Ann Stanley presented a workshop at Ecommerce Expo 2015 on search marketing for ecommerce websites.
This includes:
1) The digital marketing landscape
2) Google search results
3) The importance of mobile
4) Shopping ads and buy buttons
2. @AnnStanley
Our brands
Generating Leads,
Sales and Profit
Educating Your
Team
Building Your
Brand
Technical
Consultancy
Digital and Search
Marketing (Paid advertising,
SEO, PPC, ecommerce
marketing)
Marketing training (and
qualifications) for business
professionals
Owned and Earned media
(SEO, Content, PR, Social,
Email, MAS)
Technical consultancy in
web, Analytics, conversions
and ecommerce
5. @AnnStanley
Size of EU market by users (2013)
http://ecommercenews.eu/240-million-europeans-spent-
e170bn-online-last-year/
6. @AnnStanley
Size of EU market by product
type (2013)
http://ecommercenews.eu/ecommerce-per-country/ecommerce-in-europe/
7. @AnnStanley
Digital advertising in the UK –
(2014 full year results)
• UK digital ad spend in 2014
reached record high of
£7.194 billion with 14% year-
on-year growth
• Mobile reached £1.62 billion
of this, representing 23% of
total. Mobile had 63% year-
on-year growth, driven by
social, video and in-app ads
• Social ads grew 65% year-
on-year to £922m with 56%
on mobile (£517m)
Source: www.iabuk.net/blog/digital-adspend-goes-stellar-in-2014
10. @AnnStanley
Overview of marketing channels
Search
marketing
(PPC, SEO,
Merchant Centre)
Traffic to your site
from other sources
(email, affiliates, display ads, social,
mobile ads, PR, 3rd party sites, shopping
comparison, voucher sites, lead
generation)
Shopping platforms
and market places
(Amazon, eBay)
Other
off-site sales/leads
(Social, Mobile Apps,
daily deals sites)
Conversion optimisation
On-site Sales/Conversions
Off-site Sales/Conversions
12. @AnnStanley
Google results for ‘sofa’*
Pay per
click ads
(via
AdWords)
Pay per
click text
ads (via
AdWords)
Organic
or natural
search
results
Shopping
Ads (paid
ads via
AdWords)
*sofa chosen to illustrate different types of results
Google
new Local
listings
“Stack”
14. @AnnStanley
Searching for local services –
Importance of Review stars
• Google My Business Page
• Reviews from Google
• Need >5 to show stars
• 3rd party reviews
• Need >30 to show automatically
in ads
15. @AnnStanley
Google Shopping Ads –
“new” features
Aggregated product ratings Google Certified Shop
Local inventory listings Merchant Promotions
16. @AnnStanley
Price Drop
• Automatically generated through
data in product feeds and merchant
centre
• Dynamically highlights price drops
• Better CTR expected
18. @AnnStanley
Structured data and rich snippets
• Less than 1% of sites used Schema or structured data
• Identify any elements of the site that can be marked up using schema (refer to
schema.org for more information).
• Highlight any additional information that could be marked up.
• Mark up individual elements such as business name, address, phone number,
opening times and reviews.
19. @AnnStanley
HTTPS/SSL – secure websites –
ranking factor?
• August 6th 2014
• Google announced that they would be
giving preference to secure sites
• Adding encryption would provide a
"lightweight" rankings boost!
• Involves redirects, new Search Console
account etc. – so there will be some
developer time
20. @AnnStanley
The problem of “not-provided” data in SEO
You can get some data from Webmaster Tools/Search Console but only 3 months
21. @AnnStanley
Our solution for not-provided keyphrases
- SEO Monitor
• SEO Monitor uses data from Analytics, Webmaster tools/Search Console, AdWords, SEMrush
and Majestic
• Provides estimated Google.xxx organic traffic and conversions by keyphrase (using the
landing page as the common factor)
34. @AnnStanley
Email opening rates by device
Source: Movable Ink’s Q1 2014 US Consumer Device Preference Report
What do your
landing pages
look like on
mobiles?
