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

byAnn Stanley

February 2012

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Introduction and background

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What’s different in 2012?• Users now prefer to shop online• Further fragmentation of online channels• Panda update in Google

– Effect on your site’s SEO– Poorer performance of affiliates

• Innovations and developments– Paid search– Remarketing and display– SoMoLo – Social, Mobile, Local

• More emphasis on conversion optimisation, measurement and testing

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

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Fragmentation of channels

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Top UK sites by visits and where consumers start shopping

http://go.channeladvisor.com/UK-Website-2011-Consumer-Survey.html?ls=WebsiteSource: Hitwise week ending 11/02/2012

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Change in online sales

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Ecommerce landscape

Sales from

Search marketin

g(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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Search Engine Optimisation

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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 Panda update and need for ‘good quality content’

• In 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

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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 Panda penalties, which means:– No duplicate content– All pages to have unique, relevant and useful content

(even the 1000s of product pages on ecommerce sites!)

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

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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”

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Recent features in AdWords

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Integration with Google Merchant Centre

New Product Listing ads

AdWords product extensions

Shopping results from Merchant Centre

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

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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 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

(from Aug 2011)

Client 2

(from Jan 2011)

Client 3

(from July 2011)

Client 4

(from Jan 2011)

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% Product 1 133 0 2.3% 1 0 50.00% 109 0 0.96% 2 0 1.57%Product 2 12 0 1.9% 1 0 14.29% 17 0 1.48%Product 3 156 0 1.7% 6 0 11.76% 85 0 1.29%Product 4 30 0 0.8% 1 0 11.11% 13 0 1.18%Product 5 5 0 0.7% 1 0 11.11% 25 0 1.05%Product 6 2 0 0.5% 3 0 8.33% 155 0 1.03%Product 7 93 0 7.98% 2 0 0.62%Product 8 16 0 6.35% 22 0 0.61%Product 9 3 0 5.88% 31 0 0.59%Product 10 1 0 5.56% 31 0 0.58%

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Promoted video and YouTube ads

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Video campaigns in AdWords interface

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Integrating PPC and SEO

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Attribution – top paths which include paid search

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Why use PPC data to determine the most effective keyphrases for SEO?

• It can take 6 -12 months to see the result of your SEO activities • But you may have wasted your efforts on optimising for

keyphrases with high volumes of searches but no conversions• 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

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Understanding keyphrase profilesClient 2

All keyphrases in PPC account (bid on) 29,287

Number of eligible or active keyphrases (bid on) 26,083

All eligible keyphrases with an impression / conversion 4,666/479 (10.3%)

Number of unique keyphrases (eligible) 5,549

Unique keyphrases with an impression / conversions 1,569/299 (19.1%)247 (all match types)

See search terms all phrases 46,232

See search terms all phrases with an impression / conversion 46,201/1,837 (4.0%)

See search terms unique phrases 36,968

See search terms unique phrases with an impression / conversion 36,939 /1,050 (2.9%)

@annstanleySelecting keyphrases for SEO using PPC conversion data

Keyword

PPC data Conv. (1-per-click)

See search terms

conversionsTotal

conversions

Searches (phrase match)

Competition (Allintitle:

"keyphrase") RatioClients Brand 307 307 2900 14,200 0.204225mens underwear 196 196 27100 2,050,000 0.01322aussiebum 185 185 14800 598,000 0.024749mens underwear uk 86 86 2400 3,540 0.677966mens slimming underwear 42 18 60 73 551 0.132486xtg 29 29 58 1600 472,000 0.00339andrew christian underwear 49 49 590 82,400 0.00716Clients Brand uk 48 48 58 168 0.345238andrew christian 47 47 4400 582,000 0.00756mens enhancing underwear 45 45 260 8,060 0.032258n2n 44 44 3600 516,000 0.006977aussiebum uk 43 43 880 210 4.190476mens slimming pants 25 11 36 16 366 0.043716andrew christian uk 16 18 34 260 28 9.285714n2n underwear 29 29 140 10,500 0.013333xtg underwear 16 12 28 210 8,270 0.025393gay underwear 24 24 3600 51,300 0.070175Clients Brand clothing 24 24 58 6 9.666667andrew christian underwear uk 23 23 73 30 2.4333332xist 22 22 1600 205,000 0.007805

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Increase in organic traffic and salesJan 2011 – Dec 2012 – visits from organic (dark blue line) vs revenue (light blue line)

Visits from organic 2011 (dark blue line) vs 2010 (orange line)

SEO project started July 2011

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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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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 pageviews 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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Mobile and the effect of different devices

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Activities differ by device(Data from AdMob )

Report can be found at http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/

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Device responsive design

• Same url for all devices rather than a separate mobile site or sub-domain• User detection agent (distinguishes device)• Liquid or responsive design suitable for each size device/operating system/browser• Mobile design often has a single column with most important content/features moved

to the top and in some cases some content hidden

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Amazon.co.uk responsive design or Amazon.co.uk App

Main site – with adaptive CSS Amazon App

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Conversion rate optimisation

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Example of a low PPC conversion rate – using Funnels to solve a site-wide issue

• Is the conversion rate the same for all traffic sources?

• If yes, review in “funnel visualisation” and determine at what step there is a problem

• Review site to fix problem on the first page of the shopping cart

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Example of landing page A:B test using Google Optimiser

Using models for the product photos raised purchases by 44% and increased the average order value by 67%.

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Summary• The ecommerce landscape is more complex and fragmented with many channels

to sell on-site and off-site• Panda has changed the way ecommerce sites need to be optimised – content is

more important than ever!• Paid search continues to offer new ad formats for use with ecommerce sites,

particularly by integrating with Merchant Centre• Use data from PPC to identify converting keyphrases and use these for SEO• Social is important to generate direct traffic and sales; but also indirectly due to

the importance of social indicators in SEO • You need to understand how mobile is used by shoppers, and check whether your

website is compatible for use with mobile, tablets and other devices • Conversion optimisation and measurement is key to maximise the ROI from

different channels• Channel management software such as ChannelAdvisor will become more

important to centrally manage inventory, pricing and the data feeds

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Channel management using ChannelAdvisor

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Thank YouAnn Stanley

@annstanleyann@anicca-solutions.com

www.anicca-solutions.com

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Resources/References• http://go.channeladvisor.com/UK-Website-

2011-Consumer-Survey.html?ls=Website• http://www.channeladvisor.com/webinars/

slides/State-of-E-Commerce-2012.pdf• http://searchenginewatch.com/article/

2104571/Google-Panda-6-Months-Out-Still-Has-People-Baffled

• http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/