Gillissa News » Internet Marketing

E-Tailers could be missing out on Christmas profits due to fear of costs for boosting online sales

rwood — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:24:43 +0000

E-retailers are concerned about missing out on potential online sales over the Christmas period but the fear over high upfront costs and consultancy fees are preventing them from taking steps towards capturing readily available market share.

With the recession still affecting IT spend across the board, many retailers and marketers have had to clamp down on external spending, particularly when it comes to developmental projects and there is a tendency for people to view anything to do with boosting online sales as likely to be one of these hugely expensive and timely projects they desperately have to avoid.

Unfortunately for many it is a catch 22 situation as they clearly realise that online sales are one of the most cost-efficient sales channels and really want to raise their visibility in time for Christmas, but are too scared to explore the possibilities because they fear it will cost too much.

The good news for retailers is that product listing strategies are incredibly cost effective (and we are talking only a few hundred pounds a month on average) and can be implemented and working in just 48 hours. For those who have taken the time to explore boosting online sales through better product feed management, the results have been well worth the investment.

Inkntoneruk decided to explore how improved product listings could help make his site more profitable in 2008. Despite operating in a competitive market with wafer-thin margins, the solution he opted for (Feed Manager) was able to make subtle but significant changes to the way their products were listed online and most importantly, manage any price changes instantly. As a result, Inkntoneruk now generate up to 75% of their overall business turnover online and founder Steve Hari says he is now making a lot more money from the site as a result of focussing on finding a solution to improve the effectiveness of their product listings.

And It’s not just small retailers and brands that are reaping the benefits, Signet have also experienced a tremendous rise in online sales thanks to a greater focus on improving their product listings, so much so that the investment in product feed management seems almost laughable in comparison to the increased revenue they’ve got as a result, but I’ll talk about this more in a future blog.

Xbox Slim On Sale

mhiscock — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:39:11 +0000

This week marks the release of the Xbox Slim and no doubt demand will be high and many stores will run out of stock very quickly. As we’ve seen in recent months with the new iPhone and iPad, huge surges in demand can play havoc with many retailers stock levels and can leave many shoppers disappointed and in the current climate, no retailer wants to have to deal with any more disgruntled customers then they have to!

Such surges in demand and the risk of products running quickly out of stock on the high street has driven more and more customers to the web where they are well versed with the plethora of product listing sites now accessible over the internet. Many retailers are getting wiser to the importance of having visibility on these, yet I am still surprised at the numbers who aren’t keeping their stock availability up to date online.

If products are on many sites, then understandably it can seem an arduous tasks to ensure the stock numbers online are kept accurate, but both customers and sites such as Amazon are demanding this real time information as the online customer experience becomes more and more important. Nothing is worse for Amazon than an item ‘appearing’ to be in stock online only for the customer to find after purchasing it that it has in fact sold out, which can cause huge problems for the retailer in its relationship with Amazon.

We developed Feed Manager as a solution to this problem as we found that many retailers had the information available to update their product feeds, but simply didn’t have the ‘thing’ that could feed this information out to the web and where it needed to go. There are many strategies for retailers to achieve maximum results and Feed Manager is the most advanced solution on the market for adapting the data it receives in from the retailer and using it for whatever purpose the retailer needs.

With Christmas just around the corner, stock availability will be an critical issue for many retailers and so it is highly advisable to get their listing processes in order so that their online product display matches the real picture in the warehouse.

Continued Search Marketing Growth

mhiscock — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:40:16 +0000

Recent search marketing figures released have indicated worldwide spending on internet marketing will reach £40.6 billion pounds, almost a 12% increase on the previous year, according to figures released by eMarketer.

As you may be aware, online advertising has grown to such an extent in recent times that its expenditure outweighs the more traditional forms of advertising; television and radio. (A topic discussed in the previous Gillissa blog post ‘The Growth of Online Advertising’)

With these increased spending figures, Jared Jenks, author of the worldwide spending report, quoted “These rates will be unmatched by other media”.

In accordance with the forecast from eMarketer, Efficient Frontier found that the UK’s search marketing sector grew by 10 percent over a twelve month period, indicating the trend of search marketing prospering within difficult financial times has continued, whereas other forms of advertising have not been so profitable.

