Last week we attended comScore’s webinar about the state of  online retail economy for 3Q 2009. As always, the there was a great deal of informative and interesting data.

For us the most important, and frankly eye-opening, statistic was that while most metrics were down (3Q vs year ago: sales were down 3% , number of transactions per buyer were down 16.4%, dollars spent per buyer down 18.4% and dollars per transaction were down 2.4%) – the number of people shopping online was up a whopping 19.6%. So, even in a recession, the number of people shopping online was up almost 20%. Yes, they are spending less money, but when they do need to purchase something they are turning to the Internet. 

Habits are changing. As the economy gets better (and eventually it will), new shopping habits will be in place for people and e-commerce will once again be poised for growth.

So if your e-commerce has not been bringing in the numbers you had hoped for, now is the time to look at your website and start investing in it. The buyers are out there, and there will only be more of them in the coming years. Make sure your site is set up to convert as many visitors into customers as possible. If you focus on conversion and user experience now, your business will be set to grow.

Digital Marketing, Search Engine Marketing conversion rates, down economy, e-commerce, Online Marketing, online sales, Search Engine Marketing, Website Usability

It’s that time of year – the dreaded “pre-holiday” season. It’s when anticipation runs high and sales haven’t quite started to rev up yet.

We recommend that our clients use the month of September to get ready for November and December. That gives us (and them) enough time to check and double check everything. While there are countless items to check off the list, a few things move the sales needle the most.

It’s mid-October, so it’s crunch-time and every day really counts.  This isn’t meant as a comprehensive list. This is a “if you’re going to do a few things to get ready, these are the things to make sure you do” list:

1) Make sure you analyze last year’s numbers.

AdWords, Analytics and sales figures. You need to know what worked and what didn’t, specifically during the holiday season. Use that information to create your AdWords campaigns for this year.

It may seem like an obvious step, but some companies review month over month figures. More than any other time, it’s important to review year over year numbers, because the holidays are such an aberration for most ecommerce companies.

2) Get up to speed with your competition.

Read industry trades. Check your competitors’ sites. Have their websites changed? Understanding where they are right now and what the industry buzz is, can help you understand how robust your competition will be in the coming months.
 
3) Get your email-marketing schedule set now.

Even if all year long you’re able to work a day, a week, or a month ahead, the holidays move so quickly. You have to have a preliminary email-marketing schedule laid out, and get started on the graphics and messaging for these campaigns. The coming days will get busy. You should leave as little to the last minute as possible.

4) Create landing pages that complement your holiday AdWords campaigns.

Landing pages can help improve conversion rates, and are a critical part of the SEM process. Once again, if possible, look back to last year. Learn from what worked and what didn’t. Using the data available should help performance every year, regardless of the economy.

Online marketing is a fast moving industry, even in slow times. During the holiday season, every hour counts. Get in front of the process now, so you can have a successful, profitable, holiday season.

Digital Marketing, Search Engine Marketing AdWords, Ecommerce, email-marketing, holiday sales, Landing Pages, Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, sem

A recent study by WPP’s GroupM states that:

Even as digital advertising increases by 7%, “the growth in Internet display advertising has lost momentum over the past several years as supply has run ahead of demand. In 2010, display spending is projected to have a smaller share of total digital spending, with a 34 percent share, down from 35 percent in 2009 and 39 percent in 2006.

Worldwide display advertising is expected to grow just 5 percent next year to about $20 billion. By contrast, global search advertising will soar 12 percent to approximately $25 billion.”

I don’t see this data as a death knoll for display advertising. Internet years are like dog years in that, display advertising or banner ads, as they were once called, are ancient compared to the “new” world of search. The first banner ad is estimated to have appeared in 1994 while search ads came on the scene in 2000, a whopping six years later just as the online banner market crashed.

Text ads took a little time to really catch on.

From a consumer’s perspective, text ads didn’t garner much trust nor were they very visually appealing in the early days. Users were wary of them, preferring the organic listings that weren’t “sponsored.”

For businesses, text ads were seen as a mediocre alternative to display advertising, used mainly by businesses that couldn’t afford the high costs of creating display ads or the high CPM driven costs for the media.

However, now that the Internet and search have evolved and become a part of everyday life, text ads are no longer something to avoid and are trusted by consumers. That doesn’t mean that display ads are dead. On the contrary, there is still a place and time where they are highly effective but in this consumer-driven economy, pull is working better than push. As the study by GroupM mentioned, search marketing is really “intention marketing.” And that’s a pretty powerful tool for marketers.

So perhaps, search is still reaching a mature phase of growth while display had already hit its prime.
 
Companies are now starting to see the value in search marketing but shouldn’t discount the value of display advertising. In fact, a recent Atlas Institute study demonstrated that users exposed to both search and display ads convert at a higher rate: an average of 22 percent better than search alone and 400 percent better than display only.

Any good company will work to achieve a balance within their marketing mix, incorporating both.

Search Engine Marketing Banner Ads, digital advertising, display ads, Search Engine Marketing, text ads

When people do business on the web, they often lose sight of the competitive environment they live in simply by existing as a website. This is an important fact for business owners and how they relate to their online consumer.

Say you have a website that sells hats. Now, imagine the website as a brick and mortar that sits in a strip mall full of stores that sell hats. To your left is a hat store and to your right is another hat store. Next to those stores are more hat stores and so forth. Online, this is exactly what your potential customers see.

If I am a customer walking in this strip mall, why would I want to choose your store? Does your store invite me to shop? Does it stand out from the other shops or does it get lost in the clutter? This is how customers view websites. Imagine they are walking down this row of shops deciding which one to enter. They may enter your shop simply because you are the store closest to their car. If your store is far away, there better be something that catches their attention and encourages them to take the trip to your store.

Once a person decides to enter your store, what will they see once they arrive? Is your store well organized so that your customer can find exactly what they are looking for? Or is the store a disheveled mess?

When designing a website, it is imperative that you think of your site in this way.  Good usability makes it easy, convenient and pleasant for someone to shop online or else they’ll simply walk out of your store and move on to the next. After all, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of stores selling the exact same thing.

Users want to be able to find things quickly and with as little distraction as possible. They do not want to have to sift through unnecessary clutter. If your site appears this way, they can move on in just a couple of clicks.

Website Design, Website Usability Content, Online Content, Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Small Business

Google now has AdWords reporting features that allow you to see every single keyword phrase that resulted in click-through traffic. This new feature lets you see the words users placed before or after your keywords phrases.

For example, if you sell children’s clothing and outerwear, keywords you might have for an ad for scarves are “scarf” or “scarves.” You may also have keywords with additional adjectives, like “colorful scarves” or “pink scarves.”

Based on these assumptions, Google may display your ads when users query such terms as “lacey scarves,” “sexy scarves,” or even “elegant scarves,” since you have the word “scarves” as a keyword in your campaign. Users who query these terms are not the right potential customer for a site that sells cute children’s scarves. Users on a mission to find a specific item will often click on ads, check out the site, click back and go on to the next site.

Add keywords that drive the “wrong” traffic to your site as negative keywords, so when they are included in the query string, your ad will not appear. “Wrong” traffic means users who are looking for a product or service you do not provide and who, based on their query, would definitely not be interested in what you do provide.

Use Google’s new reporting feature to find these terms. There will likely be words or phrases that are completely unrelated to your business, and these keywords have cost you money unnecessarily. Turn them into negative keywords so you can focus your budget on the terms that are likely to convert.

Search Engine Marketing AdWords, keywords, Negative Keywords, PPC, Search Engine Marketing, sem