Google Commerce Search 3.0 Brings Big Brains to Smaller Shops

Google announced Commerce Search 3.0 yesterday. In essence, this is a massive update to their search solution for e-commerce sites. The key features of this update are:

Instant Search: Every keypress starts streaming product results and search suggestions directly within the search bar.

Realtime Inventory Search: Users can see if an item is in stock in a nearby store. Again, streamed directly within the search toolbar results.

On-site Complimentary Product Promotions: Merchandisers can create banner ads for product offers related to the search query, which when clicked, land on a query-based landing page - essentially a search results page.

User Engagement Based Product Recommendations: Essentially a Google Labs experiment for a "users who viewed/bought this product also viewed/bought" type web app as is commonly found on many high end e-commerce sites.

The Good
The great thing about Google Commerce Search 3.0 is that it enables small companies and niche retailers to enjoy high-end e-commerce features as can be found on hugely successful online shopping companies such as Amazon and Zappos - without having to make the same kind of investment in a development team. The annual license cost for Google Commerce Search is just $25,000 - equivalent to an entry level salary of a new employee.

The HealthWarehouse case study details how the installation of Google Commerce Search took only three weeks and that a "machine learning" aspect of the service was able to recognize synonyms more quickly than they could be manually added. Put simply, every search improves the accuracy of the engine.

The BabyAge case study details how they were able to implement the service in just six days as they already had a feed created for Google Product Search.

The entire engine is hosted "in the cloud" which should significantly reduce maintenance costs. All the case studies listed above and also the Woodcraft Supply case study focussed heavily on the operational savings made form using a cloud based solution.

But besides the operational improvements, the functionality improvements really show the benefits of having Google's development expertise, as the features are particularly up to date with current online shopping trends.

Yes, social shopping is on the rise and most of us will be familiar with Amazon's recommendation engine, but a few of the trends identified in last years thanksgiving season (the one that saw record sales) were have been capitalized upon in this latest update:

A) Display ads and paid search ads combined tended to increase conversion and brand recognition - which is now something even small retailers and merchandizers can make use of with the built in complimentary product promotion feature.

B) Real-time stock checking was launched by Google last year alongside award winning startups like Goodzer. Not only is real-time stock checking a way to drive footfall traffic to physical locations but also a nifty way for offline retailers to compete on price with each other and also larger online retailers. However, the real secret sauce is the future of real-time inventory checking, which Goodzer are banking on being in the augmented reality and mobile comparison shopping space. Users will snap a photo of a product they like and compare prices with shops nearby and online, whilst in the store. With Google making huge leaps and bounds in the augmented reality area with Google Goggles, it's not far-fetched to think that the risk of relying on Google Commerce Search 3.0 now, could pay-off in the imminent m-commerce (shopping via mobile or smartphome) future many retailers have yet to face.
The Bad
It's really only a little gripe but - whilst the "all the action is happening in the search box" approach seems to be fashionable right now, is visually appealing and provides a strong amount of 'scent' or 'signal' to the user - I found the interface to be more awkward to use than I expected it to be.

It wasn't enough to truly deter me, because the toolbar type search box clearly showed that the retailer stocked the similar products and did also help me to discover a range of products simply by guessing names, I found it awkward that search suggestions appeared and could be scrolled through using the keyboard but to actually select stuff I then had to switch to the mouse. As I said, it's a minor gripe and probably something easily fixed but it did cause a moment of confusion with the ever shifting results.

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The Results
All the results listed below are detailed in the case studies linked to above, but here are some interesting data points on how user behavior changed with the overall 'instant' approach of Google Commerce Search 3.0:

BabyAge said "Shoppers spent 21% less time searching, yet there were 58% more product searches."

HealthWarehouse said search volumes doubled and conversions increased by 19%.

Woodcraft Supply increased online conversions by 27.7% and increased search revenues 34%.

source:- http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2049814/Google-Commerce-Search-3.0-Brings-Big-Brains-to-Smaller-Shops

Shoppers Research Deals via Mobile and Online Ahead of 2011 Black Friday Sales

Black Friday online shopping spend in the U.S. market jumped 26 percent this year over last, to $816 million, says comScore. Retailers fared better on Thanksgiving this year, as well, with $479 million spent online, up 18 percent over the holiday in 2010.

Whether the sales increase holds through the season remains to be seen, but as with last year, shoppers are hitting online stores at 6 p.m. Thanksgiving night ahead of Black Friday sales on the high street.

Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and Apple topped the list of most visited online retailer sites for Black Friday. To date, 2011 holiday season spending totals over $12.7 billion, marking a 15 percent increase over this period last year.

