In August last year we wrote about how Google’s search engine results pages have become increasingly weighted towards paid listings. Well, if you are an ecommerce retailer, you may get stung again, as Google rolls out its latest change this month, this time to its Google Shopping listings service.

Google Shopping has been around for over a decade, previously known as Froogle, Google Products and Google Product Search and since its inception has been a free way to list products that ecommerce retailers have for sale either through uploading individual or bulk listings through Google Base. Google still benefited as it sold Adwords advertising adjacent to these unpaid results. Google Shopping results have been presented to web users in search results in a Shopping Results entry, taking users to listings of products that matched their keyword search whereupon they can compare sellers and prices. For some ecommerce retailers, this may have provided a significant amount of ‘free’ inbound traffic, although quantifying this volume of traffic is difficult unless you have intentionally configured your analytics software to tell you.

In autumn last year, Google Shopping became a paid service in the US and this process starts in the UK on 13^th February 2013 with the full shift to paid only listings by end of Q2 2013. So, fundamentally what was once ‘free’ traffic for an ecommerce retailer will become a paid channel similar to pay per click advertising in which you may already be investing.

Under this new service, products will be displayed based upon relevancy to the keyword search and the maximum cost per click (CPC), with sellers only paying Google should a user click through to their website; clicks through to the Google Shopping space will be free.

To get started, you will need to be able to create these new Product Listing Ads (PLAs) which will require an Adwords account, as this is effectively an extension of Google Adwords and a Merchant Center Account. Furthermore, you will need to provide Google with improved product and inventory data so you will need to ensure that your ecommerce product can create a feed in line with Google’s product feed specification; check with your ecommerce vendor as even sites using leading ecommerce platforms like Magento are affected.

Clearly this is a big change; for retailers with the infrastructure and the ability to manage their Product Listing Ads and bidding this will give them the ability to exercise more control of their visibility in the Google Shopping space and generate more sales. For smaller retailers however, and lower margin products this is likely an unwelcome change, creating more administration and eating into already tight margins.

Authored by Ian Cockayne

During the first few weeks of 2013 we have seen a number of high street names fall into administration; Jessops, HMV, Blockbuster have all been the latest victims in the war of attrition between the high street and online.

However, it is not just the high street that is in jeopardy; over recent months, we have been contacted by a number of businesses running ecommerce sites, some of which have been selling online for a long time, that are struggling.

The fact is that the gap between the quality of ecommerce sites of major players and those of most businesses has widened significantly, and many businesses have just not kept up. So what does make a successful ecommerce site?

Effective content management

When you are selling thousands of products and their variations, you need an effective means of managing your product pages and stock information. If you are still managing your products as a collection of static web pages, then you are wasting time manually editing pages that you could use more productively by investing in an ecommerce platform like Magento or a content management system like Umbraco or WordPress which can be extended to support ecommerce.

Intuitive navigation

Whilst many ecommerce solutions offer effective ways of getting your product database online, often the user interface of the published website leaves a lot to be desired. Many leading online retailers have put significant investment in ensuring that navigation and search tools guide visitors to products through techniques such as autocompletion, surfacing bestselling and related products or allowing visitor to search in new ways, such as on the Kiddicare website where visitors can filter products on the ratings products have been given by users.

Product pages; where the action happens

Selling certain products online is notoriously difficult as visitors do not have the physical artefact in front of them, you are effectively selling with information. This makes the design of product pages key; customers expect to see useful product descriptions and clear images, however sites like Marks and Spencer and Very take this further with multiple product images and videos of products. You also need to drive visitors through to the checkout, so you need prominent calls to action and intuitive controls to add products to the shopping basket.

Social validation

Social media is playing an increasing role in the customer funnel. Firstly, social media channels are used by many retailers for top of funnel activities to generate awareness and interest products. However social content is becoming more influential to the buying process; ratings and customer reviews within product pages are persuasive tools to convince visitors to take buying decisions. Moreover, social media is also being used as a sales support tool to help visitors with questions or as customer relationship management channels for aftersales support in the event of delivery issues or returns.

