Author Archives: Ben Adam

Essential e-commerce features & functionality to drive great customer experience – part 2

Posted on by Ben Adam

In my last post, I looked at the features and functions of e-commerce platforms that help to drive a positive customer experience at the point at which a prospect has decided they want to purchase a particular product. In part two, I am going to take a look at features that facilitate the actual moment of purchase and the post purchase experience.

 

Moment of purchase

By removing barriers to conversion, an e-commerce platform can have a big impact on making the purchase process as easy as possible.

Design
Although not necessarily dictated by the e-commerce platform, the design and layout of the site should be customisable to an extent, ideally without the need for development resource.

  • Category product layout – Product listings in grid or list format should be an option available to the customer and remembered for that user
  • Flexible module based design – The ability to move certain pieces of content from one area of the page to another, whilst adding and removing landing pages will greatly increase your chance of being able to improve conversion rates through a/b testing, for example
  • Flexible templates – Ability to assign designs on category and product level (unique design per product/category)
  • Hero & header images – Carousels and image headers should be specifiable for the homepage, categories and across other areas of the site. JohnLewis.com make excellent use of hero & header images across their categories, highlighting latest ranges and deals, for example:

Product detail
A customer needs to feel as informed as possible about a product before committing to purchase. The layout and information provided at a product level can have a big impact on this.

  • Multiple images per product – Customers expect to see a large number of high quality product images
  • Product image zoom-in capability – Images should be high resolution, be ‘zoom-able’ (did I just make that word up?!) by click and through movement of the mouse across the image
  • Product image 360 degree view – Functionality to allow for products to be viewed from all angles
  • Product coverage – Where products appear in publications, the ability to highlight this to the customer through thumbnail images/logos
  • Product stock level tracking and notification – Ensure stock availability is visible and ideally in real-time to to avoid fulfilment frustration. As highlighted in my last post, Made.com make great use of product imagery, offering a number of images from different angles and showing the items in use and on their own:

Checkout
A smooth buying process from basket to checkout to completion will help minimise the customer ‘dropping off’ at any of these stages:

  • Customisable checkout – A flexible checkout is important as this allows for testing, removing and reposition of form fields and so on
  • Checkout without account/guest checkout – Probably the biggest mistake made by retailers (and the biggest bugbear for customers) is insisting an account is created in order to make the purchase. Don’t force this on customers up-front, offer it as an option after the sale with an incentive for doing so i.e. money off a next purchase
  • SSL security support – Both front-end and back-end, secure checkout is vital for customers trust to complete the sale
  • Saved shopping baskets – Ideally with configurable expiry time. Remembering a user’s product choices will avoid frustration if they accidentally close their browser or press the back button

Delivery
A key factor to conversion is an excellent shipping and delivery process. To achieve this, the e-commerce platform should be highly configurable to allow a multitude of flexible options (assuming the retailer has the processes and systems in place to offer these options of course):

  • Trackable delivery – Customers expect to be kept up-to-date in terms of where their purchase is in transit or be able to find information on the status of their order on the site
  • Configurable delivery cost – Free delivery or flat rate delivery per order or item from our experience are the best aids to high conversion rates. Clear information for differing weights, destinations etc, are also essential so all costs are clear up-front
  • Print invoices and packaging lists from the order screen – Key to offering a smooth and efficient delivery service is to make the background processes simple and automated

Payment
A comprehensive range of payment features will allow customers to transact easily and conveniently.

  • Payment gateway integration – Offering a broad range of payment gateways will ensure any obstacles to completion are minimised
  • Discounts codes – The ability to add voucher/discount code at basket/checkout
  • Credit card details – Securely remember users credit card details (should they wish to) saves time and effort next time they make a purchase

Active selling & dynamic merchandising
This refers to the art of cross-selling a similar or complimentary product to the one a customer has chosen to purchase. This is could be an alternative (before they have added to basket), an item that would complement their purchase or an additional item required for the chosen product to function properly.