IBM found more shoppers taking to their mobiles to find the best deals, with Black Friday mobile traffic at 14.3 percent, a huge increase over the 5.6 percent of shoppers who used mobile devices to research products before buying on Black Friday in 2010. Actual sales on mobile devices, at just 3.2 percent last year, rose to 9.8 percent.

Econsultancy reported a 160 percent YoY increase in Thanksgiving Day mobile traffic, as shared by mobile platform company Usablenet. They actually showed heavier traffic on Thanksgiving Day than Black Friday, demonstrating that consumers are searching earlier for deals before hitting the stores on the biggest shopping day of the year.

Aaron Goldman of Kenshoo told Search Engine Watch they’re seeing the same trending in their data.

“Indeed, it looks like shopping started earlier with a 25 percent bump in sales revenue from paid search year-over-year across our US retail index during the week leading up to Black Friday,” Goldman said.

In their analysis of over 12 billion search advertising impressions, Kenshoo saw a 40 percent YoY increase in Thanksgiving Day retail revenue driven by paid search ads.

Performics reports a 120 percent increase in Black Friday paid search spend, with clicks up 65 percent over 2010. Apparently recognizing the potential of Thanksgiving Day as a big shopping/research day this year, retailers spent more than ever on paid search - 128 percent more than last year. Thanksgiving Day clicks rose 87 percent YoY.

holiday-retailer-paid-search-metrics-2010-vs-2011-performics

Experian’s Price Grabber shed some light on the types of products consumers sought on Black Friday, finding plasma & LCD TVs and cameras the most often visited categories in technology-related products; consoles & accessories and educational toys topped the list in non-tech categories. Consumers visiting the mobile website and using apps were most often looking for plasma & LCD TVs, cameras, and tablets/e-readers.

Price Grabber reported a massive surge in online traffic on Thanksgiving Day between 6 and 11 p.m. PST as shoppers geared up for Black Friday shopping.

While paid search spend stats impress, social traffic faltered; a paltry 0.53 percent of online shopping traffic was referred from social networks, though social chatter about Black Friday was up 110 percent over the same day a year prior, according to IBM. daily-us-visits-to-top-500-retail-sites-thanksgiving-black-friday

Hitwise Intelligence analyst Heather Dougherty looked at traffic to the top 500 retail websites in the week leading up to Black Friday. She concluded that “While Black Friday has been the top day for online retail traffic over the past two years, warm weather and early store openings encouraged shoppers to go online sooner this season.”

Last year, Cyber Monday set records with more than $1 billion in online spending; retailers will know shortly if that upward trend continued this holiday season, or if the exponential YoY growth of Black Friday in comparison to Cyber Monday will become the new norm.

source:- http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2128289/Shoppers-Research-Deals-via-Mobile-and-Online-Ahead-of-2011-Black-Friday-Sales

Google PLA Ads: 6 Ways to Crush It

PLAs are hot!

We’ve been hearing that consistently since Google Shopping switched to a fully paid marketplace in October. This channel is suddenly akin to the early days of paid search where you could likely generate positive ROI just by turning it on.

Despite the good ROI seen today, as more competition flows into the channel we will certainly see CPCs rise and quality score become a stronger arbiter of positioning.

In order to compete and drive strong ROI, you will have to run your PLA campaigns much like you run your SEM campaigns today. If you take an active optimization role, there’s an opportunity to have PLAs be one of, if not the best, revenue driver site-wide.

Even though it might seem like a convenient strategy today, beware the feeds provider that tells you they are qualified to manage your PLA campaigns because they do it for Shopzilla and PriceGrabber.

The techniques below are most familiar to expert SEM practitioners and can drive significant improvement over baseline PLA performance.

Isolating Top SKUs

Most retailers have a core set of products that represent a significant percentage of their revenue, and help the brand stand out from the competition.

On their website, on their shelves, and in their advertising and promotions, these products are handled separately due to their importance to the business. This should be no different in PLAs and these products should have their own bid strategies, keyword targets, and promotional text so that profitability on these SKUs is maximized.

This is simple to execute on within the AdWords interface, just create Product Targets for each individual SKU that you'd like to merchandise separately from the others. Once you have that Product Target created, you can bid that product on its own as well as create negatives to ensure that it doesn't get clicks on irrelevant queries.

Semantic Organization of Products

For a retailer with thousands or tens of thousands of products, it would be challenging to manage each of these SKUs individually, especially since many of them would not get enough volume to make an accurate bid.

