Digital Marketing » Glenn Ward

eCommerce – Should online stores be thinking about website usability from a mobile access POV

I was asked the other day if it would be a good idea to produce a shops brochure as an iPhone App. After taking off my iPhone evangelist hat I replied objectively. More and more people are accessing the Internet in new ways but successful apps work because they allow users to quickly and easily perform a task that they would normally do or feel comfortable doing on a laptop.

So back to the question, is it really realistic that every user would install an app for each of the stores they occasionally shop? I doubt it! And although the iPhone dominates the Market they still only account for a portion and unless you are prepared to develop for blackberry, android etc you will only be reaching out to a small proportion of shoppers.

While I have never been a fan .mobi idea of developing sites specific for mobile phone browsers as mobile phones, screen aspect ratios differ across every mobile devices, with increasing devices being able to cope with full screen browsing I would be inclined to look at the build of the main site, optimise the pages for fast download and take a long hard look at the checkout.

In these early stages of online mobile development I would not rule out in investing in getting the catalogue onto mobile devices but possibly a PDF that can be opened on most smart phones with links to your recently optimised web pages is the way to go at this stage. Think about layout of the PDF, file size, usability and linking. This file will also have the added viral advantage of being emailed and viewed at leisure without an Internet connection.

Also see iPhone apps or Online apps? What is the future as new smartphones emerge?

Mobile Technology drives regular websites to use location data on their pages

I noticed the other day while looking online at the Cineworld website for local Cinemas that they had started to use location data in their web pages. I was on my iPhone and as I hit the Cinemas page the iPhone asked if it use my location. without physically entering a postcode or location the website displayed 3 closest cinemas. In this case I’m confident the website accessed the iPhones GPS hardware but as I discovered after a short Google, Geolocation browsing is just around the corner and uses IP address data to locate your position. I was quite surprised at how accurate this actually was, try Firefox Geolocation to see for yourself, also try out Google Latitude.

Despite in the example above, saving you one step in your browsing, making browsing and locating the data you need more efficient. Geolocation browsing has marketing and advertising implications. Like PPC Advertising with ability to target customers with specific advertising based on location, allowing websites to have your location data will mean the the adverts you will be presented with will be more likely to be of interest to you. From an advertisers point of view such as affiliate programs etc adverts will be served up more efficiently and improve conversion rates.

With websites such as Facebook and Browsers holding shed loads of information about you, Targeted Marketing is made easier and easier for advertisers. Already, as you browse through Facebook you will only see adverts based on your interest and keywords. Geolocation in browsers will make this more accurate and on the bright side, advertising won’t be so imposing on users as they surf the Internet. What’s next? instead of analysing your traffics data after they have visited you site, could you inteligently assess users as the page loads and dynamically serve up your pages based on their profile?

Also see post on Analytical Software.

Live Twitter results in Google Searches, potentially huge for your sites traffic

You might have noticed over the last few days on popular google searches that you are starting to get live Twitter feeds part way down the results. Google are rolling this out gradually but think of the possibilities. Topical Tweets and links will be getting instant first page google listing and in real time, the most up to date results on the page. Obviously this is open to abuse but the concept is great. Instantly the reach you have to your potential audience massively grows in size far beyond that of just the millions of Twitterers. I would be keen to see how this shows up in analytical software and if these links benefit your sites link building and link juicing in any way.

Integrating Online Video into your Digital Marketing Stratergy

Everyone is banging on about the power of video and how companies can use it in deliverables, and as part of their Marketing collateral and I agree, it is a powerful tool, without it I would be jobless, but before you start to plan your next epic, pause to think about it’s delivery and the cost implications of this.

I have spent a year now developing a video service in a company and to some extent an industry that until recently could not see how video could benefit the product. The main issue has not been producing the video or encouraging execs to come up with new ways in which to use video, it has been the means of delivery. Like any digital marketing there is absolutely no point in producing something that is not viewed by a high volume of people and more importantly, performs a function. Similarly to the everyone creating a Facebook page merely because they can mentality, putting video out there and doing it badly has the adverse effect on proving your understanding of the landscape and damages the brand rather than enhances it.

