eCommerce Simplicity

I was in heavy notebook shopping mode this afternoon. as Ive been sick of my heavy Toshiba dragging me down at every airport and tradeshow. I was in full research mode looking for the lightest laptop I could get with enough power to run my vital apps.

In doing so, I went to many web properties. I entered ” light laptop” numerous times. Now, when I went to Circuit City (directly, not through an ad), I was provided a enticing “promo” in the homepage of the primary real estate of the site for a notebook computer.

Almost automatically, I clicked the spot and was being merchanised to on the sub-category level. Data shows that once a user has progressed to this point in an eCommerce transaction, chances of conversion dramatically increase.

The question is - did Circuit City have some type of tracking software set in place and a program with other web entities so to present RELEVANT CONTENT AND PROMOTIONS to my needs at that current time? If they did, it worked and I was fully engaged in the user experience.

This is what I feel is the next big thing in eCommerce, not flash based merchandising designs which seem to be the hot thing at eCom trade shows.

My opinion, in this instance it was completely random. Circuit City did not have the processes in place to have their site present so intelligently. But you can replicate this type of targeting on our internal site and create a much more engaging experience for your visitors and customers with current technology available today.

Behavioral Targeting
eCommerce Targeting

PPC advertising can be an effective medium to drive sales - Other times, it can be an absolute albatross around your marketing campaigns due to its unpredictability and ROI spikes. What really drives me nuts however about PPC isnt the medium, but rather, the fly by night PPC only agencies that manage mult-million dollar paid search campaigns.

A Trinity client uses an alternative PPC management organizationwho boasts of ROAS of 300% on the latest campaign. When looking at the converting keywords however, its obvious that branded terms are driving the lionshare of the revenue. In situations such as these, the advertiser must strip out branded terms from ROI calculations to get the true performance of the PPC campaign.

Even though it is important to buy branded terms, lets be honest here…a monkey could do it.

Real efficiency in paid search management comes from bid management and the proactive testing of ad copy in efforts to increase quality score (ie. ad position). Even with active ppc management, success is not ensured. Key landing page creative must be tested and different offers messaged. Google’s web optimizer tool is perfect to tune your landing pages and is quickly becoming a key part of our client’s web marketing strategies.

tags:

Paid Search
PPC

Happy Easter everyone. As I have a few moments here, I thought I would blog a little about path analysis and how it can be such a powerful driver for conversion improvement. For those who are new to the term “path analysis” - essentially is the tracking, monitoring and strategic planning related to the primary online processes within your web site.

Any website that is established with the goal of monetizing traffic should conduct path analysis to properly gauge site performance. In conceptualizing a monitoring plan, the business should first outline the goals or scenarios that are to be monitored. In a basic eCommerce business - the following four processes should be monitored:

1. Cart to Conversion process (ie. after someone adds to cart, what percentage of visits are converting into sales for the business)

2. Search to Conversion (ie. after someone receives a search result, what percentage progress to the cart and then finalize the order process)

3. Site to Email (ie. What percentage of overall traffic that visits through the homepage is progressing to the email sign up option)

4. Spotlight Products to Conversion (ie. eCommerce sites usually “spotlight” 3-8 products within the homepage - how are these products doing from a conversion perspective?)

By seeing the percentage of traffic that progresses through these processes within your site, your business will be able to identify areas of the site that are causing visitor confusion or inhibting conversion rates in some form.

Knowing this data can set improvements in motion to hopefully reduce that leakage and drive incremental improvements.

Remember, if your conversion is 3% today - just getting one more person out of the 97 who didnt buy will impact your sales 33% on the upside! Optimize those sites out there!

Web Analytics
Web Path Analysis

Many of Trinity’s clients are new to the notion of tracking web analytics and are unfamiliar with how analytics can help the overall growth of their business. In working with clients, many times we are in the position of recommending and implementing a web analytics solution that is going to meet their needs. We always come to the question - Go with Google, or go with a paid solution…

When making the decision of which way to go, the first step is to understand the level of analysis needed. If the business just wants top line reporting on marketing campaigns and content effectiveness as it relates to the conversion funnel, then Google Analytics will be more than adequate. Google Analytics (previously known as Urchin for those new to the analytic world) provides a on-demand tool to track and monitor your key metrics. It is a great solution for mid-size companies and businesses who are new to analytics.

If your business is more proactive in leveraging analytics internally within your organization - Omniture may be the best bet for you. Due to its flexibility in constructing custom path analysis reports - Omniture provides a level of speed & insight that is un-paralleled in the analytic marketplace. Look for Google to try and become the market leader in this space by incorporating these type of dynamic capabilites, but until then, Omniture is still the king of the web analytics market.

Google Analytics

Its been a crazy last month. Catching up with old friends and making new ones is always a good time and this year’s Shop.org first look and Etail West was no exception.