Simple checkout process

If you have managed to get your visitor through to the checkout process, then it is a shame to have them fall at this final hurdle. For many smaller ecommerce sites, the checkout processes can feel unrefined and purchasers often have to negotiate not only the forms on the retailer’s website, but also payment provider forms, and credit card security checks. Leading websites are putting effort into reducing the effort required by users during the checkout process, for example allowing payment without registration, clearly displaying delivery options, minimising distractions on checkout pages and allowing a range of payment methods.

Added value services

Many major retailers offer added value such as cashback offers through sites like Quidco or convenience such as click and collect, which has been particularly successful for John Lewis over the last Christmas period.

Mobile-friendly

Increasingly, your customers want to access your website on a range of devices, particularly mobile phones and tablet devices. Whilst older template based websites may still render on tablets, they often suffer from poor usability, such as navigation or forms that are difficult to use.  However, rendering a successful ecommerce site on a mobile phone is a more significant challenge, but increasingly important as mobile internet use continues to increase.

Ten years ago, the Internet was a reasonable level playing field, allowing small businesses to sell online for a relatively small investment. However times have changed; just putting your product details online, hooking in a payment system and doing a bit of on-page search engine optimisation is no longer enough. Customers are more sophisticated and will spend money on websites where they are the most informed, most confident and most comfortable; if you want a slice of that ecommerce business you are going to need to evolve or be forced to make some stark choices like your high street compatriots.

Authored by Ian Cockayne

There is a discussion in web design circles about using social media buttons on websites.  It’s been debated in the pages of .Net magazine fuelled, in part, by Smashing Magazine tweeting about increasing sharing by removing the like button from their site.

“We removed FB buttons and traffic from Facebook increased. Reason: instead of "liking" articles, readers share it on their timeleine.” @smashingmag

...just little bits of history repeating

Having been involved with website development since the early days can provide a useful perspective on current trends.   There have been discernible movements within the development of the web. Each movement has had a crop of icons and buttons:

• W3C standards. (eg HTML, CSS, WCAG)
• Support for charities, events and campaigns. (eg Blue Ribbon Free speech)
• Web directories. (eg Yahoo, Yell)
• Awards and site of the day/week/month. (eg Yell Awards, Webb Awards)
• Security accreditation for secure certificates. (eg VeriSign)
• Membership of trade and professional bodies, partnerships and other accreditation schemes. (eg Fair Trade, Which? Web Trader)
• Machine translation services. (eg Babel Fish, Google Translate)
• News feeds. (eg RSS, Atom)
• Blog networks. (eg Technorati)
• Social Media. (eg Twitter, Facebook, G+)

Early in a movement they promote awareness of something new and exciting. They suggest a site is forward-looking and connected.

At the peak of a wave, sites can be swamped with a vast number of competing offerings. This can lead to sites covered with other sites’ brands like a Formula 1 racing car. At the peak of the blogging networks, sites with sidebars of fifty or more tiny icons were common. Some try to hide this button soup away with a service like Share this or Add this that bury them away behind a user click. Yet hiding them away makes a user less likely to use them defeating the buttons' purpose.

By the end of a movement, many buttons will have fallen by the wayside as their creators fail to find a way to make money from their idea. A few will have proven their worth and continued in use across sites that found them useful. Others will have fallen out of use entirely.

But you will always find him in the kitchen at parties

The usage of some buttons may also raise questions about the value they bring to a site. Unless you have significant traffic they may attract very few clicks. A couple of minutes on the BBC website will find stories that have never been shared.

Some sites like Smashing Magazine are now saying that removing them increases the likelihood of being shared. If a user really wants to share content, they’ll cut and paste the address and compose their own message to go with it. Web browsers are starting to incorporate social media sharing facilities just as many already include share by email and automatic RSS detection.