  • Recently viewed/compared products – The option to include a list of recently viewed products
  • Active selling – The ability to push items through daily deals and new item promotions
  • Configurable cross-sells, bundled items, up-sells and related items – All should be customisable, and be able to be added to different areas/templates of the site
  • Wish lists – The ability to add desired products into a list associated with users account

IKEA make nice use of tabs to include an array of cross selling opportunity, matching and complementary products, similar items and more products from the same range:

Post purchase

Delivering on your promises after the purchase is essential to building trust and brand loyalty. An e-commerce platform can aid this in the following ways:

  • Customer accounts – Allow customers the option to create an account that remember key details such as address and payment methods
  • Customer service – Allows customers to make enquiries via their account and linked to the products they have purchased previously
  • Online chat – Integration into the platform for customer service queries, as well as asking product specific questions
  • Email marketing – Email marketing fully integrated with the customer database can feed into the retailer’s eCRM program

Conclusion

Whether off the shelf or bespoke, there is a lot to consider in terms of functionality when selecting an e-commerce platform. The above attempts to cover some of the key e-commerce features to ensure your site achieves its true potential and most importantly you deliver the kind of pre- and post-purchase experience needed to win in complex and competitive sectors, such as homewares and fashion.

Can you think of anything additional you might look for in an e-commerce platform?

 

Essential e-commerce features & functionality to drive great customer experience (part 1)

Posted on by Ben Adam

To prosper in a complex, competitive and fast paced market, retailers must deliver a superior and fulfilling customer experience, consistently and seamlessly across all marketing channels. It is a monumental challenge but one that retailers, big and small, need to overcome and marketers, at all levels, need to grasp if they are to win new customers and build valuable, long-term relationships with them.

The choice of e-commerce platform can have a major impact on a retailer’s ability to deliver this experience. The right features and functionality can greatly aid the likelihood of succeeding at each stage of the buying journey, beginning with visibility of the site in search engines (thereby acquiring targeted traffic), helping to convert that traffic and then retaining new customers through a good post purchase experience.

Our Retail Marketing Machine visualises the complex journey consumers make when researching, considering and purchasing products, along with every touch point that shapes and influences their decision.

There are a number of key stages that I will refer to during the course of this post, namely:

The shop window of opportunity
This is the point at which a prospect has decided they want to purchase a particular product or service. Are you in their shop window when they are in research and consideration mode?

Moment of purchase
This is the point at which the prospect is engaged with your brand and is ready to purchase. A wide range of factors will determine whether they progress to sale (or not) with the look and feel, features and functionality of your site playing a key role.

Post purchase experience
Here we refer to both the practical and emotional experience the customer receives once they have made their purchase. The practical involves delivery, for example. The emotional more concerned with how the retailer builds a loyal brand advocate through channels, such as content and social media.

This two part blog post looks at the features and functionality that will aid and improve each of the above stages and therefore what to consider when choosing an e-commerce platform. This is by no means an exhaustive list but more a guide to those features that help drive a superlative experience at each of the key buying stages outlined above.

Shop window of opportunity

For your site to reach and acquire customers during their ‘period of active consideration’, it needs to be found across search engines – that’s pretty much a given. But once they arrive at your site it must also present prospects with access to as much information as possible to evaluate your products sufficiently. With this in mind, let’s take a look at a number of e-commerce features that are essential to meeting this goal:

Categorising products
The ability to categorise products will aid natural search visibility, as well as improve usability. Features associated with product categorising might include:

  • Unlimited products and categories – Surprising as it might sound, some platforms have a limit to the number of products and categories you can create. Ensure you choose a platform that allows unlimited products and categories
  • Product option selection – A product should be able to have unlimited options such as size, colour, etc. rather than having to create new product pages for each variation
  • Grouped product view – Allows products to be grouped together. This works well if you are presenting a number of different products into collections or ranges
  • Faceted navigation for filtering of products – It should be easy to add new filters and tag products. Filtering should also be search engine friendly i.e. it should create ‘friendly’ URLs and use keyword insertion in page titles, meta descriptions and h1 headers. The Marks and Spencer site is a good example of clear and comprehensive faceted navigation:

Product detail
By creating content over and above that of simple product descriptions, you are creating a more memorable experience should encourage a prospect to return to the site oe perhaps share that content even if they are not quite ready to commit to the purchase at this stage. Content might include:

  • Product reviews – Usually a score out of 5, the ability to display average customer ratings for a product can help make your site a destination at the consideration stage but also help be a decision trigger
  • Question and Answers – A Q&A sections take FAQs a step further by allowing customers to ask product specific questions. This level of interaction can significantly increase conversion rates as any doubts the customer has about a product can be dispelled
  • User Generated Content (UGC) – Allow people not only to review but upload photos and videos of their experiences in using products. In turn, this helps prospects see products in their real world setting used by actual customers
  • Product comparisons – Where products are complex, the ability to compare side by side is a very powerful feature to aid decision making. Wiggle.c.o.uk uses both a Q&A areas and reviews across their products with many of the customer reviews including images as well

Site search

Configurable search with auto-suggested terms. Many e-commerce systems fall down here. Users expect the search function to be as good as that of Google.