However, the relationships between the products in a portfolio are incredibly important, in that they will behave similarly in a dynamic marketplace. Some examples of this would be products of the same brand, of the same attribute value (the color blue), or the same margin profile. Grouping these products together into product targets makes a lot of sense and allows for more effective control over the performance of the entire portfolio.

One example of this would be to group your products by category and brand. We know that JBrand Jeans and Levi's Jean Shorts have wildly different price points, customers, and margin contributions. They should live in their own groups, not under the broad heading of Denim.

Aligning Your Feed Content to User Intent

PLA is a paid search channel and not a CSE (comparison shopping engine) channel. Products are displayed based on keyword level intent signals, however most retailers’ product feeds are designed for online/offline merchandising techniques, which don’t take searcher behavior into account. The content of those feeds are consistently misaligned with how users search for products on Google and therefore a lot of potential volume is left on the table.

There are ways to gently manipulate your product feed such that information light merchandising titles like Canon EOS Rebel T4i 18MP Digital SLR Camera with 18-135mm EF-S Lens - Black can be converted to Canon EOS Rebel 18MP SLR. This much better reflects how someone might search for this product on Google.

Negative Management

One truth in the paid search world, and similarly in PLA, is that the more control marketers have over the traffic they receive from AdWords, the better they will ultimately perform.

Google makes money through creating liquid marketplaces for each search, and they seek ways to intelligently increase coverage for their advertiser network. Many times this works to the advertiser’s benefit but often it does not, making it critical to include negatives in PLA at the product target level in order to ensure relevant traffic and to not compromise ROI.

If you have a Product Target for Red Sneakers, it would make sense to have negatives for the other primary colors as well as the other types of shoes that you are merchandising through your other product targets.

Image & Title Testing

Google doesn't support ad testing for PLAs, but that doesn't mean that marketers shouldn't explore ad testing in order to drive performance. The most visible areas to test ads in PLA would be the product title and the product image.

There are a number of different ways to do this through testing different strategies either week over week for the same traffic, or at the same time for similar traffic.

For example, if you have two different styles of images on your site, one with the clothing on a model and one with it off the model, you could test all your products one week with the model shot and then rotate to the non-model shot for the next week. You should get a good sense of how clickable the different images are in Google's marketplace from this test.

Keep Tabs on Your Margins and Competition

Much like in SEM, you don't want to spend your precious ad dollars trying to compete for placement when you're margin constrained or not price competitive. There are a lot of intelligent tools in the marketplace today that can help you understand your pricing relative to the competition.

If you aren't competitive, it doesn't make sense to bid high for position against a certain product or product type. On the flip side, if you are the price/volume leader on a specific product, you should bid very aggressively and continue to establish your leadership position.

Summary

As this channel continues to grow, it will become increasingly important to actively optimize your PLA campaigns. Once your PLAs are live in AdWords, you should start adopting these techniques to continue to stay ahead of the competition.

source:- http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2250250/Google-PLA-Ads-6-Ways-to-Crush-It

Small Business - E-Commerce

Ashley White started her company, the Polkadot Alley, to supplement her full-time income as a high school teacher. By 2009, she had a modest profit and a new baby, which led her to quit her teaching job in Lubbock, Tex. After she got pregnant again in 2011, Ms. White found herself constantly on Facebook searching for vendors that sold baby clothes, and that’s when she got the idea to turn her e-commerce Web site, which sells women’s clothing and accessories, into a Facebook store.

Last year, when it generated $400,000 in revenue, Ms. White’s company switched its main customer interface to F-commerce, as it has become known. And this year, Ms. White said, the Polkadot Alley, which has eight employees and a 1,500-square-foot warehouse, is on pace to produce $1.5 million in revenue — 95 percent of it coming from people who purchase goods through the comments section of the company’s Facebook fan page.

For an e-commerce site, moving to Facebook is not without risks. “It only works for a very narrow particular niche of children’s apparel or women’s clothing with an engaged fan base,” said Zak Stambor, managing editor of the Internet Retailer. “It’s such an inferior way to purchase online compared to using a Web site.”

Among other things, higher-end e-commerce sites offer better images along with the ability to read product details and customer reviews and even to see a video of the product on a model. “There’s just a whole host of tools that selling via Facebook doesn’t offer,” Mr. Stambor said.

Of course, the biggest challenge is taking payment. Initially, Ms. White would post pictures of merchandise on her Facebook page and in order to purchase an item, customers would leave a comment under the picture that said something like, “Sold, XL.” They would also leave their e-mail address so they could be invoiced. In the beginning, Ms. White processed all of her sales by hand.

