Category Archives: Tips and tit-bits

Why every brand needs a social media policy

Posted on by Ben Potter

Over the last 12 months, as to be expected, there has been further acceleration in the uptake of social media amongst retailers. This is a result of increasing usage amongst a wider demographic, new networks popping up (such as Pinterest), as well as the role social plays in wider search, content and customer experience strategies.

Regardless of the goals you have for your social presence (whether customer acquisition, retention, customer care, brand awareness, etc.) a key foundation for success is a comprehensive social media policy. This should include:

  • Branding, tone and vocabulary guidelines
  • Customer service guidelines
  • Negative interaction protocol
  • Respectful practice guidelines
  • Legal practice and copyright awareness

Remember one size doesn’t fit all – a social media policy should be tailored to the brand. Depending on the nature of your organisation, there may be unique factors you need to consider, so don’t be tempted to use a template for your social media policy.

Here are a few important roles a good policy can fulfil:

Branded communication
Use your social media policy to guide branding across channels. We all use social media in our free time; clearly stating key buzz words, brand values and vocabulary to avoid prepares your employees to interact as brand representatives, communicating your values and writing in the correct tone of voice.

Protection for yourself and your employees
Clearly stating procedures within a social policy will help to safeguard you and your employees from negative situations and mistakes. Outlining  employee roles (for example, who leads customer service dialogue) reduces confusion around responsibility and optimises time and resource. Highlighting  legal practice, platform rules and copyright awareness is vital to ensure you aren’t in breach of the CAP digital remit.

Deliver  seamless customer service
A good social media policy will guide the customer service process, ensuring the employees responsible are aware of correct protocol for escalation and importantly, who to notify within the company if a volatile situation occurs. Negative comments are inevitable in every social space – it’s how you deal with them that will set you apart from competitors.

Avoid social faux pas:
We all know how much negative media attention the wrong tweet or post can generate. Remember Urban Outfitters’ ill-considered sales tweet amid the devastation of super storm Sandy in October 2012?

It’s tempting to think that if you have a small social team you’re unlikely to commit a social faux pas. The real time nature of social coupled with human nature can be a recipe for unintentional disaster. Neatly outlining the rules encourages employees to think twice before they tweet.

While it’s important to lay out the rules, make sure your policy isn’t too restrictive. Social media is a leisure space for consumers and interaction should be responsive and flexible; in most cases it should also be fun for all involved, both the brand and the consumer. Therefore, whilst social media policies are necessary don’t let them suffocate the spirit of social media.

Planning a new website? Don’t forget these five key elements

Posted on by Suzanne Taylor

It’s always exciting when clients are developing a new site. It is the perfect chance to sort out any issues and build advanced functionality that will help set their site apart from the competition.

However all too often, crucial elements are not factored into the initial scope which can be costly to re-address after the platform and CMS have been chosen and developers appointed. It is therefore vitally important that you think carefully about what you want, and need the site to achieve first and map your requirements from this.

Below are the top 5 elements you need to consider when getting the project scoped:

1) Analyse your current site to inform the new
What is working well? What needs improving? What are the opportunities? What do your customers think? It’s so important to understand the status of your current site so you can figure out exactly what you need the new site to achieve.

2) Ensure the navigation is search engine friendly
Textual navigation is important for the search engines to be able to easily spider the site. Therefore avoid JavaScript, Flash or image based navigations as these can be problematic the search engines.

3) Plan your site architecture
Having a good site architecture is important as it will ensure the search engines can index and rank all relevant pages on the site. Ensure that the category structure is logical and you have landing pages that match how people search. Make sure product filtering produces unique URLs so that ranking and traffic potential is maximised. (These pages should provide a better conversion rate.)

4) Specify device agnostic design
Responsive web design is the best option to allow the site to render well on different devices. If not, a separate mobile site should definitely be considered to ensure you are providing a seamless experience across devices to help further encourage conversions. Allow your customers to buy where and when they want!

5) Allow for good CMS functionality
It is important to ensure the CMS allows easy optimisation and ongoing management of the site. My colleague, Ben Adam, recently put together a much more exhaustive list of e-commerce features that will be driven by the choice of platform / CMS. Those that are pretty fundamental are as follows:

  • Logically structured, search engine friendly URLs that follow the structure of the site (avoid dynamic URLs, spaces or symbols in the URL, uppercase letters, etc.)
  • Ability to add page-by-page 301 redirects (in case your URLs change, which if you are changing platform they almost certainly will)
  • Ensure HTML tags are customisable to allow for targeted optimisation. The main ones are:
    • title tags
    • meta descriptions
    • h1 headers
    • alt tags
  • Maintain areas for copy on every page and keep this copy integrated into the design (web copy seems to be a dying component but it is still very important to the search engines, particularly if you want non-brand, search term exposure)
  • Support for the following:
    • breadcrumb trail
    • editable robots.txt
    • instructional meta tags (including rel=canonical, rel=prev / next, rel=author)
    • microformats to allow us to mark up the content directly for the search engines (e.g. price, stock, review markup etc.)
  • Allow for an XML site map, automatically generated would be best case (this means that any changes or additions will automatically populate the XML sitemap)

In most cases, the budget available for a re-build will help determine features and functionality somewhat; however you must plan and be clear about your objectives and requirements from the very beginning. Otherwise you risk spending money on a new site that doesn’t achieve what you want, and need it to.

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?

 

One simple question to ask yourself when assessing the validity of a search marketing tactic

Posted on by Ben Potter

Last week, my latest article was published on the Econsultancy website.

It explores SEO payment models that buyers need to seriously question before committing to (or in some cases avoid completely!).

The payment models under scrutiny are:

 

  • Fixed fee, quoted up-front
  • Pay-on-performance (based on rankings)
  • Pay-on-performance (based on sales without proper attribution)
  • Anything less than £200 per month

Head over to the Econsultancy blog to read why, in my view, these models just don’t work in the context of today’s search landscape.

At the end of the article I introduce a theme that I am going to briefly expand on below but which I’ll also be exploring in more detail next time.

The theme is ‘experience’. As I state in the article, here at Leapfrogg we believe it is ‘experience’ that, in time, will separate the winners from the losers. Those businesses that can deliver a superlative experience at every stage of the buying journey from awareness to advocacy will prosper. Those that don’t will fail.

For me, search marketing (and in particular the approach that is taken to natural search) can play an integral role in how a brand delivers a positive, engaging and memorable experience; the kind of experience that drives repeat business and brand advocacy. This is for a number of reasons, not least the fact that search engines remains the number one method by which prospects begin their discovery of a new product or brand. According to a report from Hitwise, on average, the UK is making an additional 93m visits per month to search engines compared with last year, representing an average year-on-year growth of 4.3%.

Therefore, the route a prospect will take in discovering your brand and products will more than likely involve a search engine. In turn, the first impression a prospect may have of your brand will come as a result of how you present yourself (or fail to present yourself) in search listings. With this in mind, search can either act as the starting point to delivering a superlative experience for the prospect OR the means by which you lose the game before they’ve even visited your website.

I’ll be exploring how specific naturals search techniques and tactics contribute to driving a positive experience (or not, as the case may be!) in my next article.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the same question I concluded my latest Econsultancy article with; a question that I believe all marketers should ask themselves when considering a natural search technique or tactic:

‘How will this approach or activity deliver a memorable & superior experience for my customers?’

By starting with this question it will allow you to take a more objective view to what you should be doing (and more importantly what you shouldn’t) when it comes to shaping and executing your natural search strategy.

This is what I’ll be exploring further next time around.

Until then…

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?

A great example of a premium shopping experience

Posted on by Lucy Freeborn

With the imminent arrival of our first baby, myself and my husband have been finally getting round to decorating the house we moved into more than a year ago.  Without a car, him commuting up to London every day and me getting bigger and bigger, we have been reliant on online suppliers and home delivery services to help us source what we need, which has been a fascinating exercise for me in how different sectors approach their online customer service, delivery and post purchase engagement.

At Leapfrogg, we believe that securing sales isn’t just about having a great product and a good website; it is concerned with understanding your prospects and customers at every stage of their buying journey from reach through to advocacy.

There are lots of different elements of the digital marketing mix that an online brand can do to tap into their customers as they move through these different stages of this buying cycle, which I will highlight with a recent personal experience.

One of the most impressive online services I used to help get the house decorated is Wallpaper Direct.  Not immediately a site that screams ‘premium retail’ at you, but everything about the online service they offer is slick, easy and jammed packed with added value.