37. @AnnStanley
April 21st 2015 –
Mobilegeddon!• Each page on your site will be classed
as either mobile friendly or not – and
tested every time there is a relevant
search
• Results can be marked as “mobile
friendly” or you can run pages through
mobile test
• After April 21st “unfriendly” pages will
get lower rankings on mobile search
results
• Get your mobile load speed to <1
second or all ranking will suffer
• Mobile apps (Android) will achieve
better rankings in mobile search result
(and its worth linking your app to the
your mobile pages)
39. @AnnStanley
Mobile results – Shopping ads
This is actually a carousel
– but most people do not notice
Normally 2 ads at the top of the results – can
be 3 at the top (when there are no
Shopping ads) and 3 at the bottom
40. @AnnStanley
Strategies for Shopping Ads on
Mobile
• Many users think there are only 3 ads on
mobile as they do not realise they can scroll
horizontally
• Additional ads may not get clicked on (with
negative effect on CTR/Quality Score)
• Conversion rate is lower (typically <20%
desktop)
• Very high bounce rates due to browsing
• Use mobile bid modifiers to reduce CPC so
the overall ROAS is similar to desktops/tablets
• Try creating “device specific” ad groups:
• Ad groups for mobile – lower bid with
high +mobile bid modifier
• Ad group for desktop/tablets – higher bid
with -100% mobile bid modifiers (to drive
mobile traffic to the mobile ad group)
• Cross device conversions are still difficult to
measure. Users may research on mobile and
buy on other devices
47. @AnnStanley
Summary of conversion
rates
Total Desktops Tablets Mobile Mobile vs
desktop
Consumer site 2.38% 3.15% 2.33% 0.73% 23.2%
Business site 3.79% 4.84% 1.47% 0.81% 16.7%
Consumer site
(non-responsive)
1.61% 2.03% 1.45% 0.39% 19.2%
Consumer site
(responsive)
1.58% 2.14% 1.5% 1.04% 48.6%
49. @AnnStanley
Mobile search –
current situation/problems
• Traffic is increasing from mobiles – so should your mobile budget increase
• Many sites are still not mobile responsive (i.e. mobile friendly), this can effect
your search rankings and user engagement
• Use is different than desktops – more browsing and different times of day, we
prefer mobiles to open email and use social media
• Conversion rate is lower (lead generation sites and ecommerce sites)
• Return on ad spend can be too low on mobile for many sites – if measured purely
on last click attribution
• Cross-device attributions in Analytics not accurate enough to know true value of
the visits to mobile
• How important are mobiles for driving visitors to store or off-line interaction via
calls
• How to send traffic to separate mobile site e.g. m. or .mobi sites
• Managing positions (with bids) as only 2 ads shown at top of mobiles (plus PLA’s
shown at the top)
Response from the search engines and social platforms has been
to create new shopping ads and buy buttons
52. @AnnStanley
Remarketing with Shopping
Ads
• Need Remarketing tag (or Google Dynamic
Remarketing tag)
• Currently in beta, you need to enrol with your Google
rep, once enrolled you will see a new “Audience tab”
• Google will create default audiences for you:
• All visitors
• Product views
• Cart Abandoners
• Past buyers
• Set bid adjustments for Shopping campaigns for users
who have been to the website before (like RLSA)
56. @AnnStanley
Google Buy Button and
marketplace
• Rumours started mid-May 2015 following an
article by the Wall Street Journal and a webinar
titled Virtual Shopping Summit (by CPC
Strategy).
• These both predicted that Google will shortly
launch a Buy Button in order to provide a
marketplace service to compete with Amazon
and eBay
• CPC Strategy thought that the scheme may be
only available to Merchants that are in the
Certified Shopping Scheme (as this provides
some level of quality control)
• They also suspected that PayPal may be
offered as a payment gateway – which is now
possible due to eBay and PayPal being split into
separate trading companies
57. @AnnStanley
Current “understanding”
(September 2015)
• This will be called Purchases on Google – there is now a limited beta with
specific retailers in the USA
• Retailers first have to integrate their ordering systems with Google to become
eligible for the “purchase” button to be displayed in their product listing ads.
• CommerceHub says it’s not necessary for a site to be verified as a Google
Trusted Store, but that it can help speed up the integration process
• The Buy Button will only be shown for certain advertisers next to Shopping Ads
on mobile devices (possibly Android only)
• Buyers that click on Buy button you will be taken to the Google Product Page
where they can choose product variants and pay with Google Wallet and
possibly PayPal
• Buyers do not go to Merchant site but the buyer may be able to opt in for
emails etc.
• Google will not take a commission but just the click cost
• Google may store buyers’ credit card details to improve conversion rates for
future sales
• The merchant will still have to provide fulfilment but may receive limited details
about the customer
60. @AnnStanley
Off the Press! – Custom
audiences for Google
• Re-engage customers through targeted ads on the
Google Search and Display Network (just Gmail ads
& YouTube).
• Reach out to new customers with similar audiences,
through Gmail and YouTube ads.
• Upload email lists into AdWords & create targeted
campaigns and ads – email addresses are
anonymised in the platform and users are targeted
by search histories and YouTube views.