This tainted love you’ve given

Buttons, badges and icons can also come with a hidden payload of problems. The button itself may be hosted on sites with poor performance delaying the display of your site. They can be poorly coded, creating delays or accessibility issues that site developers can’t correct. Lurking in a button's code can be an opportunity for a hacker to mount a cross site scripting attack against your site or other security issues.

They may use cookies creating privacy concerns for users. Every button you use dilutes your site's brand with other companies' logos. They can create clutter on your design.

Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more.

So the lesson we can take from the web's short history is that buttons come and go and that we shouldn’t get too attached to them.

What you need to do is periodically review any and all buttons, badges, social media links, third party widgets and other site elements whilst asking yourself the following questions:

• Can we legitimately include it?
• Will this dilute our brand?
• Will anyone use this?
• Does it impair site performance?
• Does it add value?
• Does it work?

Are organic search engine listings under threat?

For years search engines have helped you drive relevant traffic to your website through organic search results. Some of you may have reaped great benefit at comparatively low cost, others will have paid significantly more in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), particularly in competitive markets. Over recent years, you have had to evolve traditional SEO techniques and invest in social media and content marketing to keep your search engine positioning.

However, high quality search engines, and other online services that we take for granted do not come for free. Moreover, Google and Bing are businesses; they exist to make money, and the way that they do this is by selling us advertising space.

So far you may have managed to drive sufficient traffic without having to spend money on Pay Per Click advertising like Google Adwords. However, the days of being able to depend upon your natural search results or your Google+ Local (previously Google Places) listings may be numbered.

Paid listings are being prioritised in search engine results

Typically websites in the UK receive between 30% - 50% of their traffic from search engines. In the UK, 91% of searches are from Google (Experian Marketing Services, June 2012); this means that nearly 40% of your traffic could be coming from Google.

If 40% of your traffic comes from Google, then any changes they make can significantly affect your bottom line. We have already talked about how Google Penguin has affected businesses in this blog. However, algorithm changes are not the only changes Google are making.

Recent studies show that search engine results pages (SERPs) are increasingly weighted towards paid listings; in fact a study of Google's results pages using its own browser-size tool illustrated that on some high-value keywords, 60% of users would have to scroll the page before they saw any organic results at all!

Therefore, if you are only investing in Inbound Marketing tactics to influence your organic search engine positioning, you may in the future be at an increasing disadvantage compared to your competitors investing in Pay Per Click. Their paid advertising on the same keywords will have more prominence in the results and your organic visibility will be reduced as a consequence.

How do I know if I am affected?

If you want to understand whether this is affecting you, there are things that you can do.

Perform a SERP visibility check:

1. Identify your list of target keywords that you intend to drive business goals; you can use the Google Analytics Traffic Sources > Search > Organic Report or the Google Webmaster Tools Traffic > Search Queries Report (also available in Google Analytics) to help you
2. Use the Audience > Technology > Browser & OS > Screen Resolution Report in Google Analytics to review which screen resolutions your visitors use for a significant proportion of your visits
3. Using a tool such as setmy.browsersize.com, review the results pages for your target keywords in your desired search engines to check your visibility at these popular resolutions; you will be able to see which of your listings are visible without scrolling, and also where your competitors will be exploiting paid advertising for visibility

Regularly review your SERP visibility:

1. Regularly check your search engine ranking reports or the Google Webmaster Tools Traffic > Search Queries Report to see that you have consistent Impressions for your desired keywords, consistent positioning and the resulting click-through rate (CTR)
2. Where you see falls in click-through rate (CTR) but without corresponding falls in Impressions or Ranking, do a SERP visibility check again

By knowing that these changes are happening and performing these checks, you can evaluate whether you would benefit from using a more considered mix of search engine optimisation, social media and content marketing alongside paid advertising. Alternatively, if you are investing heavily in search engine optimisation, you might get better spend of your online advertising budget by diverting money from SEO activity to Pay Per Click advertising which may be more effective in increasing visibility and resulting visits.

Authored by Ian Cockayne

What is Google Penguin?

The last couple of months have been a busy one in the world of search engine optimisation, with many website owners counting the cost of the Google Penguin update. This is the latest change to how Google ranks search engine results that penalises websites that have excessively optimised page content or overtly-optimised inbound links.

Why is Google Penguin a good thing?

Whilst this has caused short-term headaches (insert migrane if you prefer) for site owners, this can only be a positive step forward for web users; search engine results will be less cluttered with spammy, keyword-laden content with little unique value, and ultimately the answers to the questions you are searching for.

What should I do if I have been bitten by Penguin?

Everything that Google does evolves, so as Penguin is an evolution to the earlier Panda update that weeded out content farms, it is safe to say that there may be further tweaks to come. This makes giving advice far from cut and dried.

However, if you have seen traffic to your website drop significantly since April (remember to factor in the addition of cookie blocking to comply with the EU e-Privacy Directive), then you need to review your current inbound marketing tactics. Have you invested heavily in article marketing? Or do you have many keyword-optimised links pointing to your website? In which case, you need to review this and particularly look at making your inbound link profile more natural. Note, that you may not be being affected by something that you did recently; you might have websites that have been kicking around for a while that still use some old-school search engine optimisation tactics; read a great example of how this affected a seasoned SEO expert, and how he recovered from it.

Get your social on

It is widely believed that search engines are increasingly using social signals to rank the search engine results pages. Now is the time to start an inbound marketing strategy that incorporates both search engine marketing and social media to create an ecosystem of content will make you less vulnerable to changes like Penguin in the future.

You should particularly look to create content that is sharable;

• Try filming some short videos that demonstrate the benefits of your products or services to your target audiences; as well as being a more interesting way of providing information, rich snippets of your videos increase your visibility in search engines
• Write some thought-provoking blog posts, or if you do not have the time to write new content, try curating resources from elsewhere on the web that will be helpful to your readership on a topic that they need answers to
• Why not share presentations that you have made for a seminar, exhibition or pitch using tools like Slideshare; you could post them on your LinkedIn profile to demonstrate thought leadership and expert knowledge
• Images make a much stronger connection with people. Why not build a Pinterest board, or use image sharing networks such as Instagram to add some vibrancy; they might showcase events that you have run or provide a useful resource to your audience

Your customers expect more than keyword-filled, generic content and they are more empowered than ever before to find it. Provide them with unique content that they value, and they will reward you by sharing it, giving you a strong, natural link profile that will make you less vulnerable to changes to search engines in the future.

Authored by Ian Cockayne

The past two years have seen a massive growth in take up of mobile devices; in fact the global shipments of smartphones has surpassed global PC shipments two years earlier than predicted. This and the availability of good value data packages means that more and more people are turning to using the web on their mobile phone, smartphone or tablet.

Before devices such as Apple’s iPhone, the mobile web experience was slow and frustrating. Modern smartphones have made this a thing of the past, and through a carefully thought-out mobile presence, you can give your users an engaging experience that is relevant to their needs whilst they are on the move.

There are broadly two ways of having a mobile internet presence; create a mobile application, such as those that are available in the iTunes App or Google Play stores, or create a website that is mobile-ready. Whilst mobile applications can take advantage of native features of smartphones such as location detection or in the future, near field communications, they can be expensive to commission and do not work universally, making them an expensive proposition if you want to cover a range of operating systems.

Therefore, a more sensible approach for many businesses is to make their website adapt for browsers on different mobile devices. This is where Responsive Design comes in, which, in a nutshell is crafting a website so that it dynamically adapts to a user’s device in terms of platform, screen size and orientation.

This can bring notable business benefits. Without a separate site to maintain for each type of device, considerable time and money savings can be made. Your users will benefit from an optimal browsing experience regardless of whether they are using a smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop. Furthermore, if your users are more able to interact effectively with your website, this is likely to lead to a greater number of conversions, be that joining your mailing list, requesting a quotation or placing an order.

It is not only mobile users that benefit; putting a spotlight on providing a valid experience to users on a smaller screen, helps focus attention on the site elements that are truly essential to your users, so your desktop visitors will benefit too.

We’re so convinced by the merits of Responsive Web Design that we’re employing this technique in our new Umbraco CMS solutions, to produce user-focused websites that render beautifully on mobile, tablet or desktops.

If you would like to talk to us about the benefits that a responsively-designed website could bring to your business, email us today or call us on 0151 282 4321.

Authored by Ian Cockayne

Two years we wrote a post in this blog about Google Buzz, and like everyone else, we weren’t enthused. Two years on, we have Google+ and worryingly, many people do not ‘Get it’. Only last week on a Google Analytics course I was asked by a marketing team “Why is being on Google+ useful to us?”

Getting out of the blocks

The first issue with Google+ is trying to understand what it is in the first place; in terms of social media it is more akin to Twitter, than Facebook. Most people get Facebook, because you have a website you can log in to. Google+ is more a set of social tools than a social network site, in the same way that a lot of the action on Twitter happens through third party websites and applications. However, what is more important with Google+ is that these tools are being embedded across Google’s product range such as Gmail and more notably the Google search engine.

Once you have got past the issue of what Google+ is, the second problem is that it is difficult to see the benefits as a casual user with only a few social contacts; the real benefits come from having a large network of People in your Google Circles.

Widening your Circles

In the same way as you want to attract Followers on Twitter and Fans on Facebook, it is your Circles that are important to you in Google+. If more People add you to one of their Circles, the more likely it is that your Google+ Posts will be seen and engaged with; that is easy to understand, because that is like Twitter and Facebook.

Furthermore, the more People you add to the Circles that you curate, the more likely it is that your Google+ Posts are going to be syndicated to right-minded users, and the larger your Circles, the larger your sphere of influence becomes. This is a bit more tenuous for businesses to buy into, as this represents a more convoluted way to get to an audience.

However, Google+ goes even further, offering a greater ability to target your messages than Twitter, because you can choose who you share content with, whereas with Twitter all your Followers receive everything that you tweet.

Influencing Search

The most recent innovation by Google is Search, plus Your World. This is Google’s social trump card and is what differentiates Google+ from Facebook and Twitter. Google’s key business is Search, and they are constantly looking at ways of delivering more relevant search engine results to its users. As human beings, when we are uncertain about something, we look to other people to guide us; this is known as social validation. We are even more likely to take advice from people that we know.

This is the whole crux of Search, plus Your World (SPYW); once you have performed a keyword search in Google you can personalise your search results which will pull in Posts and +1’ed content from People in your Circles that relate to your search. The intention from Google, is that this social layer of content will add valuable insight and reassurance to you, making the results more useful and relevant to you.

Google’s integration of Google+ with its search engine results is a compelling reason why your business should be looking to Google+ to build audiences that will share your content and advocate your brand to their Circles. Not only will you benefit from social recommendation, but this will increase your visibility, whilst complementing your search engine optimisation and other search marketing activities. Now, do you ‘Get it’?

Authored by Ian Cockayne

If you are a small to medium-sized business owner, chances are by now you have jumped into social media in addition to search engine optimising your website and even running paid advertising campaigns.

The biggest problem that we see for small businesses is their approach to content. Many small business websites have a lumpy approach to content, whereby a lot of effort goes in to content when a website is launched (or re-launched) only for the website to be subsequently updated sporadically. It is for this same reason that many organisations struggle with social media; setting up a social media channel like a Twitter account or a Facebook page is very easy, what is far harder is keeping that channel populated with engaging content on a continual basis, particularly when resources are scarce.

However looking forward into 2012 and beyond, having a content strategy is going to be as important to most organisations as search engine optimisation or pay per click advertising has become. The big reason for this is that the search engines are being adapted to the fast-moving web ecosystem of news, blogs and status updates that we have today. Take the Google Panda update as an example; this update to the Google search engine aimed to lower the rank of “low quality” web presences such as link farms and screen-scraping sites to improve the quality of search engine results. Google does this by using an algorithm that identifies signs of website quality. One of these qualities is recency of publication. Therefore, if you are not actively publishing new content on your website on a regular basis your web pages and website as a whole will have reduced visibility in search engine results over time.

Your search engine optimisation will not necessarily save you either, as more traditional search engine optimisation techniques like on-page tactics carry less weight in influencing search engine ranking.

It may not be just small businesses that may be affected by this; many organisations have the concept of ‘evergreen’ content. Take for example an emergency service, that may have produced content on practical tips on firework safety. This content although seasonably relevant, would fall in the search engine results as it gets older if the content is not subsequently revisited, updated, optimised and socially flagged.

Therefore, if you are going to make one resolution for 2012 to help your business succeed online, set some time aside to put a content strategy in place. Look at simple ways that you can make your website up-to-date, such as sprucing up that News and Events section, planning a press release schedule or publishing a series of short interesting articles that cross-link to your products and services. Get your social channels in hand, selecting the ones you know you can commit to keeping up to date and that you can productively engage with.

Having a plan will help your keep your content production on track, whilst getting your social media in order will increase your visibility through a wealth of channels including social networks, search engine results, apps and mobile devices.

Authored by Ian Cockayne

What has changed?

Recently Google has made a number of improvements to their Google Analytics product. However, in August a significant modification was made; they changed the way Google Analytics records the end of a session from:

• More than 30 minutes have elapsed between pageviews for a single visitor
• At the end of a day
• When a visitor closes their browser

To:

• More than 30 minutes have elapsed between pageviews for a single visitor
• At the end of a day
• When any traffic source value for the user changes. Traffic source information includes:utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, utm_content, utm_id, utm_campaign, and gclid

When this was announced in the Google Analytics blog, it was estimated that users would see a less than 1% change. However in the days following the release many users were reporting more significant changes in their reports, with the issue being slightly confused due to bugs that were discovered and subsequently fixed.

What does it mean?

Now if you are not a web analytics ‘statto’ or as a busy business owner only have time to give your reports a quick review, then you may not realise the full implications of this change. Modifying the way a session is calculated brings about a fundamental change to the way your website traffic patterns are reported and how much your data is affected will depend upon your online marketing and website usage pattern.

For example, with the close of a browser not ending a session, additional visits will not be recorded in the cases of a user closing the browser or a browser crash and the visitor returning back to your site within 30 minutes. This has the potential effect of reducing the number of visits, whilst increasing time on site and number of pages viewed. This sort of change seems logical and is welcome.

However, a more interesting issue relates to the new way that sessions are closed; when the traffic source information changes. This is particularly going to affect websites using different types of online marketing tactics, such as ecommerce sites and may be exacerbated by users’ browsing tactics. In a tabbed browsing world, it is not uncommon for web users to be looking for products via keyword searches in a search engine in one window, clicking through paid advertising in a second window, whilst reviewing comparison sites in a third window. Each of these means of reaching a website has the potential for changing the traffic source information for a visitor in Google Analytics, potentially signalling multiple visits from one visitor within a 30 minute period. This could increase the number of visits recorded to your site, increase the number of return visitors, and increase the bounce rate whilst decreasing time on site, pages per visit and for the conversion junkies amongst us reduce your conversion rates.

What is the verdict?

It is no wonder then that there were so many complaints when this change occurred, as webmasters found that the data on their traffic patterns had significantly shifted coupled with the subsequent complication of how they are going to accurately compare their current and historical data.

As much as in the immediate term this change in visitor tracking poses challenges, looking forward this change is a valuable one to businesses using Google Analytics. Firstly, it is an attempt by Google to make the data that is recorded about sites more reliable taking into account modern browser usage patterns. Secondly, this change accompanies the introduction of multi-channel funnel reports in the new Google Analytics interface. These reports will help marketers understand the paths that visitors use to visit their website in the run up to conversions and as a result better identify the value marketing tactics have in influencing customer decisions.

Authored by Ian Cockayne