So what are your options? Well of course you can invest in a bespoke video delivery platform, buy something off the shelf that meets the companies needs but this is large initial step and a large spend, especially if you have not been involved in video in the past. Much like eBay is no longer an online garage sale, blogs are no children’s online diaries, Youtube is definitely not an online repository for unprofessional home videos, in fact Youtube is now one of the largest online search engines and any digital marketer cannot ignore this.

So how do you make it work for your product? Well, while you cannot set out to make a viral video, you can maximise the exposure you receive from your production by setting clear objectives and planning far beyond that of uploading your one video to an account on YouTube and hoping people might come across it. My biggest rule is allowing people to decide upon their own browsing habits. Don’t dictate to them how they should arrive at your product because you’ll loose them at the first awkward click routine or navigation that takes more than a few seconds of their time. Although many of the online spaces provide a quick and easy means of providing link building to your website, pay every one due attention, think about the usability issues and make sure there are no awkward, dead or complicated links to your pages. Don’t presume that a person will take the time to navigate to the correct page on your site if you dump them on your homepage. More often than not they won’t complete this part of the journey.

So, back to video. Take time producing your online space whether it be on YouTube, Vimeo etc. Remember that just uploading it is not enough, promote your video with appropriate means, social media, press releases, email marketing etc. If you have produced your video well and it does the job then send the user to the relevant page on your site and to your product.

If you are in doubt about your video, usability or quality of the landing page then don’t do it! Unfortunately it’s far easier to damage a brand than it is to build it.

Introduction to Google Analytics and other website analytical tools

Also see,
Introduction to Search Engine Optimisation
Beyond SEO
Introduction to Pay Per Click Campaigns

Google Analytics is an absolute gem of a tool and can be used to make accurate business decisions regarding your advertising activities and marketing objectives. It will provide an opportunity to see what is working and what is not working in order to better utilise budgets and redistribute your spend and efforts.

It should pointed out that while Google Analytics is a great free tool, it should be cross referenced against other analytical software such as AWStats (free and installed on most hosting packages) or more professional software such as Omniture or Webtrends as data sometimes can be slightly conflicting.

It is also important to understand your objectives before you start your analysis. If you are approaching from an SEO point of view then the data you receive from the visitors of your site is as important as the data from the visitors you don’t achieve. Use services such as Googles Webmaster Tools or SEMRush to take a look at the information about where your site achieved a search engine placement but did not achieve a visit. More on this in another post.

If you are not familiar with the terms associated with web traffic then please see the summary below before reading on.

Once you have established your objectives there are two ways I approach the use of the data. Dip in and retrieve the data necessary to conclude the objective or take a look at the site visitors journey.

A site I worked on recently targeted the promotion of a trade in a specific vicinity from the trading address. Using analytics we were able to take a quick look at the geographical data by choosing visitors > Map overlay to see where the hits were coming from. In consequence the area the PPC campaign targeted was refined, reducing spend on clicks and improving conversion rates. Outside of the world of the web this data also facilitates decisions made about other geographical based advertising. A reasonably high spend on directory advertising was proving to have comparatively low conversion rates so the budget would be better distributed in areas producing sales. This is applicable for small and large business, with higher traffic websites you will have more data to play with and in turn a bit more digging to do but the cost savings are greater and overall turnover should far exceed the investment in getting it right.

So, let’s take a look at the journey I mentioned earlier. Although it can be very difficult to track one visitors journey through the website (unless you have software such as LivePerson) it is possible to retrieve enough data to make informed decision. This is technique I developed while working at a very high traffic retailer in order to make recommendations about advertising spends both on the Internet and in the real world. The basics of the journey is as follows

Referral > Landing page > Most popular pages > Exit Page > External links

This collection of data alone can answer a multitude of questions. Referrals, can quickly answer the question of whether some of your paid marketing is worth the spend, you will often see hits directly from mail sites so to some extent you can monitor your mailshots. Where you might struggle to monitor the effect of your advertising from print media or anything without a direct link. There are a few ways around this and I’ll give you a hint, creating unique landing pages to your advertising allows you to track how many hits you obtain from, say a flyer. Possibilities also arise in usability, pushing your visitors to specific parts of the site based on what you know they have come to find.

Landing pages are good for monitoring where traffic has come from but also provide a window into what is appearing high in search engines or popular pay per click search terms. Organic traffic to certain landing pages shows these are probably the most optimised pages satisfying more unique search terms. Check your search engine placement using webmaster tools, use this information to improve other pages and products.

The pages that receive the most hits Most popular pages might be highly optimised but also may reveal good usability and navigation of the site for example, home pageadvertising, good linking structure. Again this might reveal answers regarding offline advertising.

Exit pages are vital in knowing where your visitor got off. Ideally a thank you page post checkout or the contact us page for a trader. Match this by recording other data, whilst a checkouts provide the facility to monitor conversions, 10 hits or exits from your contact us page followed by 10 phone calls or emails suggests a conversion rate.

External links are as important as internal links and depending on the function of the site, remember that analytics does not drop a cookie so I the visitor leaves the site for more information and comes back google cannot tell you this. External links are especially good for sites providing information, sites with adverting, sites with sister sites and products.

Bare in mind that journeys can only be measured between two places, if a visitor hyperlinks to another page on your site then google can track the time spent on the first.

Organic Search – This is the natural search traffic obtained through the websites indexed pages on a search directory. For example, the left hand side of google.

Paid Search – This is search traffic from the adverts that appear on a search engines page. For example, Pay per click campaigns.

External / Internal links – External links are the links on the the website that link to another site. Internal links link to pages within the site.

Traffic Sources – Is a bracket heading for all the traffic sources that can be measured by Analytics.

Conversions – Are the traffic that can be measured and acheive a sale or appropriate call to action.

Conversion Rate – Are measurements on how many conversions achieved compared with number of visits. For example, a search term acheives 10 visits and 1 sale, this will produce a conversion rate

Landing Page – Is the first page at which the visitor arrived at the site (not always the home page)

Exit Page – Is the page at which the visitor leaves your site.

Understanding the science of PPC digital marketing – Make Pay Per Click work for your business

I’m often approached for some pointers in the area of Pay Per Click advertising and I start by explaining how varied the subject can be. I often read Googles guides, and other readings but don’t reach the end a whole lot wiser as every industry, every product even time of day, week or the weather effects a large campaign. I have decided my new advise approach should therefore be, how to not get PPC Marketing or advertising wrong rather than how to get it right.

So, where to begin? Let’s start with the setting up of the campaign as this is where you will begin. A common mistake from the outset is to follow all of Googles recommendations and have your advert appear for every associated word that refers to your product. It is good to think of every combination of words your customer might search but be careful not to include to broader terms especially if you do not stock the full range yourself. A brand that has a huge product portfolio will generate traffic but if you pull traffic through for broad terms there is no guarantee you will have to specific product at the specific price your potential customer is looking for. Broad terms often result in a low conversion rate. Having said this in an uncompetitive market this will be another story.

Ok, we’ve targeted our specific customer looking for a specific brand and a specific product in that brand range, the next thing they see is our advert on the right hand side / top of the search engine. All too often retailers go for a catch all advert for their entire campaign. This poses two problems, firstly, most customers want to know at the search engine stage if the retailer has the product and so this approach might lead to no click at all if a competitors advert supplies the required data. Secondly the customer clicks on your advert unsure as to what they might find, browses your site for a short while and then leaves, resulting in low conversion rates and a high spend. The odd wasted click here and there may seem insignificant on a small account but I have handled accounts from between a £500 to £2000 weekly spend, if these clicks aren’t turning into sales then you will soon be running at a loss.

