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An Integrated Approach to Driving More Traffic and Sales to Your Ecommerce Website

byAnn Stanley

October 2012

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Part 1 - Introduction and background

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Ecommerce landscape

Sales from Search marketing(PPC, SEO,

Merchant Centre)

On-site sales from other sources

(Email, affiliates, display ads, social, mobile, shopping comparison,

voucher sites)

Shopping platforms & market places

(Amazon, eBay)

Other off-site sales

(Social, Mobile, drop shipping, daily deals sites)

Conversion optimisation

On-site Sales

Off-site Sales

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How to increase the sales from your website?• Increase traffic to your website:

– Buy more traffic e.g. PPC or ad serving– Improve your search traffic through SEO, Google Merchant Centre, Google Places/Local– Use other marketing techniques e.g. Affiliate marketing– Make your site is mobile friendly to take advantage of 20-30% users using mobile

• Improve your conversion rate:– Reduce your bounce rate– Give buyers the confidence to buy from you– Provide the information to make the buying decision easy – especially if it is endorsed

by other customers or social connections– Personalise the user experience so your site is more relevant– Improve the buying process so you reduce shopping cart abandonment

• Increase sales from each customer:– Increase average order value– Encourage customers to buy again or more often (email, loyalty, promotions, social

media)– Build a community of advocates (sharing, social and incentives)

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Where do consumers start shopping?

http://go.channeladvisor.com/UK-Website-2011-Consumer-Survey.html?ls=Website

Source: Hitwise week ending 18/09/2012

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Part 2 -Quick Wins with AdWords

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Ad Extensions, Local Listings (map) and Product Listing ads

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Integration with Google Merchant Centre

Product Listing ads (PLA) – the future

AdWords product extensions (these have generally been replaced by PLA)

Shopping results from Merchant Centre – will stop in 2013?

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Summary of different shopping results in Google

Keywords =Samsonite luggage

Organic shopping results

(Merchant Centre)

AdWords Products ad extension Product Listing ads

Map and Places/Local

listings

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Product Listing ads in Auto targets tab

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Remarketing in AdWords (aka stalking)

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Remarketing results

Client 1

Client 2

Client 3

Client 4

CampaignConv. (1-per-click)

View-through

Conv.

Conv. rate (1-

per-click)Conv. (1-per-click)

View-through

Conv.

Conv. rate (1-

per-click)

Conv. (1-per-click)

View-through

Conv.

Conv. rate (1-

per-click)Conv. (1-per-click)

View-through

Conv.

Conv. rate (1-

per-click)TOTAL 445 84 1.7% 2833 220 2.57% 559 118 2.44% 862 1716 1.06%Brand 39 0 6.7% 413 0 8.99% 433 0 5.13% - - - Remarketing 9 84 2.3% 54 215 3.11% 15 118 1.34% 179 1716 3.06%Competitors - - - 216 0 2.01% - - - 184 0 1.88%Vouchers 29 0 15.26%

• Remarketing In Google is on a CPC basis but its success has pushed the prices up (one account has increased from 78p to £1.38 in a year)

• Retargeting is also available outside of Google via ad-serving networks or Demand Side Platforms (DSP) – mainly sold on a CPM basis

• Facebook have just launched Facebook Exchange in the UK (via a limited number of distributors) - offering Retargeting and Behavioural targeting on a CPM basis

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Promoted video and YouTube ads

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Video campaigns in AdWords interface

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Call tracking & optimisation- dynamic phone number created with each visit

• Phone tracking software is now available to determine the keywords that triggered a phone call from your website

• Ideal for sites where conversions are also taken over the phone as well as online

• Dynamic code is added to your website, which generates unique phone numbers every visit

• If the number is called it is redirected to your normal phone number, with the option to record the call

• The users’ referral data is sent to the tracking software and a virtual page is fired and tracked in Analytics

• A Goal can be set-up in Analytics and imported back into AdWords to allow “Call Optimisation”

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Part 2:Recent changes in Google and how to improve

your SEO

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Panda?

LSI – Latent semantic indexinghttp://searchenginewatch.com/article/2104571/Google-Panda-6-Months-Out-Still-Has-People-Baffled

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Google’s Panda update and the need for ‘good quality content’

• In February 2011, Google implemented a rolling algorithm update known as ‘Panda’, which ‘penalises’ sites that host poor quality content and/or provide a poor user experience

• The effect of the Panda update was widespread and, with every update, Google becomes more sophisticated at judging the quality of content on a site

• Many ecommerce websites were badly affected due to lack of unique content on these site and duplicate content issues

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This was followed by the Penguin update on the 24th April 2012?