However, CPC (Cost-Per-Click) rates were significantly reduced when compared to the same period the previous year, though CPC rates did rise again in the final quarter. Such an analysis seems to imply that the search marketing sector is certainly making headway in working its way out of the recession.

In accordance with this perception, Efficient Frontier suggest that a major increase in search advertising spend in the United Kingdom is imminent.

With search marketing’s continued prosperity, and its new found status as the number one method of advertisement, it appears that any predictions of future growth for search marketing are accurate.

Furthermore, the team at Gillissa have certainly noticed a surge in impressions and traffic this year, evidently coinciding with the continued popularity of online advertising. (Except for the time period during the World Cup, especially when England were still in the competition!)

Yahoo Search Marketing And Microsoft Ad Centre Transition

mhiscock — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:55:08 +0000

Recently, Microsoft and Yahoo announced their intention to create an ad/sales partnership, involving the transition of advertising customers from Yahoo’s search marketing desktop to Microsoft’s ad centre.

As regular users of both search marketing tools, the team at Gillissa believe this will be effective, fundamentally because it will be easier to manage two desktop tools rather than three!

Though the date of the transition is a long way off and unclear, there are a few factors to be wary of if you are an advertiser on Yahoo or both advertising channels.

Due to the nature of which the accounts are built on Microsoft and Yahoo, significant changes to the methods used for Yahoo were inevitable.

The two major factors to be wary of involve keywords and adverts.

Currently, for Yahoo, advertisers have a 40 character threshold for advert headlines, whereas Microsoft sets a maximum of 25 characters. This could see Yahoo advert headlines cut off at the 25 character threshold, which could make the ads ineligible to display.

Even more importantly, Yahoo does not incorporate similar keywords as individual terms, unlike Microsoft and Google, who both classify singular and plural versions of words, as well as misspelt variants, as individual terms to enhance your advert reach. This therefore means that your Yahoo keyword list needs to be revised and expanded in time for the transition.

All in all, this should see the combined Microsoft/Yahoo search marketing tool use similar advertising principles as Google, making it easier to manage across these advertising channels.

New Reviews Available From Nextag

rwood — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:23:09 +0000

Nextag have just announced new features supporting Seller Review Surveys and added a new Post-Fulfillment Survey.

They quote a recent e-commerce consumer survey carried out by Webcredible which revealed that almost one third (28 per cent) of online shoppers are most likely to be persuaded to make an online purchase by the reputation of the retailer.

We agree that inclusion of surveys and reviews are an essential part of listing products on price comparison websites. Not only do they provide a strong level of reassurance to potential purchasers, they are often picked up by Google to support natural rankings. Google’s own checkout reviews feature heavily in their product listings, and help support their rankings as well.

To find out more on deploying any shopping comparison site survey scripts, get in touch.

Tips On Account Security

mhiscock — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:39:22 +0000

Creating and setting up a meticulously structured Google Adwords account can be a very long process. Ensuring that your keywords, ad groups and campaigns are accurate and relevant to what you want to sell is critical and therefore needs thorough assessment.

So, with all this in mind, the prospect of unauthorised personnel obtaining access to your Adwords account and jeopardising all your hard work is unthinkable.

However, unauthorised access to your Adwords account is very much a reality without undertaking some precautionary methods. Though some of the following points seem obvious, it is essential to always be aware of the risks, whether through phishing, malware, or unauthorised logins.

Below are a few prevention tips to keep your account safe:

Phishing Prevention

1. Don’t reply to, or click links within, emails that ask for personal, financial or account information.

2. Check the message headers. The ‘From:’ address and the ‘Return-path’ should reference the same source.

3. If on a secure page, look for “https” at the beginning of the URL and the padlock icon in the browser.

4. Use strong passwords. A strong password should be unique; include letters, numbers and symbols; and be changed regularly.

Malware Prevention

1. Keep your computer’s antivirus, spyware, browser and security patches up to date, and run system scans regularly.

2. Exercise caution whenever you’re prompted to download an email attachment, follow an instant-message link, install a plug-in or download an unfamiliar piece of software. Remember that crimeware can be disguised to resemble anti-virus software. Always research a company’s reputation before downloading its software or visiting its website.