Usability doesn’t just become important when the potential customer reaches your site, you are dealing with a savvy shopper that doesn’t wish to continue searching once on your website. You have used the right keywords, captured them with a good advert now clinch the sale by presenting them on a landing page with the product they’re after and at a competitive price.

Rather than just looking to the Google keyword tool as this will bombard you with every possible combination of key words know to man (well computer) you should use webmaster tools, google analytics and other 3rd party sites or tools to influence your choice of keywords. More detail on these in a later post.

All of the above should be done with measured targets in mind. Without bench marks there is no guarantee you are achieving a good ROI. I always stand by that PPC marketing is a short term fix and that the foe the bulk of the advertising or sales should not rely on PPC Campaigns. Your Pay Per Click should run alongside your SEO campaigns and other digital marketing, targets and goals should be set that work in synergy with a view to improve organic search conversions and digital marketing with a higher ROI. Remember some of the most innovative digital marketing costs virtually nothing.

If you have a large AdWords spend be sure to make use of your Google account manager, they are only at the other end of the phone and will work with you to improve your campaign. Be sure to provide a clear brief and if you doubt that they completely understand you brand do not ask them to make ad hoc adjustments to the wording of ads. They are extremely useful for performing repetitive time consuming jobs. Alternatively you can speed up your editing by using tools such as Google AdWords Editor, you can have more control over your adverts and if you are a whizz with exel can export and import files allowing you to work in a more familiar format.

Just a taster for now! But do ask more specific questions and I shall rage on additional posts.

Beyond SEO, getting the right traffic for your product

You may often wonder why you might get such a high bounce rate on your websites pages and how you can improve this. For those who religiously follow their web analytics and spend time and money on ppc accounts, understanding your organic traffic can also help improve the quality of your traffic. When I first started to look into search engine optimisation I presumed it was all about achieving perfect accessibility, perfect code and checking in an seo browser to make sure your title, meta, and content achieved 100%. I later moved into the world of ecommerce and realised that it’s all very well being optimised, but it was as important, if not more so to be achieving high positions for the right search terms and following this up with content. A real life example I thought about recently, came about when walking past a little arcade that contained a computer shop / repairer. In the window he had placed a remote controlled helicopter. I went in and asked if he had any more helicopters to which he replied, ‘no… I just put that in the window to get people through the door’. My point is that the likilyhood of someone in the market for a helicopter is unlikely to just pop in and want their computer fixed or to buy a stick of ram. So, this is where it gets even more time consuming and complicated, whilst you think about all the points made in the introduction to search engine optimisation, you must also be thinking about the copy on the page and the words you use. For this reason, it always baffles me when companies offer to come in and optimise your site, unless they completely know your product and industries, they will optimise your site but you will attract all the helicopter buyers!

So, you will develop your own technique to get the balance right, you will often have no choice on the content of your page if you are running somebody else’s site, but you must insist on the freedom to rewrite the content. Use google adwords keyword tool to assess the key words you have used and use the traffic estimator to best drive traffic. Once you have your content choose the highest traffic drivers (keywords) to build into your h1 tags, follow this up with a similar technique for the page title, then for now copy this page title into your meta description. Based on your choice of keywords for the page content, copy 5 to 10 of the most used AND most relevant to your site into the meta keywords. Don’t make the mistake of listing as many possible keywords as you can think of into the meta keywords this will have the opposite effect and google will see it as spamming. Give it a few days and check the site in domain tools to see how each individual element we have just talked about scores. Once you start tweaking things, monitoring is extremely important, record your figures and make one change at a time, if you see an improvement then implement it site wide. If you see things get worse you know what had this effect and you can change it straight back.

Intoduction to Search Engine Optimisation – SEO Learn at lunch

Search engine optimisation is now far more than putting some keywords into a page and mimicking them in your meta data. Search engines have brains and combine a whole heap of site tests in order to assess where your site should appear on the search results.

Most importantly, it is vital that the content in your page is correct and reflects the pages purpose, this is not just in the text but also, the images should be named accordingly to reinforce the content and ALT Tags used to aid the visually impaired user. A good example of this would be a product on an ecommerce site. The product has a brand, possibly a model and what it is. This text will no doubt be on the page but the search engines will check the pages images to see if it matches the content and so imagery should be named accordingly.