It seems like the new “hot” thing in Ecom these days is flash and flex technology to provide a seamless experience for the shopper in both browsing & ordering. When saying seamless, I am trying to convey that pages are not reloading but rather its just one continuous flow throughout the store experience.

Im not sure however that the mainstream consumer is ready for these types of sites. Humans by nature are creatures of habit and we are hard to break of those habits, especially when we are comfortable. These new tech vendors who are promoting their technologies as the next big thing have to realize that both retailer and vendor adoption will be fairly slow. Retailers are going to be apprehensive in leaving the standard Home - Category - Sub Category - Product Page progression and consumers will need time to truly embrace flash within an eCommerce environment.

Flash can be great to utilize for merchandising at the category level, but having a complete site in flash can be a challenge at the Analytic and SEO level. Finding solutions to these hurdles is something Trinity is looking into right now - stay posted for more info…

 Tags

<a href=http://www.technorati.com/flash+seo rel=”tag”>Flash SEO</a>

I was recently asked by thestreet.com to provide my perspectives into the new Google Checkout Service.

After taking a look at a variety of different eCommerce sites that had Google checkout, it seems to be be a seamless integration within an existing platform infrastructure and provides a clean and user friendly transactional experience.

Google’s main effort here is to make the actual “purchasing” portion of the conversion funnel quicker and easier for consumers. The problem is that users must make an account with Google and input their credit card information within their system to get up and running. My perspective is that this additional step will cause a roadblock in penetration, at least initially, as consumers will be slow to adopt to the extra step.

Ebay is already defending their turf by banning Google Checkout within their site. Smart move as the Paypal unit generates a substantial amount of profits to the ebay enterprise and is the business that is most impacted by Google’s new offering.

Although Google’s solution is not a stored value system, it still is an alternative payments processing solution that stores credit card data. Very similar to the convenience offered by Paypal and their direct debit processing form a checking account.

Google’s carrot with adwords (every $10.00 spent on adwords gets $100.00 free processing within Google Checkout) should make more retailers take the time to integrate the payment alternative on their site. Now will consumers embrace it in the way Paypal was embraced? - only time will tell…

 <a href=http://www.technorati.com/google+checkout rel=”tag”>Google Checkout</a>

I admit that I am getting a little sick of writing about Google on this blog but I must say that the latest development out of Mountain View is going to completely change the Internet and search advertising.

For those who dont know, Google has launched a free service called “Google Wireless” within San Diego. Essentially described as a community outreach program, Google is offering free web access to everyone in the city. The catch is that the viewing must be done through a google interface that displays advertising relevant to the user’s path/clickstream.

What Google has done is that they have purchased fiber lines that were liquidated from the dot com bust and have built a network infrastructure that can support millions of users in California. This model is no doubt going to expand to other metropolitan areas as Google continues to buy fiber in an effort to expand this program.

If Google expands this program to other major cities, they are essentially going to be owning the user experience for a significant portion of the Internet. This will not only allow the media giant to gather a wealth of information about you and I that they will utilize in their further R&D but they will also expose every visitor to adwords listings no matter if you are on Google.com

An interesting development to say the least. Likely a few years out, but other MSN and Yahoo must understand the ramifications if this program expands.

Google Wireless

Recently I was shopping for a new notebook computer. The bargain hunter that I am, I hit the CSE’s, shopping portals, and eBay. After all of my research that took me 3 weeks, I identifed an AWESOME deal at Best Buy for a Centrino for less than $800. I headed to the store to purchase and noticed that the same model was priced 200 dollars more at the store. Puzzled, I spoke to an associate who also was puzzled after he realized the pricing discepancy.

Turns out, you could only get the discounted price ordering via Instore Pickup. An interesting method to get consumers to actively use the ISPU service by offering internet based discounts. Worked in my case! I bought it the next day.

Best Buy executes ISPU better than anyone else in my opinion. Their dedicated service area allows the consumer to bypass the standard checkout lines and get in and out as fast as possible. Clearly, more and more retailers will be embracing this technology. It flat out works from an experience standpoint.

Tags:

In-Store Pickup

In my conversations with online retailers, I frequently get asked about web copy and my perspectives into selling site visitors.

I think in most scenarios, the depth of web copy correlates to the “selling variables” of the product. To effectively sell online you must sell to a vistor’s “head” and “heart”. By outlining emotional benefits such as “A picture so clear that you feel in the first row” and intellectual benefits such as “a best in class 19 inch LCD viewing area, wide enough to handle any illustrating application” you cater to both parts of the human decision process and increase your chances of making the sale.

What you must remember though is that eCommerce shoppers dont read for long - they scan. Hit your emotional points first in a paragraph that is no more than 4-5 lines long. Then hit your viewer with the key specifics in bullet form. There’s a reason why leading etailers such as dell and amazon use bullets - follow their lead…

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Web Copy
eCommerce Writing
Internet Writing