Store pages
More often than not, store pages are dull, un-engaging and lack personality. An e-commerce platform with advanced multichannel availability and logistic capabilities can significantly help with a smooth in-store/online purchase path.

  • Store-specific content – Imagery, events, offers, staff biographies and the store manager’s ‘favourite product of the week’ are all methods by which to add relevant content to the page
  • Store locator/search – Provide advanced search and filtering functionality, as well as a reliable mapping tool and directions
  • Click and collect – The ability for a customer to select their local store and collect their order is a growing expectation of savvy customers. Obviously, the business needs to support this logistically before offering the service on the site!
  • Save a store preference – Associate a store with a customer’s account to quickly allow the customer to look at stock availability locally to them

Although not injecting much personality, Mothercare.com do a good job with their store pages in terms of information. By capturing postcode searches from people looking for their nearest store, they can potentially start to join the dots between online and offline.

Technical
Ensuring the e-commerce platform is not going to cause any headaches for search engines will give your business the best possible foundation for natural search visibility.

  • URL rewrites – Rewriting URLs in a friendly format, using words and not parameters is better for both the user and the search engines
  • HTML mark-up – Marking up HTML using Schema.org can result in rich snippets in search results and improve click through rates
  • Sitemaps – Both XML and HTML sitemaps should be generated and auto update
  • Shopping feed creation – Important for shopping comparison engines, the ability to generate comprehensive feeds that auto update but can also be customised to add or change product attributes
  • Meta-information – It should be possible to specify page titles and meta descriptions for products and categories both template driven and specified by page
  • Duplicate content prevention – Advanced canonical functionality across the site can help prevent duplication of products if placed in different categories and also help pagination issues

In part 2 we’ll look at e-commerce platform features that are important at the ‘moment of purpose’ and ‘post purchase’ stages.

Article by senior natural search consultant, Ben Adam

Ten great examples of ecommerce product page functionality

Posted on by Ben Adam

Product pages are an extremely important part to any ecommerce site. Often they will be the only view and experience a potential customer has of a product. For high ticket items, such as furniture, it is even more important that a customer feels completely comfortable with the quality of an item before they will commit to purchase.

Product pages are often over looked and fall short of their purpose. They can make or break a sale so not letting your product pages fulfil their potential isn’t giving your products a fair chance.

The following post looks at what you should try and include in your product pages and examples of brands excelling at individual elements:

Product imagery

The quality of product images, and the way in which they are presented can have a big impact on conversions. It is important for images to impart a sense of contact with the product, giving the customer a stronger sense for product specifics and details. Great product imagery should include:

  • Multiple angles and perspective views
  • Close ups, showing details of material
  • Product variations as separate images
  • Controllable 360 views
  • Products in isolation and in use

Made.com do this very well, offering a number of images from different angles and different zooms showing the items in use and on their own.

Product copy

Not everything about a product can be conveyed in pictures, for example the quality of craftsmanship and ethical production. If you want someone to commit to spending on a high ticket online, a reassuring, carefully constructed product description should be the least you can do. Great product copy should incorporate the following:

  • Highlight the unique selling points of each product
  • Include dimensions
  • Care instructions
  • Package measurements
  • Offer samples where applicable e.g. fabric swatches for sofas

To aid readership, I also recommend using bullet points to structure copy.

Go Modern makes a great effort to talk about the product design and includes some history, important for high cost items. There is arguably too much copy as web users don’t tend to read large blocks of text; this could potentially be overcome through the use of read more expandable text.

Product videos

Short of touching and feeling a product, videos are one of the best ways to help a customer feel connected with a product. There are many examples of online retailers who have seen conversion rates increase dramatically as a result of incorporating videos into their product pages, for example Zappos.com saw an increase in conversions of between 6% and 30%.

It is important that product videos are of high enough quality and that they do the job of both showing the quality of craftsmanship and the product in detail that can’t be conveyed through imagery alone.

As a bonus, product videos can be optimised for search and potentially aid click through rates from search result pages.

Again, Made.com do a good job of including product videos that show the making of and the product in use. This really helps to tell the story behind the product.

Add ‘as featured in’

With home décor publications and TV programs continuing to increase in popularity, it is important to make the most of any coverage specific products receive.  By displaying a well know publication logo this may well make people more inclined to make a purchase as it has a “seal of approval” from a trusted publication.