Acquisition & conversion:

The first gold star I mentally awarded to them was making it easy for me to find what I was looking for.  For those uninitiated, unless you’ve seen a design you really like, looking for wallpaper can be a nightmare.  Wallpaper Direct enables you to search in a variety of ways: colour, brand, type of design and features of the wallpaper.  While searching, you can save ones you like in a wish-list.  At the end of a search, you can very easily order A4 sized samples to be sent to you.  Unlike many other sites, there is no limit on the number of samples you order.  You can only get a limited number for free each time, but you can order as many as you like in one go.

They further impressed me when it came to ordering the correct number of rolls.  I can’t lie to you, reader, I can plumb in a toilet and put up shelves, but the patience you need to match up patterns to wallpaper is beyond my capabilities – so I’ve never even tried it.  Having the tool within the site to input the size of your walls / area to be wallpapered is really useful and enables you to order the right number of rolls first time.  Should you require “talking down” from any wallpaper induced hysteria, they have excellent telephone support to double check you’re making the right purchases and to handle any queries or returns.

The delivery service was also excellent.  From ordering, the wallpaper arrived quickly and my expectations were managed beautifully by both emails and texts detailing the date and time of delivery and very easy steps to follow should I want to change delivery options.


I was also thrilled with how the wallpaper arrived.  It was boxed up with a handle on top of the package to enable me to carry it home easily.  One of the brands of wallpaper I ordered was also gift wrapped with stickers and tissue paper!

Wallpaper Direct may not have the brand presence of a luxury interiors brand, but if one of the hallmarks of a premium brand is an ability to understand a customer’s pain points and offer quality service and user experience, then for me, they score very highly indeed.  They made what could have been a real chore, a pleasure and I would have no hesitation in using their services again and indeed recommending them to others.

Advocacy:

If making the actual process of searching for and ordering wallpaper fun and easy wasn’t enough to convert new users to a sale, there is a lot of added value throughout the site all designed to win your trust and encourage you to buy.  The news and reviews section, although not third party generated, is clearly visible from the home page:

Reach:

The brand also generates it own content to help inspire users – some thing Leapfrogg believes vital to help brand build with new customers in their ‘reach and research’ phase of the buying cycle.  Producing a stand-alone and brand neutral online magazine to help customers make decisions about the products and services you sell is a great way of exposing your expertise in a field and inspire purchase.

All in all, a great service that has ultimately secured the best accolade you can from a happy customer – advocacy!

Calculating the true value of a paid search campaign

Posted on by Andy Miller

What makes paid search so fantastic is its accountability. The fact that you can so clearly see the revenue generated by a campaign against click spend, on the face of it, makes measuring return on investment relatively straightforward for retailers.

However, in many cases, just doing a simple revenue against click spend formula will not tell you the entire story. I am going to explain how we calculate the return on investment (ROI) at Leapfrogg in order to understand the true value of a paid search campaign.

Calculating costs

When calculating the true ROI of a paid search campaign, there will always be additional costs on top of the basic media spend (i.e. clicks). This is especially true if there are third parties involved, such an agency managing the account or where advanced technology and attribution tools are being used.

Even if you are managing your account in-house, it is likely that somebody is being employed to look after it (I hope so anyway!). How long are they spending on it each week/month? These staffing costs should always be accounted for in any ROI calculations.

For retailers, there are also other costs involved which come at the point of sale, for example the cost of any discounts applied (and therefore the impact on margin) and delivery costs. If you want to calculate the real value of paid search, these need to be taken into consideration.

Another cost to factor in, which is so often ignored, is returns. If 10% of all orders are being returned this can significantly alter the profitability of a campaign.

Calculating revenue

Reporting on revenue can be more complex than you think. Most analytics tools report on revenue using the “last click wins” model, which means that the last visit to the site (and therefore traffic source) is credited with the sale.

However, in the multi-channel world that retailers now find themselves operating in, most customers are likely to visit the site on numerous occasions via a number of different channels before converting. This is where the “last click wins” model discounts any sales which involve more than one interaction with the site in the user journey.

In Google Analytics, the multi-channel funnels report will show you a breakdown of sales by “last interaction” as well as “assisted” (which involve more than one visit to the site). If you are not already familiar with these reports, I would recommend reading our blog post on multi-channel funnels.

We usually report on revenue by separating out “last click” sales and “assisted” sales, however some clients have different attribution models depending on the complexity of the user-journey. For example, assisted sales could mean only sales made on a “first click wins” rule, or could include only those sales where the user’s last interaction with the site came on a brand term or by a direct visit to the site.

