yoast SEO – Free Version
Search Console – Created a domain property for indexing and overseeing site health
Google Analytics – For deeper analytics abilities
WooCommerce – eCommerce Store with Square, PayPal, and WooWommerce payments as payment options
LitCommerce – Inventory app that connects to multiple stores like WooCommerce and Etsy lets you manage your inventory from one place.