In this example the image should be named Dakine_101_Rucksack.jpg the underscores allow the search engine to see the text as separate words and therefore understands exactly what it is. The ALT Tag should read Daking 101 rucksack.

Approach – Assessing the site

A good place to start is to access the site. I use Domain Tools to get an initial overview of how the pages are scoring and the Alexa page rank gives you an idea of your website overall placement out of all the websites in the world (more detail on the Alexa site) I then move onto the SEO Browser located on the right hand side of the whois lookup on domain tools.

By clicking on here you will get to see how a search engine views the site and what the true content looks like. In the top right hand corner you will see a percentage score for the site. By clicking on the I button on the top left of the browser you will see a break down of the score and what needs improving in order to achieve 100%

The SEO Optimisation notes on this page are broken down into the following categories; Meta, General, Keywords, Composition, Links, Images and Terms. All are very important and getting everything right will result a massive shift in search engine placement.

Note: Achieving 100% on this assessment is all well and good and is quite easy to do but the score must reflect your initial copy, content or purpose for the website. Getting this wrong will not attract your target audience and even run the risk of being seen as a spam site.

As touched upon earlier search engines are also very conscious of accessibility for disabled visitors. The Images category in the SEO Browser reflects some possible issues such as alt tags (alternative text) missing and also images not having height and width attributes assigned within the html.

At this point I would move to the W3C (Web Standards) website and use there tools to check the page for accessibility and also for correct use of html. The Markup Validation Service will identify missing code (often accessibility issues) and also errors in the code. Again two identical sites one with errors and one without would affect the websites position on the search engine.

Using Google as a benchmark is always good as search usage figures of their competitors does not even come close to that of Google, as you can see using analytical software on any website. To begin with, installing Google toolbar to your web browser will allow you to see the Google page rank of every page you visit marked out of 10. This is not only useful in accessing your own page but also that of your competitors.

For far more detail on page ranks and how they are achieved you can also use the webmaster tools in your Google account. The webmaster tools are generated when your Google sitemap is submitted and pages are indexed on the Google database. This service provides various assessments broken down into the following categories, Overview, Settings, Diagnostics, Statistics, Links, Sitemaps and Tools.

This sitemap should not be confused with a sitemap page within a website. These pages are designed to ensure there are link trails throughout your site and do help the spiders navigate your entire site but are not used to index your site on a search engine.

Sitemaps in another session!!

Note: Similar sitemap submissions are necessary for other major search engines including yahoo and msn.

So… knowing what we now know and lets say we have applied all our changes to improve naming conventions, errors, accessibility etc, how do we climb the search engines?

I like to work backwards and reinforce what we have already achieved. At this point it’s good to know and assess where your existing traffic is coming from. This can be easily identified with Google analytics or AWStats. and allows you to identify the terms that users are searching for and arriving at the site. With this information, greater density of keywords and terms can be added further in the copy and stressed back through the meta data page title etc as identified with our earlier tools. Also it is useful to quickly identify keyword and term frequency, a useful site for this is LinkVendor words appearing a number of times within a page are not always used in the Meta keywords, description and title and as a search engine does not understand subject matter these words should be considered. Finally, and this is one of my favourites SEMRush formally known as seodigger. Pop your domain name in here and it will reveal loads of search terms, where you appear on Google for each term and the traffic they generate. SEMRush are now providing the same for adwords keyword terms.

It is also good practise to look at your Google Adwords and your Google organic traffic as a cost saving exercise for your Adwords account and also to identify terms to work into your natural traffic sources but that’s a whole other project.

Final Thought – All this is useless if you make a number of changes at the same time as you will not know which has worsened or improved your placement also unless you monitor your progress you have no means of knowing if it is working.

Useful Tools

Also available from my head.

Sitemaps, PPC Campaigns, Analytics, quality linking, usability,