Logos should be added to the product description with links to copies of the publication. The frenchbedroomcompany.co.uk do an excellent job of this:

Made.com also employs this tactic on their product pages:

Cross selling

The art of cross-selling is offering a similar or complementary product to the one a potential customer is looking at. This is generally an alternative model, an item that would complement or is required for the product to function properly.
Using a well-executed cross-selling strategy will likely result in:

  • Increased transactions as customers find what they want with greater ease
  • Increased average order values as they add additional items to their basket
  • Greater exposure of your product range
  • Greater exposure to higher margin products
  • Increased customer satisfaction as related products help complete their shopping process quickly

IKEA make nice use of tabs to include an array of cross selling opportunity, matching and complementary products, similar items and more products from the same range.

Whilst Amazon excel in offering complementary items and packages.

And John Lewis makes use of recently viewed across their site

The art to cross selling is relevancy. You will only increase basket values by presenting products that truly complement the core item being purchased. Presenting a list of random products in the hope one might be selected is not the right approach to be taking here.

Q&A Content

Question & Answer content takes FAQs a step further, by letting customers ask product specific questions. This level of interaction, especially where a real time element can be added, can significantly increase conversion rates as any doubts the customer has about a product can be allayed. Q&A content is becoming increasingly popular on more technical ecommerce sites; Wiggle.co.uk is a good example of this in action.

Don’t forget multichannel

Keeping multichannel in mind, Dwell link to the stores where you can go and see the product, helping drive footfall and potentially securing a sale.

A nice feature that few brands are currently employing.

The challenge of course is measuring the impact of online activity on store footfall and attributing sales accordingly.

Conclusion

The ultimate product page would be a hybrid of all these great examples. But the specific functionality you require for your website is likely to depend on your product, its complexity, the length of the consideration period and so on.

What is clear is that product pages need to work harder than ever if you are turn interested browsers into customers.

What great examples of product pages have you seen?

Get the most out of Facebook’s new look

Posted on by Ben Adam

As you may well have already seen, Facebook Pages have a new look and functionality which was rolled out on 30th March, the change will be seen as a fairly radical one for many brands who will now need to be thinking of telling their brand’s story rather than trying to interact with customers in the style of a message board.

This has implications for both brands that already have a Facebook presence as well as those who haven’t yet made the Facebook leap. Below are the key areas to look at when updating or setting up the new Facebook timeline for your brand.

Cover photo

The most obvious change to the new Facebook timeline is addition of the Cover photo, the full width image that sits permanently at the top of your page should be unique to your business, brand or organisation.

With the tab format no longer, the default page will always be the timeline; this puts greater importance on the cover image. The cover image will be the new focal point for existing and new fans alike.

There a number of requirements associated with your cover image. Cover images must be at least 399 pixels wide and may not contain any of the following:

  • Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
  • Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other ‘about us’ information
  • References to any user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
  • Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

But don’t forget your profile picture. This will publicly displayed across Facebook as before, therefore you should upload a 180 x 180 image (which will automatically be resized to 32 x 32.)

Visually compelling

The new Facebook layout puts a huge emphasis on the visuals, make your page compelling by keeping your posts as image centric as possible. Good use of images will make your page easy to scan and help make it more engaging as a result.

Prioritise content

The new Timeline allows for much greater customisation through starred, pinned, hidden and milestone posts. A new feature of Timeline is the ability to star posts; this will highlight the post and result in the post expanding across the screen in widescreen. Additionally you can now hide posts that are timely or you no longer want to appear on your timeline, such as competitions, product recalls and apologies.


Cited by Facebook as a tip to help engage people with your timeline, a pinned post will ensure people notice your most important content by appearing in the top left of a Page’s timeline with flag in its top-right corner for 7 days.

In addition to pinned and starred posts, Milestones can be added to your Timeline these are key moments you would like to highlight on your page, they are automatically expanded and have a flag icon; they are a perfect way to tell the history of your brand. For best results use an image 843 pixels wide and 403 pixels tall for Milestones.

Applications

In the new Facebook design, applications are given less prominence, up to 3 applications can be included on your homepage alongside the Photos application but to view anymore, users will have to expand the apps section.

Old applications will still display but will look narrow in the new layout which now incorporates wider 810px apps.

User comment control and messages

Unlike before, Facebook now puts brands in complete control of comments; it’s now possible to ensure that all conversations that appear on the page will have received prior approval.

Previously the only way consumers could communicate with brands through Facebook was by publically posting on the wall. The new Facebook means users can send messages privately by selecting the new “Message” button (located next to the “Like” button.) Should the brand wish this to be visible, the brand can then respond privately.