Designed to penalise search spam!• Keyword stuffing• Link schemes• Cloaking, “sneaky” redirects

or “doorway” pages• Purposeful duplicate conten

t

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Optimise for the user – not search engines

• Making sure a site is optimised to provide a rich, relevant and rewarding experience for visitors is the best way to avoid penalties, which means:– No duplicate content - use Canonical tag and Webmaster tools (plus

other technical ways) to ensure Google only indexes pages once (e.g.. when products are listed in >1 categories, pagination issues, repeated content in tabs etc.)

– All pages should have unique, relevant and useful content (including the 1000s of category, sub-category and product pages on ecommerce sites!)

– Good levels of interaction on site (low bounce rates, inbound links to ‘deep’ pages, social mentions etc.)

– No spam (keyword stuffing)– Avoid link schemes and develop “Natural links” – e.g.. a higher

proportion of links should have anchor text with your brand name or url (not just your keyphrase)

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Ecommerce optimisation – unique content on category pages

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Ongoing ‘Fresh’ content (blogging with social plug-ins)

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User-generated content• User-generated content, or UGC, is still a great way to add unique and

relevant content to web pages – especially product pages in the ‘post-Panda’ search environment:

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Video integrated with product pages

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Use of Schema.org and rich snippets

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Google’s “Search, Plus Your World”(Google.com)

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Social

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Importance of social• Direct sales e.g. Facebook commerce • Direct traffic e.g. Brand pages (Facebook,

Google Plus, Twitter) • Community, loyalty and word of mouth

(Facebook Likes, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Delicious) and social shopping sites e.g. Kaboodle

• Referrals, links and SEO benefit (Google Plus, Facebook Shares, social bookmarking)

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Google Plus

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Kaboodle

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• Pinterest is a social platform that allows users to ‘pin’ images and videos they like into pre-determined categories or ‘boards’. Since it’s launch last year Pinterest has become the fastest site ever to reach over 10 million monthly unique visits. Therefore, if Pinterest is not part of your social strategy – it should be!

• There are many social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious that are currently enjoying record traffic (Reddit recently announced it has tripled in size over the past year and now serves 1.6 billion page views per month). Again, with these kind of figures, if these sites are not part of your social strategy then perhaps they should be!

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Pinterest

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Part 3 - Integrating digital marketing channels and Attribution Modelling

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Using PPC data to determine the most effective keyphrases for SEO?

• It can take 6 -12 months to see the result of your SEO activities

• We recommend you use PPC data as part of your SEO strategy– Narrow down your list to the keyphrases that convert– Use as many months data as possible and use “See

Search Terms” to see the actual converting phrases– If you are not currently using PPC then you may want

to run a PPC campaign before starting your SEO, in order to understand your keyphrase profile

@annstanleySelecting keyphrases for SEO using PPC conversion data

Keyword Searches (phrase match)

Competition (Allintitle:

"keyphrase") Ratio

PPC data Conv. (1-per-

click)

See search terms

conversionsTotal

conversions1 2900 14,200 0.20 307 3072 27100 2,050,000 0.01 196 1963 14800 598,000 0.02 185 1854 2400 3,540 0.68 86 865 73 551 0.13 42 18 606 1600 472,000 0.01 29 29 587 590 82,400 0.01 49 498 58 168 0.35 48 489 4400 582,000 0.01 47 47

10 260 8,060 0.03 45 4511 3600 516,000 0.01 44 4412 880 210 4.19 43 4313 16 366 0.04 25 11 3614 260 28 9.29 16 18 3415 140 10,500 0.01 29 2916 210 8,270 0.03 16 12 2817 3600 51,300 0.07 24 2418 58 6 9.67 24 2419 73 30 2.43 23 2320 1600 205,000 0.01 22 22

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Increase in organic traffic and salesJan 2011 - Aug 2012 – monthly visits from organic (dark blue line) vs. revenue (light blue line)

Visits from organic 2011 (dark blue line) vs. 2010 (orange line) – weekly results

SEO project started July 2011

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Attribution – top paths leading to a sale

Last click before a conversion

Assisted click – in conversion path

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Integration of channels (last click vs. assisted click)

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Summary• The ecommerce landscape is more complex and fragmented

with many channels to sell on-site and off-site• Paid search continues to offer new ad formats for use with

ecommerce sites, particularly Product Listing Ads (integrating with Google Merchant Centre) and Remarketing

• Panda and Penguin has changed the way ecommerce sites need to be optimised – content is more important than ever!

• Social is important to generate direct traffic and sales; but also indirectly due to the importance of social indicators in SEO

• Understanding Conversion Attribution is key to maximise the ROI from different channels

• Use data from PPC to identify converting keyphrases and use these for SEO

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Thank YouSee us on stand 1405

Ann Stanley@annstanley

ann@anicca-solutions.com

www.anicca-solutions.com