• Available in all locations and across all devices.
• Rolling out across all accounts over the coming
weeks.
**Need email lists of past or current customers in order
to target.**
62. @AnnStanley
Bing Shopping ads
• Still in beta in the UK
• Create Merchant Center Store
• Need a product feed (Product catalog) – you have to
provide a url where there will be an xml or csv file
• Upload Product catalog into Merchant Center Store
• Within Bing ads account - create Product ads campaign
• You need to use the same log in, so this automatically links
with your Merchant Center Store
• The process of creating ad groups and product groups is
identical to Google Shopping
• Data displayed may be limited as this point – e.g.
benchmark CTR may not be provided
• Bing tracking uses normal PPC conversion tracking code
(this can include dynamic value) – same as AdWords
67. @AnnStanley
Where do the ads appear
Sponsored Product ads
• Amazon search
• Right of search results on Amazon SERP
• Bottom of search results on Amazon SERP
• Ad Placement on detail pages
• Mobile and tablet ads
Product ads
• Bottom of search results on Amazon SERP
• Now discontinued!
68. @AnnStanley
Setting up your ads
• Create an account – go to sellercentral
to create campaigns (enter existing
account for Sponsored products)
• You receive £20 for sponsored products
• Need a feed – use feed management
software or use Google feed
• The data in the feed provides the url –
i.e. on Amazon page
• Upload via sellercentral
• Minimum bids based on sector – you
can set bids but a percentage higher
than min e.g. +10%
69. @AnnStanley
Advantages of Sponsored
Products
• Increase product “Discoverability”
• Get more Buy Box traffic
• Positively impact Buy Box factors
• Highlight new offers (e.g. iPhone 6 vs. 5)
• Give exposure to offers with low sessions
• Increase visibility for clearance items, and
seasonal promotions
• Help promote new to Amazon ASIN with no pre-
existing sales history
72. @AnnStanley
Facebook Dynamic Product
ads (Dynamic Retargeting)
• Your ads will only be shown to previous visitors to your main site – so this is a form of dynamic
retargeting
• Create a Business Manager (you can create this from scratch and/or you can link it to a
Business page)
• Create the feed (Product Catalog) in the correct format – best to use feed management
software
• Upload the Product Catalog into the Business Manager
• Add Facebook tracking pixel to thank you page on your site - also has dynamic value of sale
• Also need to add remarketing pixels and tag your site (i.e. “Custom audience pixel”)
• Use Power Editor to create the ads
• Create separate campaigns – type is “Product Catalog sale”
• Similar to AdWords - you can create filters for the products within campaign
• Choose your audience behaviour –
• Viewed product but did not buy
• Added to cart but did not buy
• Combination of above (either or)
• Custom audience
• Choose your ad template
• 1 single image
• Multiple (recommended)
• Scroll
85. @AnnStanley
Why you should use Feed
Management software?
• Support multiple platforms - allowing easy expansion into new
channels - Google/Bing, Shopping comparison engines (CSE),
Affiliate feeds, Marketplaces (eBay, Amazon etc.), Social ads
• Easy to set-up – you create one “feed-in” (usually your Google
Shopping feed) and the software creates multiple “feeds-out”
(bespoke for each specific platform)
• Some offer creation of dynamic AdWords text ad with parameters
e.g. price inserted from feed for a specific SKU
• Bid management – including rules based
• Reporting by product, category, brand etc.
• Manual adjustment of feed content tailored for specific platforms
i.e. allows you to modify content outside of website
• Large choice of software suppliers - some with low entry costs
86. @AnnStanley
Software suppliers
• Feed Management software
Price of feed management software:
• Software packages from £50 - £2k+ per month
• Many charge for each additional channel
• Some charge a percentage of sales
Feed-Out Feed-Out and Orders-In Other software types
• FeedOptimise
• OneFeed
• SingleFeed
• Feed Manager
• GoDataFeed
• SummitFEED
• FusePump
• ChannelAdvisor
• Intelligent Reach
• Sellbrite
• Linnworks
• SellerExpress
• Competitive intelligence
e.g. SEMrush, Adthena,
Adgooroo
• Bid management e.g.
Marin, Kenshoo, Acquisio
87. @AnnStanley
Summary
• The Shopping and buy button landscape is
even more complex
• Some drive traffic back to your site, others
allow you to promote or buy products already
advertised on the platform
• Examples of some of these ads were difficult
to find (Amazon Product ads and Twitter buy
button)
• Most require a product feed
• Most have conversion tracking pixels – so use
Tag manager
• We recommend using Feed Management
software