She continued to plug away to build her fan base, and then on July 11, 2012, things changed. “I sold this sports dress and my fans went wild,” she said. “I ended up selling over 400 dresses in three hours and generated over $11,000 in sales in one night.”

In the days after the sale, though, she was completely overwhelmed trying to fill orders. She even called a few of her former students and asked them to come help process the orders. “It’s so much work to manage inventory yourself and invoice each customer individually,” Ms. White said. “It would take hours every sale night, and sometimes I would lose customers because it took me up to 36 hours sometimes to invoice people.”

Because the system required buyers to post their e-mail addresses on her Facebook page, she also had to worry about competitors poaching her customers. After that big night in July 2012, she started searching for an application to help with payment processing and found Soldsie, a mobile-friendly app that issues invoices directly to people who leave comments on a Facebook post. Commenters receive an invoice by e-mail that can be paid with PayPal or a debit or credit card on file. Soldsie takes 3 percent of all sales, a fee that is billed at the end of every month. (There are other payment applications that work on Facebook, including Ecwid, Ribbon and Gumroad.)

Ms. White said she decided to start selling directly on Facebook because she wanted to build an intimate relationship with her customers. “With my Web site, people had to go and find me, and I was in a sea of millions,” she said. “With Facebook, if my sister or best friend comments on my page, that draws in their friends to see what we’re doing. It’s just so much faster.”

There are some drawbacks, she said. “Your competitors can see everything you are doing,” she said. “And I have no control over Facebook, so if they sell tomorrow, I would need to figure out something else to do with my business.”

Facebook declined to share statistics on the number of vendors operating on the site, but Chris Bennett, founder of Soldsie, offered his results as proof that Facebook commerce is growing. “We just passed 1,000 stores on Facebook and are moving $1 million a month through our app.” Ninety percent of his business owners are women, he said, many of them stay-at-home moms based in Southern states, including Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas.

In my next post, I will talk further about the mechanics of running a store one Facebook

source:- http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/an-e-commerce-company-learns-to-sell-directly-on-facebook/

Top 4 challenges in monetizing data

The wealth of data being pushed to businesses around the globe on a daily basis is staggering, but much of that data continues to be either ignored or used in a way that isn't beneficial to the brand.

I recently had the chance to chat with NovoPayment's CEO Anabel Perez. The NovoPayment platform is a leading tech-payment service in Latin America, helping businesses better capitalize on the data offered every day.

"As the buzz around big data turns to increased action in our region, some eminent and long-term challenges will have to be addressed," said Perez.

Challenges including how 'talent' - data analyzers, for instance - are trained so that data collection, storage and analysis consistently grow. More people log on to the Internet every day, giving brands access to more engagement data. As people change how they engage, data analysis must also change.
Another challenge: digital payments.

"If our formal economies are flowing rivers of data, our informal economies are like vast, opaque lakes. We've heard for many years about the war on cash, but this initiative is going to be increasingly relevant to broaden our digital world and break down its current edges," said Perez.

And don't forget security - along with more legitimate consumers come botnet farms, fraudulent advertising and other online issues. Perez cautions that security will always be at the forefront of the challenges in collecting and monetizing data. As will be collaboration.

"Good data is like good ingredients. Some combinations can be extremely appetizing and even sustaining. Will our companies learn to share data or will our strong culture of competition and suspicion keep us from great things? Can we imagine a "First Bank of Data" for sharing this information or is it some utilitarian dream?" said Perez.

You can read part one of my talk with Anabel and NovoPayment, including how to better monetize data, here.

source:- http://www.bizreport.com/2013/08/top-4-challenges-in-monetizing-data.html

Ecommerce trends that may help brands connect

Back to school shoppers are expected to push more than $70 billion retail dollars into the US economy this month. That is a drop in the retail bucket, especially when we take holiday shopping forecasts into account. According to one forecast holiday shoppers could spend more than $600 billion. Our experts weigh in on ecommerce trends that may help brands connect.

Kristina: The back to school rush upon us in the US, and the holiday season will be here shortly. What trends are you seeing in the ecommerce space?

Kelly Ford, Vice President of Marketing, SundaySky: Online retailers will continue with last year's omnichannel initiatives, such as offering digital coupons that can be redeemed via any channel, as well as continued support for making purchases online and picking up in-store. This is especially key as consumers browse for the best prices on mobile devices before making an in-store purchase, as back-to-school shopping is heavily driven by promotions and bargains, and less by brand loyalty.

