In 2022, Topship shipped parcels from Nigeria to 189 countries. Yet people searching for those exact routes couldn’t find it.
Here’s how we built a page for every route, and what it did for organic traffic and sign-ups.
How do you make a shipping startup visible to the people already searching for the exact routes it serves?
Lead consultant at Zaicon Digital. I owned the SEO strategy, page architecture, conversion work, app store optimisation, and analytics.
I designed and launched a network of 436 programmatic route pages, then rebuilt the conversion journey, app store presence and tracking behind them.
Topship had a strong product and fair prices. But its website barely showed up in search.
Most new customers came through paid ads. In a crowded market, that’s an expensive way to grow.
Meanwhile, people searched for exact routes every day. Think “shipping from Lagos to Abuja” or “delivery from Nigeria to UK”. Topship served those routes but had no page for them.
Beyond the headline results, the page network delivered:
Organic search went from a minor channel to the biggest source of new sign-ups. Over the same period, Topship kept breaking its monthly delivery record. Pages ranked on page one for searches like “shipping from Lagos to Abuja”, “delivery from Nigeria to UK”, and “express delivery Lagos”.
We started with search demand, not a content calendar. We listed every route Topship served, then checked how people searched for each.
The pattern was clear. People search by where a parcel starts and where it’s going. So we built a page for each pair.
Each page type had its own place in the site. That kept URLs readable and internal links logical.
Programmatic pages often fail because they’re thin. So we set rules every page had to meet before it went live.
Traffic was only half the job. We also reworked the journey from first visit to first shipment.
On the homepage, we built two hero sections for different customer types. We added app reviews and social proof, plus app prompts below the hero and above the footer.
After sign-up, a 14-day onboarding flow taught new users how to ship. An abandoned shipment flow brought back people who started an order and stopped. Anyone inactive for 30 days or more got a reactivation campaign.
Topship had just launched its mobile app. We wanted web customers to move across.
The order confirmation page, the welcome email, and every transactional email carried an app download prompt with social proof.
In the app stores, we optimised the title and description for terms like “shipping”, “delivery”, “logistics”, and “interstate delivery”. We improved the icon and screenshots, and asked for a review after each successful delivery. A dedicated landing page showed off the app’s features.
You can’t improve what you can’t see. So we rebuilt Topship’s tracking across web and app.
GA4 and Google Tag Manager went across topship.africa, ship.topship.africa, and blog.topship.africa. We tracked sign-ups, quotes, and completed orders as conversions.
The apps got Firebase, their own GA4 property, the Facebook SDK, and OneSignal for push messages. Mixpanel and session recordings showed where users dropped off.
While organic grew, we cut waste in paid media.
On Google Ads, we linked GA4 for conversions and audiences, ran app install campaigns, and excluded existing customers. On Meta, we made separate creative for new customers and for moving existing ones to the app. Retargeting followed site visitors and anyone who abandoned a shipment.
Topship’s demand was hiding in thousands of route searches. Most businesses with many locations, routes, or products have the same gap. Want to find yours? Get in touch, and let’s map your demand together.
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