• by Mike Cassidy , September 5, 2014

Now that college football is officially lighting up stadiums across the country, Guy Moore's two Tallahassee, Fla. shops near the Florida State University campus have taken on their annual mad-house status.

Fans of the reigning national championship team are packing the stores in search of one thing: garnet. Yes, as in garnet and gold; garnet and gold T-shirts, jerseys, hats, coasters, beer coozies -- you name it.

What do you mean, "What’s garnet?"

Colors are a funny thing. Any Florida State fan knows garnet as well as they know their own name. But others? They might easily describe garnet as maroon, or crimson, or cardinal, or red for that matter. Even Guy Moore, the founder of Garnet & Gold, a venerable FSU fan apparel shop and Web site, says the precise definition of the color can get a little fuzzy.

"You go to FSU and you see different shades of garnet,” Moore, 69, says. “There’s crimson, maroon. The maroon has too much purple in it. The crimson has too much red in it."

While confusion on a college campus might lead to some friendly taunting among fans of FSU (garnet), Alabama (crimson) and Stanford (cardinal), color confusion can be a real problem for an e-commerce enterprise that must account for the dozens of different ways consumers describe the same color.

Say you’re a big Florida State fan who’s searching for a garnet bedspread to welcome in the new football season and the onset of cooler weather in most of the country. "Garnet bedspread" isn't likely to get you very far as an organic search term.

Worse, what if you’re a merchant who has a healthy stock of dark red bedspreads that reasonable people would certainly agree are garnet, whether you describe them that way or not? You just lost a sale. Now multiply that over thousands of Web sites and millions of fans searching for millions of items that reflect their school colors. (Think purple, vermillion, burnt orange, focal orange, olive, cream, scarlet, Harvard crimson, Chicago maroon, cherry, maize, prairie gold, Wyoming prairie gold, old gold, blue, dark blue, royal blue, navy blue, true blue, Yale blue, Carolina blue, reflex blue, midnight blue, azure blue, slate blue and on and on.)

No one ever said organic search was easy. Digital marketers and e-commerce executives pull their hair out worrying about providing high-quality content and keeping up with the tagging and rule-writing needed to keep an ever-evolving inventory search-friendly, even as consumers constantly come up with new ways to describe what they’re after.

The kickoff of college football season seems an ideal reminder of the intense focus that digital retailers must maintain in a field that is as competitive as any -- athletic or non-athletic. So much is out of a retailer’s control -- the macro-economy, the whims of fashion, the weather, the rapid-fire evolution of language and the terms consumers use to look for what they want.  

"My last thought that goes through my mind at night is that my life is based on a game,” says Austin Moore, 28, general manager of the company his father owns. “We’re totally reliant on a bunch of college kids throwing a ball around."

Yes, Garnet & Gold's sales (including the 23 percent and growing attributable to e-commerce) tend to rise and fall with the fortunes of Florida State football. The total market for college-licensed merchandise like the items that the Moores sell was nearly $4.6 billion last year, the season FSU won the national title. The Seminoles’ No. 1 finish rocketed Florida State gear to No. 8 on the list of best-selling school attire -- up from No. 21 the year before, meaning a big win for the Moores.

And so far, so good this year for the father-and-son team, with FSU beating (although not dominating) Oklahoma State, 37-31 on Saturday, to tie a school record of 17 straight wins.

Given that so much is out of the hands of e-commerce retailers, it’s all the more vital that they seize control of those things they can influence. Things like:

• Identifying both your site’s commercial and editorial content gaps. High-quality and comprehensive content helps search engines help your potential customers find you and your products.

• Maximize the ability for consumers to find you by thinking like a search engine. Examine your site structure and consider how easy, or difficult, it is for a search engine to index your pages. Build relationships among your pages to improve the ability for engines to crawl the site.

• Turn to technology like natural language processing and machine learning to help the humans in your organization keep up with your ever-changing inventory and the shifting ways consumers describe what it is they are searching for.

• Promote your content through channels that make sense. If you’re selling college sports fan apparel, think about forums and experts that fans turn to, for instance. Work to understand what would motivate such channels to post your content.

Although there are many ways that retailers can improve their chances at success, there are few locks in life. Unless you’re a diehard Florida State fan, like Guy Moore.

"I think things look really good," he says of the young season. "We've got a fantastic quarterback. We’ve got a back-up. We’ve got back-up after back-up after back-up. I see us as a two or three touchdown favorite over about everybody we play."