Our ecommerce customers with retargeted video ad programs will begin to move up the acquisition funnel this season. Based on their success with retargeted video ads, they will begin to target look-alike prospects based on lifestyle and demographic data to determine similar online patterns of a target demographic from their retargeted programs lower in the funnel. I anticipate we will see this emerging trend continue into the holiday season, as well.

Billy Nava, Vice President of Retail Solutions, TransPerfect: There has been an increase in the use of grid pages with multi-category and cross-channel items. Since the back-to-school shopping season isn't just about clothes, or accessories, or technology, but incorporates all of the above, retailers are finding ways to offer that full package. Instead of logging onto a retail site and only seeing clothes, now you'll see full outfits, with backpacks and notebooks included in the picture. Brands are tying in other products, channels and companies in the interest of mixing categories to make it easier for the consumer. The customer doesn't even realize this affiliate channel marketing is happening on the back-end - they just receive the goods they ordered - but this sort of multichannel partner experience is helping to facilitate a more convenient and all-inclusive shopping experience.

Jeff Zwelling , Convertro CEO: Consumers are looking for fast, economical and efficient ways to purchase back-to-school necessities both in-store and online. Based on the data we've collected from our customers, we know the majority of consumers browse products online, but then make the final sale in store. The main trend, given the customers' age group, seems to be mobile e-shopping, even in the form of mobile browsing followed by a later purchase on the home desktop or in-store. Therefore, it is essential that e-commerce retailers have the ability to track their consumers cross-device and cross-channel, as well as focus on personalized advertising and targeted discounts. The last minute shoppers in this instance are not the primary market, so e-commerce retailers need to start thinking about their back-to-school campaigns months in advance.

Kristina: How can retailers increase ecommerce engagement and conversions?

Kelly: Recommendation and personalization tactics can be enhanced by leveraging the most captivating online medium out there - video. Hearing your first name narrated in a video greeting is significantly more engaging than reading it within a static email.

Likewise, brands should consider "flipping the funnel" to approach prospects and customers in a more personal way, rather than starting at the top with generic mass awareness tactics. We see time and time again, from ecommerce to retail banking to travel brands, that more personalized, individual connections with customers translate to better engagement, higher profitability and deeper loyalty.
Billy: Brands can definitely benefit from leveraging social media to increase consumer engagement and ultimately drive more conversions. Promotion-based banners and emails have proven to be effective, and the use of Twitter and Facebook commerce is now a necessity. All of this helps brands create more cohesive retargeting based on past purchases.

Jeff: Audiences can easily tune out ads if they're not relevant. Personalization and good timing are key factors in efficiently increasing conversions.

You can read part of my chats with the ecommerce experts here.

source:- http://www.bizreport.com/2013/08/ecommerce-trends-that-may-help-brands-connect.html

Alibaba Seen Buying U.S. E-Commerce Stake

As Alibaba prepares for a hotly anticipated initial public offering, the Chinese e-commerce giant is still busy striking deals. But its latest may raise some eyebrows.

Alibaba has agreed to pay about $75 million for a minority stake in ShopRunner, a retail shipping service run by Scott Thompson, who briefly, and controversially, served as Yahoo’s chief executive, a person briefed on the matter said on Saturday.

The investment is one of several that the Chinese giant is making to both expand its operations worldwide and to gather new ideas for its home market.

Both will likely help Alibaba as it prepares for its planned I.P.O., which has already drawn interest from swarms of potential investors and bankers hoping for a piece of a giant global transaction. Though the company hasn’t committed to a time frame, an stock sale could take kick off by year end, people briefed on the process have said.

ShopRunner, which provides free two-day shipping services for retailers similar to Amazon.com‘s Prime service, could eventually yield new insights for core Alibaba businesses like Taobao.

Since last summer, ShopRunner has been run by Mr. Thompson, a former senior PayPal executive who left Yahoo amid a storm of controversy. Picked as the Web pioneer’s chief executive in January 2012, he quickly became a target of the activist investor Daniel S. Loeb, who uncovered embellishments in Mr. Thompson’s academic credentials.

The board eventually removed Mr. Thompson as chief executive in May of that year, roughly five months into his tenure.

He surfaced as the chief executive of ShopRunner two months later, returning to his roots in e-commerce.

Despite the controversy, he had maintained a bond with Alibaba executives. It was Mr. Thompson who had led many of the start-and-stop talks that led to Yahoo’s deal to sell half of its stake in Alibaba back to the Chinese company, yielding a multibillion-dollar windfall that has underpinned much of the American Internet company’s resurgence.

News of Alibaba’s investment was reported earlier by The Financial Times.

source:- http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/alibaba-seen-buying-u-s-e-commerce-stake/?_r=0