Online Marketing Week In Review (3/4/11) – eCommerce Edition
March 04 2011 by Stephanie Ryska ~ 5 CommentsHere is some online marketing news you might have missed while watching Charlie Sheen or checking out Apple’s newest product, iPad 2. This week’s theme is ecommerce.
Marketing Momentum is More Dependent on Marketing Mix Than Ever Before
In the world of marketing you need the four Ps (product, price, place, promotion) but now you need to add an effective marketing mix. Customers have complex behaviors that can’t always be controlled. Customers are seeing the same things from many different sources, like social networks, emails, search, and online forums. As marketers you need to map out your customers’ buying process so you can better understand your customers and how to market to them.
E-Commerce to Reach Nearly $300 Billion in US by 2015 [STATS]
Customers are becoming more familiar with online shopping and beginning to prefer its convenience. Part of the growth comes from an increased in internet connectivity via smartphones, tablets and game consoles. Also part of the upswing is from e-commerce sites like Gilt Groupe, Groupon, LivingSocial, and Netflix. Existing online shoppers who increased their online spending drove e-commerce growth in 2010. But 30 percent was attributed to consumers who shopped online for the first time. E-commerce new makes up 8% of total retail sales.
SEO: Why 65 Percent of Top 20 E-Commerce Sites Are Missing the Boat
Google drives 80% of traffic to e-commerce sites. Does Google drive traffic to your product pages where the “add to cart” is located? ClickZ looks at the top 20 Internet retailers. Many sites do a good job of optimizing their pages and URLs but many ignore their user-generated content. Organic search is 25 to 35% of traffic to large sites. Google favors user generated content. Then Google indexes customer reviews from sites product pages that is a boost in SEO rankings. But 65% of top 20 Internet retailers are not indexing their product pages correctly. The big mistake is that sites are using iFrames for their customer reviews and search engines don’t attribute content in iFrames.
Social Online Shopping- What Men Prefer and Women Don’t
Men and women have different habits when it comes to online shopping. Men prefer gadgets like smartphones and women prefer to use social networks for finding shopping deals. As of right now only 6% of online shoppers are using Facebook to buy goods and services (but this will change due to advances in Facebook shopping platforms). There is some ground work to be done for using social media as a channel for online shopping but research shows that many opportunities exist for younger consumers.
Tips and Must-Haves for your eCommerce Platform
Here are some SEO elements to consider for your ecommerce platform. Here are some simple highlights. Make sure your product image is handled right. When customers click on different colors for a product the URL should remain the same. Make sure that search engines can read your product reviews because Google likes user content over company content. When products are removed instead of the 301 redirecting to the homepage, it should redirect to related products.
Have a great weekend!
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