It’s been well documented that luxury brands are late getting into the ecommerce game. It wasn’t until after the recession hit in 2008 and many high-end designers found their products relegated to discount bins in well-known upscale department stores, that they started getting serious about the online space.

The problem isn’t that they’re late to the ecommerce world, the problem is they are bringing their glossy magazine mindset to their websites, and in doing so, they are building sites based on how they want their sites to function, without considering how users want to shop.

Flash heavy sites, light on usability

Most luxury brands break many, if not all, usability rules. They create sites that look and feel like look-books, not ecommerce sites.

These sites are largely flash driven, with big glossy images, pages that load slow, often have their own “unique” brand specific navigation and are anything but easy to use. Once a user figures out how to get to the product level (no easy feat on many of these luxury sites), the information provided is so basic it’s almost not useful at all.

Don’t believe me? Compare the experience of looking at Stuart Weitzman shoes on Zappos.com, versus on StuartWeitzman.com.  On Zappos.com, we have easy filtering of products, fast page loads, navigation that matches the mental models we expect from ecommerce sites, and detailed product descriptions and reviews. All of this is accomplished without “cheapening” the brand at all.

On the company site, we are subjected to big, bold flash pages that are utterly useless to a user. The user has to go 4 clicks in (clicking “shop the site”) two different times on different pages, just to get to shop a “default” style of shoe. The default is set to pumps. If we want to shop flats, or something else, we need to click again. Web sites aren’t the same as brick and mortar stores, and users don’t have the same expectation or attention span when shopping online. In a flash (no pun intended) users can find the same brands and products elsewhere.

Site Usability is only one part of the problem. In Part 2 – we’ll go over why even those brands that have usable sites are still missing out on sales.

“Internet retail sales in the U.S. will grow 10% a year through 2015 as shoppers spend more time online, Forrester Research says, and the implications aren’t good for brick-and-mortar stores… not only are customers increasingly shopping online, but savvy in-store customers are also armed with smartphones that can help them find better deals elsewhere or score price-matching offers.”

Shopping online is only growing and not going away anytime soon. Therefore, businesses need to think about how they want to structure their operations to move with the times. They should not be relying on brick-and-mortar stores to merchandise, brand, and sell their products when sales continue to decline. Mulpuru writes,

“Companies need to think about the permanent implications of smaller margins on stores in the longer-term future and how their multichannel initiatives can help to offset this trend.”

This concept is something that we are always talking about and working on with our clients. Although it is intimidating to make changes to an existing supply chain, you don’t want to miss the boat on this fast moving online gravy train. Either, companies need to work with their distributors to come up with a profitable e-commerce plan (selling wholesale to ecommerce sites), or market themselves online in a way that appropriately represents the brand and creates revenue through their website.

See the full article here: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/02/27/e-commerce-will-keep-rolling-research-firm-says/?mod=dist_smartbrief

We’ve been waiting for ages for AdWords to automate some of the things that we can set up in advance – like making an ad with a special offer live on the day of a sale and then pausing that ad when the day is done.

Well, today they announced this very feature! We don’t use many automated tools here (we think generally speaking that automation works in Google’s favor), but we’re excited about this feature. No more staying up until midnight to turn on promo ads!

To read more about it, check out the AdWords blog:   http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/adwords-rules-and-so-can-you.html

Today, we examine one last misconception related to the use of your ad space and a final mistaken belief for the whole existence of pay-per-click.
 
Misconception#4: A company should include their name in the ad so people know who they are.

A pay-per-click ad allows for 25 characters in the headline and two lines consisting of 35 characters each. That’s not a lot of room to get your message across to qualified prospects while using your budget wisely. People often waste their characters repeating information.

For example, an ad will read “Great discounts at shoes.com” and the last line is the URL www.shoes.com

What I’ve learned: Every word counts in the pay-per-click ad space. Don’t waste your characters.

Google allows you to insert your website at the bottom of each ad, yet people still find it necessary to include it in the body.  With such limited space, the body of a ppc ad must be used as efficiently as possible. Convey your message well and interest in your website will follow.
 
That’s right. I said convey your message to generate interest in your website. This brings us to my final misconception.

Misconception #5: Pay-per-click ads should be designed to sell the product.

People often fall into the belief that they need to sell their product with their ppc ads similar to the way they would with traditional advertising.
 
What I’ve learned: Sell your website and the product sales will follow.

Pay-per-click ads offer such limited space to convey a message which makes it very difficult to truly sell your product or service. Use your ad to create interest in your website and then set your website up to convert the people who come in via your ppc ads.
 
Overall, generating success with ppc advertising campaigns is a process that is built one component at a time. A successful campaign must be built on a deep understanding of your customer, well-researched keywords, a well-managed budget and thoughtful messaging. I hope that you walk away having learned something new about this subject. After all, I got to learn these lessons the hard way. Here’s hoping you don’t have to stumble through these same mistakes.
 
My next series will tackle usability practices and the common misconceptions about how people use websites. You’ll be surprised how common assumptions result in big losses of consumer traffic.

Today’s post focuses on setting the budget for Google AdWords and what I like to call budget blunders.
 
Misconception#3: The wonderful thing about pay-per-click advertising is that it is for all budgets, large and small. Anyone can tailor a pay-per-click campaign to suit their budget and get results.

Setting a pay-per-click budget can be tricky and this misconception is the larger umbrella under which a number of mistakes occur. To begin with, when a person creates a pay-per-clilck campaign and attempts to stay within a modest budget, they often forget that there is a correlation between their keywords and their budget.

For example, if a person chooses to include keywords with a large search volume and they don’t have a large budget, they run the risk of blowing their budget almost immediately, so their ads will only run for a matter of minutes, or hours. Imagine a keyword like “real estate” which is searched for 101,000,000 per day. If your ad is tied to the phrase “real estate”, your weekly or monthlyad budget can be exhausted within one day because of the number of times people search for this term.

Another common budget blunder is when people choose obscure keywords in order to stay within budget. Contrary to choosing popular keywords that break the bank within a day, these people choose their keywords based on “maximizing” their budget on keywords that are rarely searched for. But if no one (or very, very few people) is searching for these terms, their ads will never be seen! It’s kind of like opening a restaurant in a back alley rather than a busy street because the rent is cheaper. It may cost less, but no one will find you.

What I’ve learned: An ad is only as effective as its weakest link. If the foundation is not strong, poor results will be reflected.

So, when it comes to budget, most people follow two extremes. To avoid the common pitfalls associated with setting your budget, you must consider all angles of your approach. Your customers affect your keyword choices, your keyword choices affect your budget. Are you starting to see how the entire process must be built on a firm foundation of understanding? Pay-per-click may require expertise after all.

In our last blog for this series, we look at how people use their limited space in creating an ad in a pay-per-click environment like AdWords. Did you know that placing your company’s name in the ad is a waste of characters? I’ll tell you why in my next post.