31 Oct 2008
Take a look at the evolution of Google’s Halloween logos over the years, starting with the year 1999. They seem to have gone from cute to scary. The 2008 logo (at the bottom) was designed by Wes Craven, legendary horror director. Which is your favorite?
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
It’s really sad when great search engine marketing campaigns don’t bring about conversions due to problems with the website. So this week we are examining issues we have encountered with various shopping carts, contact forms, and booking engines.
Although a robust shopping cart is crucial for conversion of your website traffic, it is often overlooked when websites are being designed or updated. Any business that sells products and services online needs to recognize the importance of a shopping cart that works! These are some of the malignant and chronic problems I have diagnosed for clients.
Is your shopping cart compatible with all of your customers’ browsers? This is the most important issue plaguing online businesses and their shopping carts. You need to keep in mind that your customers now use Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome, etc. By not having your shopping cart optimized for all of them, you are saying goodbye to sales and brand-building opportunities.
Mac or PC? How about both! Please don’t alienate potential customers by not supporting the Mac platform. Mac user numbers are on the rise thanks to the massive blunder known as Microsoft Vista. Test and ensure compatibility on both platforms for best results.
How many steps to the finish line? Are you making it notoriously hard for your customers to complete a sale? Do you really need to have 10 steps before you confirm an order? Always keep things simple. Your customers will happily buy your wares online if you don’t frustrate them with unnecessary steps. A crisp, clean look and feel minus unnecessarily steps is key to excellent conversion.
Why did someone abandon your shopping cart? It’s for them to know and you to find out. Start cranking out those Abandonment Surveys in order to learn why. This is probably the hardest step to implement, but it is also the best way for you to find out how good/bad your customers’ online shopping experience is. Be sure to include your phone numbers, contact information, and email addresses. And remember, for each person that gives you criticism, there are 10 others who felt the same way and didn’t tell you.
Offer protection, kill doubt. In today’s world of online scams and identity theft, make sure that you present a secure and reassuring shopping cart experience. Having a logo such as Hacksafe or SSL helps ease peoples’ fears about buying online. Likewise, a shady-looking shopping cart is almost certain to fail you on conversions. According to some surveys, over 40% of customers abandon a shopping cart when they are asked to give too much personal information. Remember, a shopping cart and an online survey are two very different things. Nobody should ever feel interrogated on your website.
Best advice coming out of our Chicago office: “Test Early and Test Often”
Your shopping cart is your bread and butter. It deserves your undivided attention. Don’t hesitate to check, test, and change things around to ensure that revenue does not seep through the cracks.
23 Oct 2008
Every year people talk about how early the holiday season has started. But for an advertiser, the kickoff date is unclear. Determining when to start advertising and where to allocate the bulk of the holiday marketing budget can be the key to successful growth. So, while the economy may not be doing so hot this year, the question remains, “how can you maximize profits during the holiday upswing in spending?” Your answers should focus on timing and targeting, goals well suited to search marketing.
To keep your holiday advertising campaign efficient, a carefully structured PPC bidding plan will go a long way. Obviously, a thorough understanding of your products and services is vital. Research should then refine your assumptions to make the big improvements that matter in terms of ROI. To do this, two resources are particularly useful.
When looking through the research, some of the most valuable finds exist where the data doesn’t match your expectations. Take the fitness industry, for example. A lot of people would probably guess correctly that January is the prime time for new gym memberships. But if you have, say, $10,000 to spend in online advertising, where do you place the bulk of the money? Do you divide across two months? Do you spend most of it in the second, third, or fourth weeks of January?
Fitness industry managers would probably suggest the first two weeks of January. Online, Google Insights reveals a different timetable for online traffic.
Interest Over Time
Check out the normalized numbers, or relative popularity index of searches for “personal trainers.”
The traffic spike starts on Christmas day and then drops off after the first week of January. In-person signups usually keep strong until mid-February, so the search traffic clearly indicates a customer research phase that starts earlier then the actual signup phase.
An online advertiser in the fitness industry would be wise to start spending more money around Christmas day and then hit a peak at New Year’s Day. To further target the advertising, you can explore the trends by the hour. You may discover that the conversion rates vary by time of day. For example, potential clients may be filling out a fitness industry contact form at higher percentages during the lunchtime hours. Tying this data together with the weekly trends, a campaign could be designed to spend the largest share of a holiday budget on a 4-hour window during lunch over a 2-week period. Using techniques like these, you can be sure to spend your money on ads that potential clients will find immediately useful and relevant. So while your competitors are spending money evenly across the holiday season, your campaign can spend at the times when people are most likely to act, putting your company ahead of the pack.
Attention all hotels!! The holiday season is upon us, and retail marketers are not the only one’s that should be fine-tuning their search marketing campaigns. Seasonal keywords for the travel industry are often overlooked during keyword research, but they can be a crucial and powerful tool in your online marketing strategy.
Let’s take a look at some examples from one of the most competitive markets in online marketing: New York City Travel.
Typically, to run a paid search campaign in NYC would take a healthy budget. Broad competitive keywords can be costly due to high search volume and heavy competition from major brands. However, take a look at these seasonal searches:
My first observation is that there is only 1 independent hotel advertising on this set of keyword phrases. No major brands, no other independent hotels, not even the discount sites Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity are bidding on these seasonal terms.
For an independent hotel, this is huge. As you can see from the stats below, provided by the Google Keyword Tool, there are over 11,100 searches just for those 3 terms, with the majority of those searches happening during late October, November and December.
Not only that, but the average cost per click for these terms is only $0.44. These are unbelievable numbers for such a competitive vertical!Pair this style of seasonal search marketing with a solid revenue management program that actively creates seasonal packages and discounts, and you will have a rock star search marketing program.