Increasing engagement

Facebook recently supplied a number of recommendations in order to help increase engagement with your page. These are as follows:

  • Keep posts succinct – between 100 and 250 characters
  • Use photos – posts with photos result in twice the engagement of those without
  • Post regularly – there’s no right answer here but generally Facebook recommend once a day
  • Use Facebook Insights – look closely at Facebook insights and find out what posts are being well received and do more of the same

Conclusion

The new Facebook design means brands need to re-assess how they are using the social network and think a lot more about how their profile can tell an engaging story with a lot more emphasis on the visual.

How to create an optimised Google+ business page

Posted on by Ben Adam

Lucy’s recent post offered caution to jumping on the Google+ bandwagon and highlighted what should be carefully considered before creating a Google+ business page.

Considering whether to create a Google+ page or profile for your brand is pretty much the same as any other social network with the added factor that creating a Google+ page and getting active on the new social network could offer a welcome boost to your natural search visibility.

Below are a couple of examples of how Google+ content is already starting appearing in the SERPs.

Google+ posts

For some queries, Google is pulling in the latest Google+ post, leading to even more brand exposure and for this ASOS example, great promotion of their latest offer.

Suggested pages

Currently only appearing on google.com searches, suggested people and pages to follow for generic searches:

How to create a well optimised Google+ brand page

If you decide to create a Google+ business page, you should keep the following guidelines in mind so that you set the foundations for your Google+ activity to start making waves in the SERPs:

Getting started
Once you have a Google profile registered you can create a page using the Google the Create A Page tool to create your business page.

First off, choose from one of 5 categories:

  • Local Business or Place
  • Product or Brand
  • Company, Institution or Organization
  • Arts, Entertainment or Sports
  • Other

If you are creating a Local Business or Place you have the option entering a phone number in a similar way to registering a new Google Place. (Please note that currently, Place pages and Google+ pages must be managed separately).

Setting up a page will give admin rights to that Google account, other accounts can be added from the Settings Managers; the only difference between managers and owners being the ability to delete a page and transfer ownership of that page.

Strangely, unlike Facebook, Google hasn’t bothered with search engine ‘friendly’ URLs for profile pages. Instead your URL uses a unique ID. However, as with Facebook you’ll need to access the page through a personal account and you’ll have the ability to choose whether you are acting as yourself or the business page.

The difference between pages and profiles can get a bit confusing, according to the Google help page it is as follows:

  • Pages can’t add people to circles until the page is added first or mentioned. Learn more
  • Pages can be made for a variety of different entities whereas profiles can only be made for people
  • Pages can have multiple administrators
  • The default privacy setting for elements on your page profile is public
  • Pages have the +1 button
  • Pages can’t +1 other pages, nor can they +1 stuff on the Web
  • Pages can’t play games
  • Pages don’t have the option to share to ‘Extended circles’
  • Pages can’t hangout on a mobile device
  • Local pages have special fields that help people find the business’ physical location. Learn more about local pages

Once you’ve setup your page, below are the key areas to be focusing on to get the page as well optimised as possible.

Name / Brand

This forms the page title so is worth including a keyword if possible, think of it as a way to help differentiate your business name if needed, don’t force it though.

Tag line and then bio

Both the page name, tagline and the about introduction are used for the page meta description. This will also be a factor used in returning your page in any internal Google+ searches.

When writing your tagline and about intro use the following guidelines:

  • Describe your business offering
  • Include your companies USPs
  • Clarify what the Google+ page is for (H&M do this well)
  • Use bullet points
  • Add links if required (at the time of writing, these links are dofollow so should have some SEO weight to them)

Photos

Probably the most striking part of a Google+ page are the 5 horizontal; thumbnails under the tagline. This is an opportunity to get creative, see Econsultancies 20 of the best photo strips for some inspiration and checkout Burberry’s use of gifs to create a moving picture header.

Recommended links

Again, these links are ‘dofollow’ so they should have SEO value. If you’ve linked to useful sections of your site from your About Information put in links here to your other social network profiles, blog and website.

Verifying your page

To verify your Google+ page you need to link it up to your site, this way you’ll get a verified logo by your page name and you’ll be eligible for Google Direct and adWords Social extensions (more below).

