Category: SEO

Call to action: Blurring and Hebrew websites

I liked this tip about improving conversion rate by blurring your website: by blurring your site you avoid the temptation to read the text on your website and can focus on the design.

So in was interesting to be asked to comment on the usability and SEO of an Israeli website, in Hebrew.

Through Google analytics and the Google translation tool it was relatively easy to work out how visitors were arriving at and navigating the site. But it was clear even before this, looking at the Hebrew version, that the navigation is confused and there’s a lack of call to action. The site is about 80 pages (which is good for SEO) but the homepage has over 20 internal links, not including the top and bottom navigation.

According to Dr Mike Baxter who suggests the blurring tip, Visitors decide whether they like your website in one 20th of a second.  And if they don’t like it, they won’t convert.

Even if I knew any Hebrew, which I don’t, I wouldn’t know where to click.

No Comments by on June 6, 2010
filed in Ecommerce design, SEO

Trends in internet retailing

This is a nice summary of key trends, from internetretailing.net

  • Multi-channel integration. Online consumers are getting ever more demanding, and ever more intolerant when retailers fail to join up their multi-channel dots. A seamless cross-channel experience, driven by a single view of the customer, will become a core requirement for success in the years ahead.
  • Mobile. The potential of mobile as a new channel for retailers has received much of the industry’s attention over the last few months. The ability for customers to easily price check, find the latest coupons and deals and purchase online from their mobile phone — even in-store — is going to lead to significant changes in shopping habits.
  • Mobile – again. One of the most interesting developments is likely to be the way in which mobile will link into retailers’ multi-channel strategies as a way to connect up the different channels through technologies such as mobile barcodes, coupons and NFC.
  • Delivery. Fulfilment and delivery service providers have responded well over the last few months, introducing ever more sophisticated delivery options. ‘One size fits all’ is no longer enough.
  • Personalisation. Everything from personalised on-site recommendation engines to tightly targeted email campaigns will be key to delivering growth as internet retailing becomes ever more competitive in the years ahead.
  • Choice. Whether it’s offering a wide range of ways to pay, or options for the frequency of marketing emails, consumers are set to expect online retailers to use information gained from previous purchases and site visits to tailor the offering to meet their particular needs.
  • Social media. On the one hand, social media has now become quite entrenched. On the other, however, an understanding of the ways in which social media can be leveraged to aid business decisions is still in its early days and is set to deliver significant commercial advantage to those who gain the greatest expertise.
  • Email. Still very much a key sales driver, and one that internet retailers still need to be investing in and making a key development priority.
No Comments by on March 29, 2010
filed in Ecommerce strategy, SEO, Social media
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Is adwords ever “not cost effective”?

I was talking to the owner of Sunspel, a website selling luxury menswear both online and offline, who came out with the statement “Adwords is not cost effective for us” (not for product-related keywords, only for brand-related keywords).

My main experience with Adwords was for Viners.co.uk where my adwords campaigns generated 50% of sales at a cost per conversion of around 10% of the average order value – so very cost effective, in fact the most cost effective marketing channel in that particular case.

Of course an adwords campaign will not be particularly cost effective if the keywords chosen are not relevant, if ads are poorly written, and landing pages are poor. But the point made by Sunspel was that there were too many competitors bidding on keywords like “T Shirt” or “mens clothes”, and with so much competition it’s difficult to push a luxury message vs. a price-based message.

To some extent I had it easy running campaigns for a site selling mostly cutlery, where the majority of traffic came for a handful of “cutlery”-related keywords. And there are fewer Adwords competitors in the world of cutlery than T shirts. But to a much bigger extent Adwords was cost effective due to constant optimization; stopping keywords and ads which were not cost effective, refining keywords and ads which were more cost effective; constantly looking for trends and opportunities in the long tail of search terms.

No Comments by on March 15, 2010
filed in Ecommerce strategy, SEO
tagged , , ,

Stop designing websites, start designing posters

This is an unusual use of .gif product images on a patterned background in an online shop – perhaps inspired this trend for web design inspired by poster design.

I also like how the price (and all product text) is only shown when you mouse over the product. Not very search engine friendly, but a bold attempt to make the product the hero, and sell the sizzle not the steak.

No Comments by on March 12, 2010
filed in Ecommerce design, SEO
tagged ,

I Like:

Zappos.com (the biggest online retailer of footwear in the US, now owned by Amazon) has this nice widget to encourage you to “blog about this item”.

I Like:

Ramona by Lassen at Zappos.com
Ramona by LassenZappos.com - Powered by Service

It’s a great example of building engagement with the brand AND helping SEO by building links to their site. Apparently Zappos has been doing social media well for a while, as this chart of inbound links since they embraced Twitter shows:

No Comments by on March 5, 2010
filed in SEO, Social media
tagged , ,

Title tags & domain names in SEO

This is a good summary of the role of title tags and domain names in Search Engine Optimisation.

I would add also, click-through-rate will be improved with better title tags and meta descriptions:

  • If your title tag just says “Welcome” and your competitors nicely describe their products, which one is more likely to be clicked on?
  • If your meta description is just a list of keywords what does this actually tell the customer? Much better to promote benefits such as free delivery, fast delivery etc.
No Comments by on January 12, 2010
filed in Ecommerce design, SEO
tagged

42% of online gift shoppers have abandoned sites that load too slowly

A new study of 1,500 consumers’ experience of shopping for gifts online found that the majority were  continuing to experience ‘virtual’ queues at online shops in the run up to Christmas.

80% of shoppers encountered slow working websites around Christmas and 30% believe that websites perform more slowly in the run-up to the holiday season. An alarming 42% of consumers have abandoned purchases on slow running sites while buying their gifts, and 34% are more likely to switch to a competitor’s website during this period.

Read the full article from internetretailing.net

No Comments by on January 5, 2010
filed in Ecommerce design, SEO
© 2011 Helen Coupland