This is why it is important to agree on a sensible sales attribution model before you start reporting on sales and revenue. Many different channels (i.e. search, affiliates, email, display, etc.) will all be competing for the conversion and you have to be careful you don’t end up over-reporting on sales.

To take your reporting even further, we would also recommend calculating the lifetime value of a paid search customer. How many of these new acquisitions go on to make a repeat purchase? We found that 17% of new customers from paid search went on to make a repeat purchase for one of our clients. This sort of data is valuable and could alter the price you are willing to pay for a click when you understand the true value of a new customer.

And what about offline sales? If you have tracking mechanisms in place (such as voucher codes or call tracking) to attribute in-store or telephone sales back to paid search activity, you are in serious multi-channel ROI heaven!

Conclusion

In summary, calculating the true value of a paid search campaign is not an easy task but by doing so you’ll be in a far better place to make much informed decisions on the development of your paid search strategy and the price you are willing to pay to acquire a new customer.

How do you report on ROI?

Survey results: Inside the mind of your premium retail customer

Posted on by Lucy Freeborn

Last week, I presented Leapfrogg’s first piece of customer insight research of 2012 at SheerB2B, the conference specifically for retailers in the premium and luxury sector.

We will be producing a piece of insight into the premium retail industry each quarter this year and our first research piece focused on exploring the habits and behaviours of consumers purchasing premium products and services.

As the UK economy slides back into recession, the news agenda is packed full of doom and gloom about consumer spending on the high street and we were interested in finding out what the reality is for premium brands who sell online.

Significantly, 61% of premium UK shoppers say they will not reduce their online spending habits in 2012.  Great news for premium and luxury brands reading the Government’s gloomy economic report from Q1.  Indeed, 30% of our survey respondents claimed they are actually planning on spending more in 2012 than they did in 2011, due to increasing levels of good service and confidence purchasing online.

We also uncovered some surprising details about who the ‘premium retail customer’ actually is.  The average household salary of our premium shopper respondents was just £23K per annum – really exploding the myth of who the premium retailer customer is and inspiring us to dig deeper into this in our next quarter’s research.

We also looked at how the premium retail shopper uses the internet during their buying journey. More than a third of consumers use the web to compare and check prices. For 20% of respondents, online search is used for product inspiration and research. Surprisingly, only 14% use online to search for offers or vouchers, reinforcing what we’ve believed for a while, that retailers need to focus on the longer term investment in providing genuinely quality products, competitive pricing, useful information and great service over quick-win approaches such as voucher codes.  There’s no doubt that voucher code sites and smart tactical pricing to help shift stock and introduce new customers to your products plays a part in a rounded multichannel approach. However, maintaining a ‘bigger picture’ focus and protecting your brand equity is key.

Naturally, 39% of respondents said that lower prices would encourage them to spend more with a premium brand in 2012, but excitingly for our clients currently looking at developing better relationships with their customers, 21% of our respondents claimed that the proven quality of a product and great service is enough to encourage increased spend this year.

We’ve put together this infographic to bring to life the stats that we believe to be the most noteworthy from the research, but the full report, complete with advice on what to do next and actionable insights for brands, is available to download at absolutely no cost!

Click here to read and download the Leapfrogg Premium Shopper survey

What a multichannel retailer should include in a search marketing brief

Posted on by Ben Potter

Back in November 2010, I wrote about the importance of, and what to include in a brief when looking to appoint a search agency.  Whilst much of the advice remains the same, an awful lot has changed in the last couple of years, which in turn impacts how a retailer needs to brief prospective agencies.

Firstly, search has continued to evolve. It is far from the stand-alone discipline it perhaps once was. Social media, content strategy and online PR are now all critical components of a successful natural search strategy (also known as organic search or SEO).

Furthermore, retailers are operating in a complex multichannel environment where increasingly savvy customers expect a consistent and seamless experience as they move between different channels, such as desktop PC, mobile, store and catalogue.

The winners will ultimately be those who can effectively integrate their search, social media, content and online PR strategies, whilst also ensuring that their online and offline operations work in unison.

As such, when multichannel retailers are looking to source a search agency they need to provide access to information, which on the surface, may appear irrelevant. However, in the context of an evolving search landscape and multichannel environment, such information is integral to the delivery of an effective search strategy.

Why is a brief important?

Ultimately, developing a brief is to the benefit of both parties. The agency can build a strong understanding of the business, which leads to the most appropriate solution being presented. The retailer benefits for the very same reason; a solution is developed which is most appropriate to their objectives, internal resource and budget, whilst being aligned to other marketing channels.