To confirm ownership of a site, Google looks for two things:

  • A rel=”publisher” link from the main page of your website to your Google+ page. This tells Google that the Google+ page represents the publisher of the site, and makes your site eligible for Google Direct Connect. In addition, the count of +1′s on your Google page reflects the number of +1′s on the home page of your site (but not +1′s on individual pieces of content). If you use the AdWords social extension, this total +1 count is also applied to your ads.
  • A reciprocal link back from your Google+ page to the main page of your website.

Google Direct

Google direct lets you quickly navigate to a Google+ page by preceding your search by a ‘+’, it’s unlikely have much traction at the moment but well worth getting setup now as good foundation for the future.

adWords Social Extensions

This allows you to share your +1 information between your adWords campaign and your Google+ page allowing for annotations to be displayed on your PPC ads. Potentially improving your click through rates.

Ultimately, greater visibility within Google Web and Google+ search is going to come down to how engaging you are as a brand in Google+. Lay the foundations with a well optimised page, encourage +1s and get people to add you to circles to maximise the potential of your Google+ business page.

Facebook ‘Likes’ and travel sites

Posted on by Ben Adam

A recent study from Usabilla looking at user experience of 800 users across 18 leading travel websites turned up some very interesting results. There was a great deal to learn from the study but perhaps the biggest surprise was the negative reaction shown towards the inclusion of the Facebook Like buttons.

Amongst the negative feedback towards the Facebook Like buttons where comments such as “trying too hard”, “unprofessional”, “infantile” and generally a lot of comments of “hate”. The comment “I am here to book a trip, not to market this company on Facebook” summarised the feedback nicely. Strong words indeed.

So don’t include Facebook Like’s on travel websites?

Not so fast. These negative responses are not likely to be purely down to the inclusion of Facebook Like buttons, more the way they have been incorporated into the site and the approach taken by the brand when trying to communicate the reason for their inclusion to customers.

So how should you include Facebook Likes into a travel site?

Don’t just plonk your Facebook button on the home page or every page of the site without any thought. There are a number of considerations that should be made when incorporating a like button:

Placement

Consider carefully where you place the button. Add to content that people will actually want to share and endorse to get the most traction. This might include:

  • Photos and photo galleries
  • Guides and useful information such as ‘things to do’
  • Blog posts or news articles

Communication

If you still want people to like your brand, try to position the button as to “follow” rather than to “Like” on Facebook and try to communicate what’s in it for them, for example:

  • To stay updated though the Facebook news feed
  • Access to special offers or deals only for followers

Additionally, consider if including an indicator of the number of ‘Likes’ will instill trust and help increase conversions.

Alternatives

Don’t forget about Facebook Send. There’s a nice example on the Facebook page where someone is sharing an Orbitz Hotel page with their roommates. Facebook Send is private and like a ‘Like’ can be sent to different Facebook friends or groups. Facebook explain it best:

“We designed the Send button to be used alongside the Like button. By including both on your website, people will have ability to broadcast the things they like and also send it to specific people.”

Testing and measuring

Don’t just add a button and forget about it, there are exact ways to measure the levels of interaction and identify the combinations that are performing best:

  •  Use a/b testing to change the position, size, etc to see which variation encourages the greatest level of engagement
  • Setup the Social Tracking in Google Analytics to see if people are interacting and sharing your content

Simply putting the Facebook ‘Like’ button on your homepage because “everyone else is doing it” is a big ‘no no’. Sometimes it’s better not to do things at all than do them badly so seriously consider the above carefully to make the Facebook Like work well for both your business and your customers.

Optimising for social signals

Posted on by Ben Adam

social buttons

Although social content sharing has been around for some time now, only recently has the sharing of content had a direct impact on a pages ranking in Google or Bing. It is becoming ever more important to ensure customers are encouraged to tweet, share, like and now +1 your products or news stories.

The most popular and most significant social influencers on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are:

  • Tweets
  • Facebook likes and shares
  • Google’s +1

What are the benefits?

Google and Bing have both stated that social signals have a direct effect on rankings. Tweets already have been shown to aid rankings and there is an increasingly need for them to be considered as an additional form a link building. Sites should be aiming to get pages mentioned in tweets by authoritative people as you would aim to gain links from authoritative websites.

Twitter

If an article is retweeted or referenced in Twitter, Bing will add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. However, it currently carries more weight in Bing Social Search. Google also use it as a signal in both their organic and news rankings. However, only in the last couple of days there have been reports of Google placing less emphasis on Twitter and removing the ‘real time’ filter from the search options on the left hand side of the page. It remains to be seen if this is temporary or a more permanent move, perhaps to drive users towards Google+ and +1.