Unauthorised Login Prevention

1. Secure and encrypt your wireless network.

2. Don’t leave your computer unattended. If you’re using a public terminal, make sure that you log out of all your accounts before you leave.

3. Assign a separate login to each user. Don’t share logins and passwords.

Change to Feeds To Shopping.com

rwood — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:29:56 +0000

We’ve been advised by Shopping.com that they are changing the number of mandatory fields for products from 3 to 9 with effect from 1st July 2010. These are now all required for a feed:

Image (Minimum size 150 x150 pixel)
MPN or UPC (certain products only)
Brand
Merchant SKU
Description
Product Name
Product URL
Product Price
Shipping

No massive showstoppers for most e-store owners as these are fields which are almost universally contained within an e-store by product. MPN might present a problem if you don’t have the data, although this only affects products in Consumer Electronics and/or Media.

If you are already a Feed Manager customer this need not be a concern; your shopping.com feed will be updated in line with their new listing instructions.

However, if you are submitting a feed to shopping.com independently, you’ll need to take action in the next couple of weeks to prevent problems with your listing.

What Changes From CPA to CPC?

mhiscock — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 16:37:26 +0000

As is always the case at Gillissa, we have been working on making improvements to all the accounts that we manage, based fundamentally on the needs of the client.

Recently, one client altered their needs, so that clicks were of paramount importance, replacing the previous necessity of a set cost per acquisition (CPA).

In accordance with this, we changed some of the campaigns in the account from CPA bids to CPC (Cost-Per-Click) bids.

A CPC bid refers to the amount that you are willing to pay for a click on your advert when the advert appears on Google or partner sites. A maximum CPA bid is the amount that you would be willing to pay for a conversion.

Consequently, we noticed a significant change in the performance of the involved keywords over a set time period.

The general trend in changing from CPA to CPC was a surge in impressions, clicks, click-through-rate and to an extent, conversions.

However, coupled with these changes was a surge in overall cost and cost/conversion.

Therefore, the bidding preference you implement can have an enormous effect on your campaign and how well it performs, emphasising the importance of structuring your account thoroughly to ensure you maximise your success.

Global Search Continues To Prosper

mhiscock — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:31:57 +0000

A recent report by comScore has indicated a tremendous growth for search marketing, perhaps correlating in a significant boost to search engine marketing.

Between the twelve month period of December 2008 and December 2009, the global search market grew by 46%.

In fact, an estimated 131 billion search queries were carried out from the home and at work by people aged 15 and above.

This undoubtedly illustrates the level of interest in internet searches and the massive potential that search marketing holds, by enabling the advertiser to reach an audience of this magnitude.

In terms of countries, the United Kingdom was the fourth largest search market in the world, behind the United States, China and Japan.

In terms of search engines, Google retained the position as the outright market leader, handling 87.8 billion searches (accounting for 66.8%).

Again, in relation to December 2008, this year saw a 58% increase for Google.

Google Wary Of Rogue Advertisers

mhiscock — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:12:47 +0000

As discussed within the previous blog post ‘Shop Safely This Christmas!’ the team at Gillissa outlined our discovery of an illegitimate advertiser using Google Adwords to advertise within the sponsored links section of Google’s webpage.

As a result, we notified Google of our findings and they dealt with the matter accordingly.

However, there are numerous rogue advertisers still operating on Google Adwords.

Recently, Google have outlined their desire to step up efforts to remove rogue advertisers and act more aggressively to prevent any repeat appearances within the Google Adwords system.

New technology enables Google to ‘blacklist’ all rogue advertiser domains, and subsequently ban them from Adwords account-creation level permanently.

Google spokeswoman Deanna Yick stated:

“We want users to have a high quality, relevant and safe experience when getting information from our ads”.

Indeed, removing rogue advertisers will enhance the user experience, as well as making the Adwords playing field more fair and viable for the legitimate advertisers.

Yick added “We constantly review and improve our quality systems and are now doing even more to protect users by being stricter with offending advertisers”.

Though Google claim that rogue advertisers make up a small minority of the Adwords total, it is without question that the Adwords experience as a whole will improve as a result of Google’s increasingly strict strategy implemented.