How an iPad Model Lookup Page Ranked #1 in Search

Challenge

If you wanted to get a case for your 12.9-inch iPad Pro, you can’t simply search “12.9-inch ipad pro cases”. That’s because nearly every generation of iPad has a unique form factor depending on its generational release. And so if you own the 12.9-inch iPad Pro that was released in March 2020 (4th gen), you wouldn’t be able to use the case made for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro that was released in May 2021 (5th gen).

When I learned about this during my time at Targus, I asked iPad owners around the office if they knew which generation their iPad was. Aside from the product managers, not only did very few know this detail, they also had no idea how to find out. If employees of a company that makes iPad cases didn’t know how to get this information, how would the average consumer?

Solution

I worked with my team to launch a landing page that educates users on how to find their generation specific iPad model number and then match it to a model name. This would give them the information they needed to shop for compatible accessories. The hope was that if a user was trying to figure out their exact model, there’s a good chance it was to determine compatibility with an accessory purchase.

The top of the page helps users locate the model number, which is etched into the back of their iPad in small print.

The next step provided a lookup table to map the model number to the full model name. This information is critical because accessories are marketed by the full model name, not the model number, but only the model number is easily findable. The table also included a link to a device category page to shop compatible accessories for their model.

Results

The page was spun up fairly quickly, and we saw results almost immediately.

• The page achieved its goal of first page ranking and for a time, even ranked first for “which ipad do i have” and similar long tail searches.

• The page hasn’t really been updated since we built it back in 2017 and it’s still ranking 6th!

• We received tens of thousands of pageviews to this page, nearly all from organic search.

• Conversion rate was on the lower side, and could have been optimized, but was still generating around $50K per year.

Takeaways

• We determined that conversion rate was low, because the majority of users were simply trying to know which iPad model they have, and weren’t necessarily in the market for accessories

• However, this still allowed us to build awareness among users that may not have known who we were, and that we had cases and other accessories for their iPad