Facebook likes and share

For links shared within Facebook, either through personal walls or fan pages Bing has a close relationship with Facebook and currently looks at links shared that are marked as “Everyone,” and links shared from Facebook fan pages. Google treat links shared on Facebook fan pages the same as it treats tweeted links but has no personal wall data from Facebook.

Facebook “send” is more personalised recommendation and endorsement; earning Facebook shares currently will not directly boost your rankings (though it may have positive effects that indirectly promote links, tweets and other signals Google may use as suggested by Matt Peters).

Google +1

Google has been indicating right from the start that +1s are going to influence search results. Once fully rolled out in the UK, +1s, as well as being  used as a ranking factor, are also going to  impact both paid and natural CTRs from SERPs, as +1s appear alongside the search result.

Adding buttons to your site

Incorporating buttons into your site design is no simple task; there is an important balance between avoiding clutter and promoting the share buttons.

Generally the most popular method for implementing social buttons is a “Catchall service” such as “addthis”. Although the catchall can help prevent cluttering of your pages and avoid user confusion, they lack the call to action and impact of big bold buttons. They also don’t show the number of shares that may encourage greater user interaction.

What buttons should be included?

To avoid cluttering your pages and confusing customers only buttons that you see as significant use should be included, ideally limiting them to 3. Look closely at where your current traffic is coming from and consider your customer demographic before choosing the buttons to add.

What pages?

Social buttons are not relevant to all pages of the site and should not simply be replicated across every page. There are a variety of ways that the social sharing buttons should be incorporated into the site such as:

  • Product detail pages
  • Blog posts and news articles
  • Category level pages
  • Thank you pages
  • Wish lists

Where?

It is important that when placing social buttons there is a balance between content and promotion. We don’t want to the buttons to draw attention from any other goals but do want them to be simple to find. Consider containing within one widget and above the fold. Also add secondary buttons to the foot of long pages such as articles and posts.

Google announces a number of new search features

Posted on by Ben Adam

On Monday, Google announced a number of new innovations at its “Inside Search” event. The new features included Voice Search, a Mobile Update, Instant Pages and Search by Image.

Voice Search the already available, and very useful feature for mobile devices has been brought to the desktop. I’m not sure how useful this will be for desktops but Google suggests Voice Search will be great for:

  • Hard-to-spell searches – Makes searching words you’re not sure how to spell quicker and easier
  • Longer searches – Search long queries, even really, really long queries, just by talking
  • Searches that are just more fun to search out loud – Now you can ask your computer anything!
  • Searching without typing – Use it in the kitchen, in the garage or anytime your hands might be full

Mobile Homepage Update – A new addition to the Google mobile homepage is 3 new touch friendly buttons for Restaurants, Coffee, Pubs & Bars and More, shifting even more emphasis on Google’s local search. As well as the homepage update, the layout for the results has had a face lift with a scrolling list of places now below an updating map and image. Again, some more touch friendly buttons have been added to listings for viewing  reviews or calling.

Instant Pages – In Google’s attempt to save people time, following on from Instant Search is Instant Pages.  Google gets the top search result ready in the background while you’re choosing which link to click, saving valuable seconds. As you scan the results deciding which one to choose, Google is already pre-rendering the top search result, when clicked, it loads instantly, very nice!

To use Instant Pages, you’ll want to get the next beta release of Chrome, which includes pre-rendering (for the adventurous, you can try Instant Pages today with the developer version).

Search by Image – Google’s new search by image function means users can explore the web in an entirely new way by beginning their  search with an image (although not exactly original as TinEye have been doing this for some time). The new Google function has 3 different ways to search:

  • Drag and drop – Drag and drop an image from the web or your computer into the search box on images.google.com
  • Upload an image – On images.google.com, click the camera icon, then select “Upload an image.” Select the image you want to use to start your search
  • Copy and paste the URL for an image – Right-click an image in your browser to copy the URL. On images.google.com, click the camera icon, and “Paste image URL”

The impact of these new features on how the average person searches is very much open for debate:

  • Mobile updates - the mobile changes put more importance on ensuring you places pages are up-to-date and as informative as possible
  • Voice Search – It is unlikely to have any significant, short-term impact but if it did take off could lead to an increase in longer tail searches
  • Instant Pages – Instant pages signifies the importance of a fast loading site. Google is unlikely to look favourably on a slow loading site as it would lead to an increased strain as it pre-loads pages
  • Search by Image – May be interesting for retail and see some impact on the way some people search for products, especially when combined with mobile

Watch this space!

