Hit Search Limited liverpool 0845 643 9289

Future of Social Media for UK Retailers

By Andrew Redfern @ 21st January 2011 6:23 pm online retailing

A study has found that only 4 percent of the UK’s top 100 retailers have integrated shopping function within their Facebook “fan” pages as clothes retailer, Asos announced it is set to launch its first Facebook store later this month.

Through launching a Facebook store, Asos’s is taking advantage of its millions of “fans” who already interact with the store via Facebook. Asos’s Facebook store is a trail blazer for the retail industry, 65 of the top 100 companies currently have Facebook pages, more will be following Asos’s footsteps throughout 2011. In the past, retailers have used Facebook as a shop front, directing their “fans” to their website to make the final transaction. Developing stores on Facebook will provide an easier platform for customers to make their purchase with fewer clicks and a more direct way to make their purchase.

James Hart, Asos ecommerce director said “at the moment the Facebook shop doesn’t have real targets as such but in theory fewer clicks and barriers to purchase should mean greater conversions. We’ll have to see if it does lead to increased sales,”

Andy Redfern, Hit Search Director added “Social commerce will be a growing area of online marketing throughout 2011. ASOS and Facebook a very similar demographic a lot of other large companies will be keeping a close eye on this campaign this year.”

PPC Tips for the Run up to Christmas

By Andrew Redfern @ 1st November 2010 4:44 pm online retailing

While the basics of paid search behaviour and choice of keywords do not change throughout the run up to Christmas, the market conditions, however, vary by the way people buy, the way you sell and the way you compete.

Searches are more gift giving inclined, with increasing urgency as shipping deadlines get closer. As it is traditionally a heavily promotional time focusing on specific key dates – black Friday, cyber Monday and the increasing importance of shipping deadlines, sales and inventory levels vary significantly. As demand rises, competition heats up by existing competitors becoming more aggressive in their online marketing strategies and new competitors entering the market.

The chart below shows the volatile trends of the peak Christmas season last year (click on the graph for an enlarged version).

Peak Holiday PPC Seasons

The text ad is the first opportunity to answer to the searcher’s question, it must appeal to their gift giving intent, your promotions and distinguish itself from new and more agressive competition.

Alex Cohen, accomplished online marketer, blogger and presenter gives 3 tips to help increase click through rates and answer the most profitable holiday questions.

1. Segregate your brand keywords

Brand Keywords are unique, containing your brand name, they have high click through rates and low cost per click with high return on investment. Brand plus keywords contain your brand name and a category generic term. As there will be many brand plus terms, it is important to focus on the most profitable first for the Christmas period then to work through the rest in due time. The goal being to only attract brand plus queries, the last step to add your own brand terms as negative to any non brand campaigns

2. Manage your ads with ad parameters

The use of numbers in adverts, e.g. cost, inventory or discounts will help the ad to stand out against competitors, requiring a specific landing page which delivers the promise. You can add parameters to control changing figures for inventory stock or prices. The AdWords API blog has some good examples.

3. Query Mine for Winners

During the period leading up to Christmas, it is important to dig deeper into your search queries. People will search in new and different ways, especially as Google’s new ad format and Google instant have just launched and this is the first Christmas period that they will be used. It is important to focus on the highest volume/ cost terms and words that are converting profitably. These will separate out into unique ad groups with specific ad groups that address their intent.

Andy Donaldson (Hit Search Director) comments – ‘A Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign can either make or break a business over this critical period for online retail. Adopting a Christmas PPC strategy focused on a scalable return on investment should be the least your agency is focused on over the next few weeks…’

To ensure success in the run up to Christmas, paid adverts are critical. The best text ads are crafted by focusing on the specific Christmas intent in each search query. Use brand terms to break out your ad groups. Get specific in text ads with numerical parameters and mine search queries to fine tune even more directly.

MND-HS-011110

Adapted from Alex Cohen’s “3 holiday PPC Tips for Black Friday (and beyond)” http://searchenginewatch.com/3641490

Hit Search calls for help for digital push for SME’s

By Andrew Redfern @ 28th October 2010 12:43 pm online retailing

According to the ‘Connected Kingdom’ report commissioned by Google, the UK internet is now worth more than £100 billion. A significant finding of the report was that the internet in the UK is growing at a rate of 10% every year, in 2008 it made up 7.2% of the UK economy and is predicted to generate up to 10% of the UK’s economy by 2015.

“As the report highlights the UK is the leading nation for e-commerce and the Internet is one of the key drivers for steady growth in the economy in 2010.” said Andy Redfern, Director of Hit Search Limited, online marketing specialists.

The UK has the largest per capita online market and the second largest e-commerce market in the world according to the report. Redfern add “At a time when the government is spending vast amount of time on austerity measures – a greater focus on getting the majority of SME’s digitally enabled from a sales point of view would no doubt help increase the country’s GDP.”

