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2004-11 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
October 2004. Click-through traffic monitored from search ads
placed with Google's AdWords and Yahoo's Overture showed different patterns of
conversion at the target web site, depending on whether the keywords were the
ones bringing most traffic, or the ones bringing less traffic.
For the keywords that brought the highest traffic, conversions
diminished on a scale with the ad's lower position in the column of ads. So the
lower in the column your ad appeared, the lower the conversion rate of the traffic
coming to your site.
But with those keywords that brought lesser amounts of
traffic, there was a tendency for the lower-positioned ads to result in greater
conversion rates at the website, a reversal of the conversion pattern. This was
visible in both search engines, but much more pronounced in Google. No explanation
is made for this contrary behavior.
-source: Atlas Institute
COLLATERAL. The four-page report
of the study's findings is available as a PDF file here:
How
search engine ad rank affects conversion
COMMENT. Webmasters and search engine
marketing (SEM) professionals have for years discussed and tested the cost-benefit
relationships of search ad rank, or position in the column of ads. Traffic is
click-though-rate (CTR), and this is the cost of the ad since you pay per click
(PPC), but this is only the start. The rate of conversion to sale or other desired
action is far more important: how many of those who came followed through to giving
you money to pay for the ad? The play of increasing a bid price to move an ad
higher in the ad listings happens in concert with much anxious scrutiny of resultant
user behavior, for the ultimate metric for any campaign is return on advertising
spend (ROAS).
There has long been among professionals a concept of playing "under the radar"
with under-valued keywords, and lower down the listings, to achieve much less
traffic than the top or mainstream players in the market, but with significantly
greater ROAS, and with rather less visibility as a threat to competitors (which
can be a tangible factor in the game).
2004-01 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
January 2004. Unfinished online transactions
could equal $63 billion in 2004.
-source: DataMonitor
January 2004. Of shoppers who abandon
an online purchase before completing the transaction, 35 percent blame added costs
such as shipping and handling or else lengthy delivery times (i.e. disclosed only
in the checkout procedure). Thirty-five percent also abandon when sites request
too much information (i.e. more than felt to be absolutely necessary for the transaction,
or requested at too early a step in the process). Seventeen percent cite the lack
of sufficient product information to make a purchase decision. Fourteen percent
simply change their mind for unknown reasons and are believed to go brick-and-mortar
instead.
-source: NetIQ
2003-05 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
April 2003. Online customer service is
weak in the area of email. Eighty-eight percent of users expect a response to
their customer service email within 24 hours, 13 percent expect this within one
hour. Only 56 percent are happy with their experiences. Phone contact is increasingly
important.
-source: Jupiter Research
April 2003. Seventy percent of consumers
expect their online purchasing to increase in 2003. Business-to-consumer (B2C)
revenues may reach $60 billion. $45bn was spent directly online last year, but
the Internet also influenced and affected about five times that amount in offline
spending.
-source: eMarketer, Jupiter Research, US Dept. Commerce
April 2003. Fifty-two percent of companies
will increase their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) budgets this year,
although the emphasis on sales will outweigh service and support by a factor of
3 to 2.
-source: Aberdeen Group
April 2003. Forty-three percent of online
retailers cannot provide shopping cart abandonment figures, and 14 percent cannot
identify customer conversion rates. More than 75 percent implemented new technology
last year, but many now stand in need of upgrades and replacements that may not
happen, with some vendors out of business, and IT budgets slashed. Measurement
is suffering most. Manager priorities for technology initiatives in 2003 rank
as: server and platform upgrades, order processing, performance, personalization,
search, product enhancement, automation, and channel integration, with marketing
and measurement coming at the bottom of the list. Eighty-four percent of online
retailers use site activity and sales as primary measurement, instead of data
mining.
-source: the e-tailing group, inc.
[COMMENT 2003-05. Merchants in general have done
well at improving site design and customer service. They remain focused on the
imediate sale, and capturing share, which is arguably the most important thing.
The real winners are those who not only capture share but retain share. Customer
service and customer retention grow out of data mining. Gartner holds that businesses
failing to meet customer service excellence will turn over 100 percent of their
customer base every five years.]
2002-07 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
May 2002. European banking websites frustrate
their users with flawed navigation and customer service inadequacies. In-site
search features and some kind of help system are the most sought after by users.
-source: Forrester
May 2002. A survey of experienced Web
users finds that user expectations are now more demanding of website performance
than ever before. Of respondents, 96% said a site must be continually updated,
96% said it has to be easy to navigate, 93% said the site must have in-depth information
on its subject, and 89% said they demand a quick load and response time.
-source: Enterpulse Corp
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