Google +1 = Facebook Like + Twitter RT

Posted on by Ben Adam

On the 30th March, Google announced yet another foray into the social side of the web with the Google +1 button. The Google +1 button is a simple way for people to share and receive website recommendations, “right when you want them” in the search results page.

Below I take a look at the potential implications:

+1 and Paid Search

Google +1 won’t just be coming to Natural Search results but Paid Search ads too. +1ing a search result or on any publisher will impact the way the Paid ad is displayed. Advertisers can opt out using this form but Christian Oestlien, Google’s Group Product Manager for Ads, told SearchEngineLand how the +1 had the potential to significantly increase click through rates (CTRs) from Paid results.

A more Social Google

Google states “relevance isn’t just about pages—it’s also about relationships”. Google +1 is yet another stage of evolution of Google to a more social experience. The recent Social Search update has seen an increase in the number of results ranking based on things your friends in your social circle have shared on Twitter, Flickr and other sites. If your logged into your Google account you can see what Google knows about your social circle based on your contacts and connected accounts.

The Impact of +1 on Search

Google is emphasising right from the start that this is going to influence search results as Tom Critchlow identified in the type of language being used by Google around the launch of +1. Currently you need to have a Google account and be logged in. This already is a limitation to the impact the +1 will have at least initially with Google looking to take capitalise on the approximately 170 million Gmail users. This is however far less than Facebook’s 500 million active users.

Our very own Lucy Freeborn sums up the struggle facing Google

“My main thoughts on it are that, even for Google, it’s fairly ambitious. As Facebook’s like button is universal it’s going to be quite difficult to get people to use another button that, in principle, does exactly the same thing. Also, almost everyone has a Facebook account that they log into everyday where as far less people have a Google account and not everyone is logged into their Google account all the time. As +1 will only work when you’re logged into your Google account I think this could be a big issue for Google.”

If you are not logged in and you click the +1 button, you won’t be able to recommend (you’ll be asked to sign up or login). However, without a Google profile you may still be subject to the influence of the +1. On Google’s official +1 post:

And even if none of your friends are baristas or caffeine addicts, we may still show you how many people across the web have +1’d your local coffee shop.

So even if other peoples +1s don’t affect rankings when your logged out (which I would expect they will) CTRs will potentially see a similar boost as is expected with the Paid Search ads.

+1 and Spam

A lot of comments around the launch of +1 have been about how easy it will be for people to manipulate. However, the nature of the Social Circle means Google has a lot of information from your connected accounts to help confirm your humanness making it potentially very hard to game.

What to do next?

Be prepared, get ready to add +1 buttons to products, blog posts etc. think about how they might best fit into your site design. There aren’t any

Currently only a small number of searchers on Google.com in the US will be able to see the +1 buttons automatically, but if you’re keen for an early preview you can enable it in Google experimental search. Just make sure your on Google.com for the moment.

Depending on whether Google is willing to share statistics related to users there is potentially a huge amount of demographic data available. Google has hinted at this in its Privacy Policy:

“We may share aggregate statistics related to users’ +1 activity with the public, our users, and partners, such as publishers, advertisers, or connected sites. For example, we may tell a publisher that “10% of the people who +1’d this page are in Tacoma, Washington.”

It’s still early stages and it’s very hard to guess the uptake of +1. Google has historically struggled with its attempts at being social so far (remember Google Wave and Buzz?)

At the moment it’s a wait and see.

The importance of optimising your Google Place listing; a quick case study

Posted on by Ben Adam

Since Google integrated its Place results into the standard web results, claiming your listing has been a quick win to climb the search engine results page (SERP), helping many local businesses leapfrog the competition.

However, even if you’ve claimed your Place page it might not be fulfilling its true potential. Using an example from one of our retail clients, I’ll explain how.

What we did

We took a number of local stores and added some key store information to improve and optimise the listings both content wise and visually thereby making them more enticing to users. We…

  • Added listing to relevant categories
  • Added optimised descriptions
  • Added store specific information including
  1. Parking availability
  2. Disabled access availability
  3. Ranges available
  4. Brands available
  5. Any extra store info
  • Added 10 product images that directly relate to stores range and best selling products

The results

Here are the great results we’ve seen in the last few months:

Note

Impressions = how many times users saw your business listing as a local search result
Actions = how many times users showed interest in your business listing

Store 1

Store 2

Store 3

Conclusion

A well optimised, enticing and informative Place page resulted in many more people interacting with the listings, sending increased traffic levels to the site.

Therefore be sure to optimise your Place page and add as much relevant and useful information as possible!