Ecommerce Marketing

Search engine description - in a Google natural search, what description is displayed by Google for the homepage?

A website’s meta description has one key purpose – to drive click-throughs from the search engine results page to your website.

Think of it as an advertisement – NOT as a collection of keywords.

Average score: 20 out of 25 = 80%

High flyers: Argos, Tesco, Asda, John Lewis, Play.com, LoveFilm.com, Vie at home, Comet, Currys, Maplin

Not enough of the retailers were on top of this, with only 10 of the 20 ensuring their meta description in a Google natural search displayed an effective and compelling summary of their mission, without becoming truncated.
 
Truncation is where Google is unable to show the whole of the description because the text is too long.

In these cases some editing would help to ensure the description is optimised to deliver the strongest message within a limited character count, and maximise click-throughs.

In too many cases retailers who had compelling reasons for searchers to visit their site, such as free delivery, price discounts or a USP, didn’t mention these in their meta description.

Best practice guidelines

* Your meta description should provide a clear and concise summary of your website and clearly communicate what a visitor to your site can expect to find

* The description should compel the searcher to click through to your website (without being gimmicky)

* The length of text should be optimised to avoid truncation

* Meta copy should not sacrifice click-throughs for search rankings

Top Tip

* Don’t focus your meta description on keywords.

It’s well worth using a couple of keywords where possible in your description, but the page title rather than the description is your best optimisation tag for keywords.

5.2 Sales promotion mechanisms

Once you’ve enticed the customer to explore your website, it’s time to maximise their spending potential.

Cross-selling and up-selling, ‘deals of the day’ and best seller lists will draw customers to products they may not have been considering, drive return traffic and help maximise revenue per visit.

The sales promotion mechanisms we scored against in this category were:

*Just arrived/coming soon
*Offers department
* Deal of the day/week
* Best sellers
* Bundles or buy-one-get-one-frees
* Most popular searches
* Wish lists
* Cross-sell
* Up-sell
* Loyalty scheme advertised on front pages

Average score: 50 out of 90 – 55%

High flyers: Boots, Avon, lookfantastic.com

No retailers scored full marks in this section and 45% scored less than half marks.

Retailers need to take advantage of every tool and technique available to them through ecommerce solutions, to help increase spend per customer per visit.

Proven sales promotion techniques such as bundled offers and crosssell/up-sell suggestions drive customers to spend more and lend themselves perfectly to the ecommerce site medium.

Somewhat surprising was the fact that the electrical retailers, whilst efficient at cross-selling, performed poorly in the area of up-selling.

High-value goods offer an ideal opportunity to tempt an aspirational customer into buying the next model up!

We were also interested to discover that just half of the retailers offered customers the opportunity to build a wish list.

Wish lists are a great mechanism for reminding users of products they may have forgotten they wanted, and can also encourage customers to refer their friends and family to the site too.

Best practice guidelines

* Test different promotional mechanisms to see which work best for your site

* Promote special offers on the home page as well as product pages

* Use time sensitive offers such as ‘Deal of the Day’ or ‘Deal of the Week’ to encourage users to return regularly to the site

* Make it easy for users to find special offers

* Inspire customer confi dence by showing best sellers and most popular searches

* Maximise returning visits by featuring regularly updated just arrived/coming soon sections

* Increase spend without discounting price by creating bundled offers

* Enable users to set up private wish lists as well as gift lists to encourage engagement and referrals

* Where appropriate, encourage customer spend through an online loyalty scheme

Top Tip

* Sales promotion devices that automatically “discover” likely cross sells based on shopping habits and “x goes well with y” are difficult and expensive to write yourself.

However there are several 3rd parties that offer this functionality on a monthly rental basis.

If your ecommerce solutions do not support using one of these, then consider changing to one that does as these are proven mechanisms to generate more sales.

See also section 6.5.

5.3 Data capture

Using the website to collect opted-in, permission-based contact data is a corner stone of successful online marketing.

The homepage of an ecommerce site is a critical channel for collecting customer and prospect contact data for opted-in communications.

Once a visitor has taken that fi rst step to engaging with the retailer by signing up to a newsletter, the customer relationship building process can begin.

Getting visitors to sign up to a newsletter or alerter takes more than just a form.

To maximise the number of signups, retailers need to spell out the benefits of subscribing and make this call to action a ‘no brainer’.

Average score: 18 out of 30 = 60%

High flyers: hmv.com, Virgin Vie, Avon, Comet, Currys, PC World, Dixons

20% of the retailers surveyed did not include a data collection/sign-up mechanism on their homepage.

Of those that did have the data capture link on the homepage, only half of them positioned it above the fold where it would be easily visible.

The retailers who failed to score here are missing out on valuable opportunities to capture the contact data of visitors who may abandon the site without buying, and remain otherwise anonymous.

Best practice guidelines

* Ensure your data collection link is in a prominent position, above the fold on both your homepage and on deeper content pages

* Spell out the benefi ts of subscribing or signing up, e.g. special offers, new releases, subscriber previews and privileges

* Let recipients know how frequently they can expect to receive communications from you (and stick to these commitments)

* Look to capture detail such as ‘where heard’ and ‘gender’ to help you target your initial messages where possible

* Consider using ‘double opt-in’ whereby the contact is required to validate their email address by clicking a link in the validation email you have sent them

Top Tip

Experiment with your signup form by testing alternative copy, incentives and capturing different amounts of personal data.

If collecting personal details impacts your signup rate, try collecting this in an initial welcome email to new subscribers, or in a follow-up form after registration.

5.4 Social networking and viral marketing options

Over 25% of the UK’s adult population use a social network in one form or another, be that via sites like Facebook and Twitter, recommendation engines like Digg! or blogging networks.

The power of social recommendations is often greater than paid-for marketing activity, so retailers would be wise to enable and encourage their customers to share any bargains, unusual product finds or wish lists by making it easy for them to post the pages to their social networks.

Average score: 5 out of 15 = 33%

High flyers: Maplin, Argos, lookfantastic.com

Overall the retailers we surveyed scored poorly in this section, missing out on opportunities to spread their marketing reach at no extra cost.

Best practice guidelines

* Make sure links to share pages on social networking sites are on every product page

* Use ‘Tweet this’ buttons which include the URL and pre-written text

* Use ‘Email this’ buttons which generate a pre-written email or form

* Use ‘forward this page’ buttons

* Encourage customers to follow you on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook, and link with other marketing messages

Top Tip

* Make it as easy as possible for customers to post your web pages on their social networking sites with a one-click process.

Go to previous page