What should be included in a search marketing brief?

With the above in mind, multichannel retailers should include the following information in a search marketing brief. Please note; it is not unusual for an NDA to be signed at pitch stage bearing in mind the sensitive nature of some of the information required

Company background

It is useful for the agency to understand the context of why you are looking to engage them. This starts with an understanding of where you’ve come from before we explore where you want to go. Therefore, this section should include a brief history of the business, recent market trends, how the company has performed and the challenges you are facing (both internal and external).

Products

There should be a particular emphasis on your most profitable and popular product lines. For the purposes of forecasting be open to sharing average order values and margins, as well as an overview of your product strategy i.e. innovations, new launches and so on.

Competition

The agency will be looking to assess potential keyword targets (based on the product lines you have cited above). This will involve identifying your competition in search results, as well as researching other marketing activity they are undertaking. It is worth noting that often your competition in search results is very different to your competition across other channels. A small retailer selling black dresses, for example, may find themselves competing in search results with major players, such as Marks & Spencer and John Lewis, which in turn may make related keyword targets unrealistic.

Target audience

Describe your target audience (sex, age, geography, for example), whilst also outlining what your insight is based on. For example, have you got an active database of customers where you have conducted surveys or focus groups? Ultimately, if an agency is going to help you acquire more customers they need to have an acute understanding of who you are trying to reach.

Also consider why this audience should listen to you. Why are you better than the competition? For example, do you position yourself on price, quality or service? Drawing out your USPs and key benefits will be critical to shaping a content-driven, search strategy to increase customer acquisition.

Your commercial objectives

I cannot stress enough the importance of sharing your overriding commercial objectives, ideally for the next 2 – 3 years.  If an agency is to deliver an effective search strategy they need to understand the context of how it is expected to contribute to overall business goals.

At Leapfrogg, we work on the premise that objectives should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound) and based on reliable market data.

At this stage, you should also explain your wider business and marketing plans. Reiterating the point that search does not operate in a silo, it is important that the agency understands what other marketing channels you will be investing in to meet your objectives and in turn, how search might support them, for example new store openings and your mobile strategy.

Current activity and performance

To develop a top line strategy and tactical plan at pitch stage, the agency need to understand the investment you have already made in the channels under discussion, as well as having access to data via tools such as Google Analytics.

Therefore, an overview of the tactics that you are currently employing or have employed in recent months, such as natural search, paid search, social media, content and so on, will be useful. This is a chance to outline other partners or agencies that you employ and that your search agency will be expected to work alongside, for example web developers and offline PR.

Understanding your in-house resource is also essential in the spirit of developing a collaborative partnership with an agency. You should not be looking to ‘outsource’ your search marketing in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, you should seek to partner with your agency, sharing roles and responsibilities where applicable. As such, the agency needs to understand the skill, experience and desire of in-house staff to work on certain aspects of the strategy and tactical execution.

Timescales and budget

All too often, time and resource is wasted during the pitch process (on both sides) because important matters such as timescales for moving ahead and budget are not discussed openly and honestly upfront. An agency will invest many hours, perhaps days, in putting together a proposal. Therefore, to avoid time being wasted, which also includes your time in sourcing and supplying information, it is helpful to know when you intend to start the project, whether you are in contract with an existing agency and any notice clauses.

When it comes to budgets, avoid a situation where you give no indication of what you have to play with. Have in mind a budget and be prepared to share it so that the agency can shape a solution that is appropriate. Essentially, ensure there is a correlation between your commercial objectives and the amount of budget you are prepared to invest in meeting them.

Finally, outline the stages you will be working through in making a decision; how many agencies are you inviting to pitch, who will be involved and who will make the ultimate decision, as well as any particular conditions an agency has to meet. This might include specific sector experience or preferred payment models, for example.

Conclusion

Without establishing a brief you run the risk of making a potentially costly decision when it comes to your search strategy. The briefing process should involve intense questioning by the agency and a willingness on the part of the retailer to share required information.

Anything less than this and you are likely to fall into the trap of buying an off-the-shelf, packaged solution…the polar opposite of a search strategy that is aligned to your business objectives and in tune with your wider retail strategy. The latter can only be achieved with a properly defined brief.

Yes, the process takes time but in the long-run will ultimately deliver far greater returns.