The report also found that the growing online industry accounts for approximately 250,000 UK jobs and will play a vital part for the UKs economic recovery during the next few years. Within the UK, the online industry is already larger than the construction, transport and utility sectors. Redfern commented “I am proud that our industry directly employees over 250,000 staff and growth of SME’s that use internet marketing outstrips those offline by a ratio of four to one. “

Redfern concludes “The Digital Inclusion task force focus was on the general public, this report highlights that greater investment is needed to push our business community online.”

TSD-HS-28910

16% Rise in Online Christmas Shopping

By Andrew Redfern @ 19th October 2010 11:22 am online retailing

It has been predicted that in the run up to Christmas 2010, online sales will be up by 16% to £6.4bn on the same period of 2009. This will bring the total online sales for the year 2010 to £57.8bn compared to £49.8bn in 2009, supporting the trend towards the increase in online shopping which will certainly create a challenge to the dominance of the high street.

The prediction follows reports in June 2010 that online shopping had increased by 22% over the past year compared to 2008/2009. In September, online shopping sales had increased by 24% year on year as consumers started their Christmas and winter clothes shopping early. Chris Webster, head of retail consulting and technology at Capgemini noted an interesting observation that consumers are starting to spread the cost of Christmas over several pay checks and we may start to see an early peak in Christmas shopping spends.

Director of Hit Search Andy Donaldson commented on the topic “ We have a variety of huge retail brands and despite the economic downturn over the past 2 – 3 years they have prospered right throughout the year. Proof that by getting the online marketing mix right, can not only buck seasonal trends, but also stabilise businesses above and beyond their bricks and mortar sales – especially during this key period for retail.”

Hit Search provides a range of search engine optimisation and pay per click solutions helping you to increase your online presence for a share in this growing trend. Call 0845 643 9289 to hear about what we can do for you.

TMB-HS-191010

Online Sales Jump 18%. Can this all be down to a bit of rain?

By Andrew Redfern @ 20th August 2010 11:46 am online retailing

IMRG today announced that internet sales during July have grown at the fastest pace since before the recession began in 2007.

IMRG is an industry body for global e-retailing and the IMRG Capgemini Index results come from analysis of online sales of over 100 retailers in the UK.

The figures show that online sales for July were up 18% on the figures for July 2009 with many reports today blaming the wet weather for keeping shoppers at home.

While there is no doubt that shoppers are more likely to shop from home during periods of inclement weather and that the 18% rise from July 09 can be partially attributed to the unusually wet weather we have all experienced during July it by no means tells the whole story.

Overall retail sales grew by 1.1% from June which we all remember was a very hot month which indicates that wet weather doesn’t put too many people off going to the high street.

The bigger story seems to be that online retailers are coming out of the recession in a stronger position than their high street counterparts and are set to continue to increase their overall share of the retail sector.

“Although online retail sales survived the recession more convincingly than High Street sales, the last two years or so have no doubt been shaky at time.”

“It is really encouraging to see growth levels returning to those seen pre-2007 and before consumer confidence was knocked by the financial crisis and the recession” said Chris Webster from Cap Gemini, which publishes the online sales index with IMRG

Whatever the reason for the dramatic 18% growth from July 09 it seems that the recession is coming to an end for the online retail market even if some other sectors of the economy are in trouble.

BBC dot.life : Online retail traffic growth increasing despite the gloom

By Andrew Redfern @ 15th January 2009 12:18 pm online retailing

Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC has posted an interesting article on their dot.life blog. It notes a huge increase in online retailing in the last quarter of 2008 compared to 2007 whilst the British Retail Consortium issue figures saying they’d seen “Worst December in [the] Survey’s History”.

The article quotes figure from Neilsen Online and says “No surprise that Amazon is at the top of the list with a monthly audience of 15.6 million. But that was a rise of just 18% on the previous year, whereas the figures for some traditional retailers were far more spectacular. Argos saw its audience rise by 32%, Marks and Spencer had a 46% rise and Littlewoods’ audience was up 66%.”

So it seems that people are being very cautious when it comes to the high street and this is pushing people toward bargain hunting online. Despite the gloom over the top-line figures The British Retail Consortium see a similar trends to Neilsen stating “non-store sales in December were 30.0% higher than a year ago” so it would seem that the traditional retailers are gaining significant growth from their online presence whilst seeing a massive fall from their core business model.

All this underlines the importance of online, it could be argued that the sudden freezing of their web revenue stream was instrumental in Zavvi’s collapse. Rory finishes with an interesting point “Back in the late 90s the dotcom evangelists told us that online start-ups would crush the dinosaurs of retailing and leave the shopping malls and high streets deserted. That didn’t happen – but a decade later the online retail revolution is finally happening. And funnily enough, the dinosaurs are now leading the charge.”

This period, with it’s contrasting fortunes for high street and online divisions, will be analysed long and hard but it will be an interesting benchmark in growth on online retailing.

Would you like to know more about online retail? If so, contact Hit Search, SEO and Google adWords qualified PPC specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible.

Other Related Stories That May Be Of Interest: