A quick answer to the question in the title is that localised PPC reduces spend by limiting impressions and clicks.

Although this may not sound ideal, it’s, in fact, a fantastic way to run a campaign – especially if you have a limited budget.

The right keyword

You would not run a localised PPC campaign unless the service being offered by the site was limited to a select geographical area – or areas – and therefore it would be useless to anybody outside a defined radius of the business or organisation.

For instance, a website for a secondary school in Old Swinford, Stourbridge, would not be relevant to those looking for secondary schools in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion. It makes no sense for either institution to bid on the keyword ‘secondary school’ or even ‘secondary school UK’, as both are far too broad. Instead, one ought to go for ‘secondary schools Aberystwyth’ and the other – ‘secondary schools Stourbridge’.

Locations can be added to campaigns as an automatically included factor, which will limit the ad’s exposure to those who are likely to find it most relevant.

Having said that, it is still important to add the keywords with a location to each ad group, as those searching for Stourbridge secondary schools are just as likely to type in ‘secondary schools Stourbridge’ as they are to try out ‘secondary schools in my area’ or ‘local secondary schools’. It just helps to cover all the bases, and considering it takes a matter of seconds to include them as keywords, there is really no reason why not do it.

Negative keywords

Just as you can use locations as keywords, you should also add them as negative keywords.

For example, there is a St Ives in Cornwall, but there is also a St Ives in Dorset and another one in Cambridge. If you’re in Cornwall targeting “secondary schools St Ives”, then as well as adding ‘Cornwall’ to your keywords, you’d also want to include ‘Dorset’ and ‘Cambridge’ as negative keywords.

The overall aim of using localised keywords is the same as using niche keywords; namely, it keeps the cost of each individual click down. You’re less likely to be found, it’s true, but those who do find you are more likely to be interested in what you have to offer. At the time of writing, for example, ‘London secondary schools’ as a keyword had a suggested bid of £0.62, whereas for ‘secondary schools UK’ Google suggested a bid of £0.76.

This may look like an insignificant difference, but with an average of 260 monthly searches, one would cost you £161.20 pcm and the other £197.60 pcm. Already, the difference in potential spend becomes apparent and it should also be noted that even the more localised of the two is still very broad.

It is also good practice to add the location as a keyword in various ways. While ‘London secondary schools’ comes with a £0.62 suggested bid, ‘secondary schools In London’ has a £1.00 suggested bid and ‘secondary school London’ – £0.30. Each has its own number of average monthly searches and relative competitiveness, but as with any AdWords campaign, these must all be balanced against a budget and how well the website the ad’s aiming at appeals to each keywords.  

The post Why Marketers Need Localised PPC in 2017 appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Facebook can be an extraordinarily powerful advertising platform for your brand. It’s certainly the most powerful advertising platform among those of all the different social networking sites. However, most brands simply don’t take the time to understand all the best features of Facebook’s Ads Manager. They assume that the same tactics that might work elsewhere online – or, even worse, offline – will also work on Facebook.  

By understanding the six most common Facebook advertising mistakes, however, you’ll be in a much better position to improve the performance of your next Facebook advertising campaign.

Mistake #1: Focusing on quantity over quality

In most of the traditional advertising world, such as TV or radio ads, creating an ad that will reach as many people as possible is the ultimate goal. However, that’s simply not true on Facebook, where it’s actually preferable to target as narrow an audience as possible to ensure that those who see your ads are going to be genuinely interested. Spreading a broad net is tempting, but you are likely to get a lot of impressions but low engagement.

Here’s just one example: if you are a small boutique with just one geographic location, why would you want to run a “national” ad? On Facebook, you can geo-target, so that ads only reach users within certain geographic areas, such as the specific city where your boutique is located. This automatically improves the odds that a Facebook user will click on one of your ads since it will be much more relevant.

Mistake #2: Not doing basic A/B testing of ads

People automatically have a lot of biases and assumptions about what kinds of ads will work. It’s often the case, though, that certain messages and certain images just don’t work well on Facebook. Remember, many people are getting ads on their mobile devices as well. As a result, it’s absolutely critical to do some basic A/B testing for each campaign.

Split test adverts to ensure that you’re using the best one for the job. Images are key and you may not be sure which will lead to the most engagement. Rather than using your gut and relying on your personal preference, assume you’re always wrong and rely on the opinions of others to determine what they like.

For example, if you’re running a Facebook campaign for a new product that you’re promoting, there are various ways to target the ads. You can create one ad featuring a close-up image of the product, one ad featuring an image someone actually using the product and one ad that focuses on more of the emotional or psychological benefits of how you will feel after using the product. This same type of thinking is applicable to just about any kind of Facebook ad.

Mistake #3: Obsessively checking analytical data

Facebook advertising provides analytical data from the second a campaign goes live and it can be tempting to sit there refreshing the page as you watch the number of impressions climb. Nothing telling will become apparent in the first hour, so rather than wasting time, set up the campaign and leave it to run for at least 24 hours before studying the data. The longer you leave it to run, the more data you’ll have to base your decisions on.

Mistake #4: Ignoring the data completely

When you’re running a Facebook ad campaign, there’s simply no excuse for ignoring the data. Facebook provides a wealth of important analytical data to help refine campaigns that are running and inform future campaigns. If you set up your Facebook Ad campaign and then ignore it until it’s over, you’re missing out on the chance to optimise your ad and make the most from your spend.

Just remember – you need to understand the various uses of a Facebook advertising campaign to make sense of the data. Within Facebook Ads Manager, you always need to set your “advertising objective.” There are always some objectives that are going to be easier to achieve than others. Simply getting people to “like” your Facebook fan page is a lot easier than getting someone to install an app.

Mistake #5: Not checking (and double-checking) for mistakes

Facebook ads are deceptively easy to create. However, do yourself a favour: always give your ads a quick once-over before they go live. The Internet loves to mock businesses that promise a good service and pride themselves on attention to detail but cannot even spell check their own work. If you think you’ve checked your work enough, do it again at least one more time.  

Mistake #6: Not understanding your audience

Targeting an audience on Facebook shouldn’t be difficult. After all, you already have so much data about them – you have their demographic information (age, gender, location), as well as their psychographic data (interests, likes and behaviours). And yet many brands insist on talking to Facebook users in a way that simply does not resonate with them.

For example, one mistake made by brands trying overly hard to attract consumers is using jargon and text speak. It’s tacky and makes you look juvenile. Regardless of how informal your business is or the age of your average demographic, you’re still a business and it’s more than possible to engage with all generations without calling them ‘m8’.

The power of Facebook advertising

Those are just the most common mistakes made by advertisers on Facebook. Ultimately, all of these mistakes ignore in one way or another the powerful built-in features of Facebook’s advertising solutions. Remember – Facebook wants you to succeed as much as you do, so there’s no excuse not to have a successful Facebook advertising campaign.

Unlike traditional advertisers who must blast out the same ad to everyone and have no ability to change an ad if it’s not working, Facebook advertisers have the ability to start and stop a campaign on the fly. You can target ads to as small a niche audience as you would like. You can tap into some really informative data to ensure that each new campaign is much better than the last. And, best of all, you have enormous flexibility in setting the final budget of any campaign, so you always know how much you’re spending and what kind of return you need.

The post Six Common Facebook Advertising Mistakes appeared first on PerformanceIN.

If you’re thinking of optimising a website for search in 2017, there are three important trends to keep in mind. By using related keywords, optimising for mobile and creating a customer experience that’s based on conversions rather than just visits, you can ensure that not only are visitors coming to your site, but that they are also taking the kinds of actions that you want them to take.

Related keywords

You don’t want to repeat a single keyword phrase throughout a post or page anymore. You want to optimise the post for your main keyword phrase by including it in the title, in the first paragraph, in the last paragraph, and in the header image’s filename, ALT text, and title text.

But from that point on, you want to get some related keywords in mind that you can intersperse throughout the article. Let’s say you’re writing about “Google technology.” Using Rank Tracker, you can get insights into related keyword phrases and how they stack up against your chosen phrase using insights from a variety of resources beyond Google AdWords Keyword Planner.

That covers text search, but what about voice search? Voice search has been an ongoing project in the tech industry for a few years now. In the process of working out the details, it has become one of the fastest-growing search options. The appeal is undeniable – it’s hands-free, fast and futuristic.

The goal for voice search in 2017 is to go above and beyond voice recognition and evolve into voice understanding. This involves several changes with respect to previous searches, location-based context, context based on frequently used apps, personalised information and keyword research based on spoken queries. In other words, a user may get completely different results based on his or her location and prior search experience.

Mobile

The buzzword everyone is talking about heading into 2017 is AMP (accelerated mobile pages). In short, your website pages are going to show up higher in search if they load quickly on mobile devices. This area is getting bigger and Google is placing greater emphasis on it.

AMP is a way to build web pages for static content that renders fast. AMP in action consists of three different parts:

• AMP HTML is HTML with some restrictions for reliable performance and some extensions for building rich content beyond basic HTML;
• AMP JS library ensures the fast rendering of AMP HTML pages;
• The Google AMP Cache can be used to serve cached AMP HTML pages.

Mobile accessibility has reshaped SEO over the past few years. Mobile search is growing at a rapid pace and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down in the future. Traffic distribution has been shifting away from desktop and moving towards mobile devices, and many websites are already getting the majority of their traffic from mobile devices.

As a result, websites have to be mobile friendly. It’s almost impossible to overemphasise this point. If you don’t use responsive web design and try to use any common content management (WordPress, Joomla, Squarespace) or e-commerce (Shopify, Magento) solution, your pages are not going to load as quickly as they should. The good news is that there are many responsive designs out there for you. The goal should be for your pages to look as good on your desktop as they do on your mobile device.

Customer experience

While rankings are great, it’s time to stop focusing on them as an all-or-nothing way to determine if SEO is working. It’s not about being number one for the keyword phrase with the highest search volume. It’s about being number one (organically and/or paid) for the keyword phrase with the highest search volume that will get you conversions.

Think about this in terms of leads for a sales team. There are leads, and then there are qualified leads – the types of prospects who have the greatest chance of becoming future customers. In the same way, you can think of your website as attracting a mix of unqualified and qualified leads. As a result, you don’t just want any old garden variety of traffic, unless your income is based off the cost per impression advertisers buying space on your website.

Why is qualified traffic the best to generate? Because not only is it most likely to convert, but because even if it doesn’t, it’s the best to use for retargeting in Google AdWords, social media ads, and other remarketing campaigns.  

Thus, a conversion-focused approach is important for your bottom line. It’s going to raise your quality across the board. It’s going to raise the level of your content, your meta titles, your descriptions, your images, your videos, your social posts, your interviews and your roundups. Everything you do in the name of marketing will be done with higher quality because your endgame isn’t just to get a link. Your endgame is to get a potential customer into your sales funnel.

You can think of a website visit as the new entry point of your sales funnel. The higher the quality of prospects going into the funnel, the more sales you’ll have coming out at the other end. That’s the way it works in real world sales, and that’s also the way it now works on the web.

Investigate, optimise, adjust

The year 2017 will be a big year all around. Brands will need to place value on optimising their digital content based on intent rather than specific keywords. For your SEO strategy, it will be critical to:

• Investigate. What are users searching for that brings them to your page? What questions do they want your content to answer?
• Optimise. Once you have gathered your research data and found areas that need work, make the changes needed to boost ratings. Based on your research, tell the consumer’s story by altering content to reflect the reader’s experience.
• Adjust. Keep up with analytics to see what’s working and what isn’t so you can update accordingly.

Users are becoming increasingly connected and engaged with the content they consume. It’s very important for SEO marketers to factor these upcoming trends into the bigger picture in order to be prepared to take on future challenges.

The post Three SEO Trends You’ll Want to Watch Out For in 2017 appeared first on PerformanceIN.

For a brand, there’s nothing more valuable than high-quality, authentic content that tells your story and helps buyers understand why they should buy your products. That’s why there has been such a push over the past 12 months towards creating content affiliates – typically blogs run by influencers – that can be harnessed as part of a brand’s overall affiliate marketing efforts.

If 2016 was the year that content marketing became a huge new trend, then 2017 could be the year of the content affiliate.

Bring branding back to digital

The major reason content affiliates are so valuable is that well-curated partnerships help to create a valuable brand profile. This is especially true because many of these content affiliates are run by very passionate content producers, who have an intimate and first-hand knowledge of your products and why people buy them. As a result, they can help to highlight the key selling features of your products.

Moreover, these partnerships create mutual authenticity. You can think of this as a two-way relationship. The content affiliates are making your brand more authentic, and in return, the brand is making them more authentic by giving them exclusive access to products or online resources.

These content affiliates can help you tell a story. Think of how powerful first-person customer reviews are on your own website when it comes to selling products. Those same types of unique, first-person reviews also appear on these content affiliates. That’s what makes them such a powerful storytelling medium for your brand. It’s the authentic voice of the consumer being brought to life.

Create legacy content

There are essentially two types of content that appear on the Internet today – legacy content and ephemeral content. Legacy content used to be known as ‘evergreen content’ – it’s essentially content that people are always looking for and won’t be outdated in just a few weeks. It’s the reason why an article from 2012 – five years ago – might still show up on the first page of Google search results.

On the other hand, ephemeral content is content that’s intended only to be consumed within a very limited time window. Often, this is ‘viral’ content that may exist only for a day or a week. The classic type of ephemeral content is social media content. In most cases, if you don’t see the content when it first appears in your news feed, you will never see it.

In general, the shelf life of content is longer when it’s also shared on Facebook and YouTube. And that’s why content affiliates are also so valuable – they often have their own network of social media sites where they post content. For example, a fashion blog might review your new clothing collection on their website, and then create a beautiful two-minute YouTube video showing how someone might wear that clothing and pair it with different outfits.

Increase search volume

Up front, it’s important to note that content marketing should not be used for SEO purposes. Content marketing will increase relevant search results, not ranking. In short, content affiliates can help to create more relevant search results for your products, but they won’t magically lift your brand to the very top of Google search results.

The goal of partnering with the content affiliates is to have them talking about your products and linking back to your site. And it’s also important to encourage these content affiliates to create amazing content that’s highly relevant. Thus, when someone searches for the name of your products on Google, the results that pop up on the first page of search results should include some content sites explaining how and why people are buying this product.

Increased power of influencers

Celebrity endorsement has always helped to sell products – just think of sports stars and entertainment stars signed by the mega-brands. And now the equivalent of the ‘celebrity endorsement’ in the content marketing world are the online influencers. These are high-profile bloggers, thought leaders and industry superstars who maintain an active online presence. In some cases, they may have millions of followers and fans.

Younger audiences are increasingly drawn to influencers over more traditional role models. In many ways, this is because these influencers show up in their social news feeds, whereas the traditional role models may not. The way people learn about brands and products is via Facebook, not newspapers or TV ads. So they are looking for influencers who can reach them where they are on social media.

Reaching niche audiences

The real power of content affiliates comes from their ability to reach niche audiences, or what some refer to as ‘the long tail.’ If you think about the way most brands market themselves, it’s to the mass market and to the widest group of consumers that is possible.

That’s what creates an opportunity for these content affiliates. They are very connected to the robust user ecosystem for specific products and have a very good understanding of how to reach these people. For large brands, then, it’s simply more efficient to use content affiliates to reach these harder-to-find niche audiences, while they can focus on their ‘core’ audience.

Increasing measurability

It’s now possible to measure interaction and reach of these content affiliates. And that’s good news for marketers, who have always been concerned that they weren’t getting their money’s worth when they used these content affiliates. The basic concern was that these influencers and bloggers might be talking about their products, but there was no way to quantify the link between a ‘mention’ and a ‘sale.’

What’s happened, too, is that brands and content affiliates have been able to find a compromise solution. Unlike traditional affiliates, brands are no longer requiring a link from a content affiliate to lead immediately to a new sale. And content affiliates are increasingly willing to accept that their outreach efforts need to be measurable and quantified – it’s not enough just to ‘create buzz’ for a product.

In many ways, affiliate marketing is undergoing a transformation, both in the business models used to reward affiliates, as well as the types of sites that brands consider to be valuable parts of an affiliate network.

For brands looking to improve relevant search results, tap into the power of influencers and reach new niche audiences, it’s hard to ignore the potential of content affiliates.

Brands have always been extraordinarily good at creating their own content, and now is the time to trust in the power of high-quality content sites to create the same kinds of authentic content that can drive future sales.

The post Why 2017 Could Be the Year of the Content Affiliate appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Pay per click (PPC) is a discipline which can be tangled with misunderstanding, amateurish fumbles, and many wasted budgets, so what do you need in order to create a valid, sustainable, long-term advantage using PPC?

Not so long ago the internet was merely a figment of the imagination. Now, an evolutionary idea that has become a goldmine revolutionising the way businesses operate and communicate with their customers. This leads us to ponder the thought of how on earth businesses survived before the evolution of the Dot-Com Boom, known to most as the world wide web or the internet.

Let’s take Christmas as a good example. It’s best to start your PPC campaign early in order to get into the forefront of your customers’ minds when it comes to the festive period. Craig Gaylon, a senior PPC expert and media specialist states that “the hot period for the holiday season typically begins the day after Halloween, with traffic levels increasing during the first week of November.”

In 2011, John Lewis, Waitrose, Debenhams and Boots all reported a 4 to 6% increase in sales in the five-week period leading up to Christmas. Website traffic for Not On The High Street performed the best overall, with its peak performance being in July, a month you wouldn’t expect people to think about Christmas; more about what to take on holiday next month.

But you’re probably thinking: how did these brands do it, what do I need to do? Well, it’s hard, but certainly not impossible. Here are a few PPC tips to put you ahead of the game, putting you in the driver’s seat.

It’s all about the keywords

Do some basic keyword research; serve purpose to your PPC campaign. Google AdWords is a free online marketing tool; great PPC software that allows you to do a broad search finding keywords that are deemed relevant by Google’s algorithms. This can include misspelled or grammatical errors that are close to your selected keyword. You should also be looking at using negative keywords in your campaign to avoid spending money on unqualified clicks.

Avoid bidding on branded keywords if you have a unique brand name or you are an international internet sensation. Either way, you are therefore most likely already dominating the SERP (search engine result page) so why spend your budget bidding on it to stop others using it?

Don’t be afraid to look back

The best thing about online marketing is that you can amend campaigns while they are in full swing. Think of it as progressing, continually optimising to deliver the strongest results. Spend 10 minutes of your day checking up on your campaign. Make sure your campaign is being tracked via analytics; this way you can look at specific metrics that can help you optimise your campaign and future campaigns. You will be enlightened with useful information; what keywords are performing well and those deemed useless. You will be able to fine tune your bidding as well as keeping an eye on expensive keywords before they get out of control.

The landing page is important, so don’t ignore it

As mentioned before, it goes both ways. The landing page is equally as important as your campaign. You can have the most fantastic, effective PPC ad but if you’re taking PPC leads to a landing page that is disjointed, confusing, and isn’t working in conjunction with your PPC ad, then you are just going to lose out on potential online website conversions thus wasting your money. It’s all about the user experience, making them want to stay on the page, browsing, even better, buying.

Here at Optimus, we really do appreciate the value that should be added when it comes to creating successful marketing campaigns. By ignoring these 3 PPC basics, however, small or minute you feel they are, it could have a dramatic impact on your campaign’s success. So make sure you take note of these 3 PPC tips, you will be delightfully enlightened by the results.

The post Three Tricks to Maximise Your PPC appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based channel that works for the mutual benefit of brands, customers and a third-party intermediary. The model, in its basic form, is very simple – a business will tap into the huge audiences that an affiliate website has by providing that affiliate with content to push to its customers, which is often in the form of a voucher code or cashback offer. The affiliate is then, in turn, rewarded a commission from the brand for every sale they drive. Easy, right?

Despite the simplicity of the model, affiliate marketing is constantly changing in response to new market conditions, and that means the way in which affiliates drive sales is continually adapting. There is one element, though, that does not change – whichever affiliate site the customer clicks on last before making the purchase, wins the commission. That makes it relatively easy to align a brand’s goals with the goal of the affiliate, which is simply to earn that ‘last click.’

The good news is that there are five different tactical ways in which you can improve the performance of your affiliate programme channels.

Step 1: (Re)-define your objectives

There are various different goals and objectives you might have for your affiliate programmes. For example, they could be a way to drive sales, acquire new customers, boost profitability or gain market share. Each of these goals requires a slightly different approach for managing an affiliate programme. The problem is that, very often, older programmes have moved from their original objectives with no new strategy in place.

This makes it important to define a cost of sale for the affiliate channel. If you find that you are not reaching these goals, then you will need to re-evaluate your overall cost structure. Moreover, if you find that results vary widely, from month to month, or from quarter to quarter, you may also want to redefine your objectives going forward.

Step 2: Fully understand your data and KPIs, and monitor them

In many ways, data is the key to the optimal performance of your affiliate programmes. The more data you have, the better. It’s important to put into place key performance indicators (KPIs) that are integral to the performance of these channels. Each KPI will tell you how well you are achieving certain targets.

This means that you need to closely follow up on your tracking reports as much as possible. One way to do this is by examining who is driving sales, voucher codes being used and the products being sold. You need to know what your affiliate data is telling you, and how to recognise when the data isn’t making sense. That could be a sign that the strategy for the programme is no longer working for some or all of your affiliates.

Also, consider how the conversion rates from your affiliate channels relate to your overall conversion rates, or those from other channels. Look at regular reports to spot wins or emerging trends and issues based on the richest possible data. As needed, communicate what you are finding with key publisher partners.

Step 3: Understand the different publisher business models

This may sound obvious, but some companies don’t actually know what an affiliate does to generate traffic and sales. As long as the sales are coming in, they don’t question the selling tactics of a publisher. However, by taking a finer-grained look at the overall publisher business model, you may get a number of insights into the types of advantage – or disadvantages – they bring in terms of fulfilling commercial objectives.

One basic example of how publisher models differ is the difference between cashback codes and voucher codes. These both have large audiences and have the potential for new customers. However, they can be used in slightly different ways. For example, they could be used to increase market share or share of voice in addition to driving an overall increase in sales. By studying data over time, you can fine-tune your overall model.

Step 4: Don’t be afraid to experiment

The affiliate marketing landscape continues to shift, and that means there are alternatives to pure CPA to achieve branding. Best of all, these alternatives can be achieved within the target cost of sale for the channel.

One way to experiment is to use different promotions for different affiliate categories. There’s no rule that says you need to give every affiliate the same promotions. Also, don’t be afraid to run something short-term and aggressive. This is particularly true around key selling periods, such as the winter holidays. Voucher codes can be particularly effective in driving overall sales at a time when customers are in active buying mode.

Step 5: Be creative in your communication

Affiliate marketing is such an entrenched practice among brands that they sometimes think that there’s no need to be creative or innovative. That couldn’t be further from the truth: don’t be afraid to make some noise. Sometimes, in order to cut through all the clutter, you have to be creative.

Also, be sure you open up the communication channels with your affiliate publishers. Communicate the brand and offers to your publishers regularly through relevant messages. This will help them on their end to craft the most effective selling techniques. Also, ensure what is available to publishers is up to date – avoid out-of-date brand images and colours. These are often confusing for consumers, and could lead to unexplained dips in sales.

Poised for success

Using these five steps, it’s possible to boost the performance of your affiliate marketing programmes. Make sure you define (or re-define) the objectives, constantly monitor and analyse your data, understand the variety of publisher models out there, experiment, and remain creative in your communication. Each of these steps will help to calibrate expectations and incentives between brands, affiliates and customers.

By making this an iterative process of continuous review and improvement, you will be poised to have a successful affiliate marketing programme. And, most importantly, you will be well-positioned to make strategic shifts whenever the structure of the market shifts.

The affiliate marketing model is continually evolving, so you want to make sure that you are well-prepared for any changes when they occur.

The post Five Easy Steps to Improve Affiliate Programme Management appeared first on PerformanceIN.

There are a wide range of digital marketing tools and techniques available to the modern e-commerce website, with each appealing to different types of online businesses, depending on the objectives they have.

Each tool has a particular strength and stands out in their own right, so often no one technique can be called better or guarantee greater success than any other. Having said that, there are some that have proven to be more versatile than others; for example, those that tackle shopping cart abandonments.    

A worrying symptom

Online advertisements targeting individual users who’ve abandoned their shopping cart before completion are widely utilised by digital marketers and are often successful at converting a dead prospect into a sale. However, in spite of the undeniable proficiency of remarketing and retargeting campaigns, the fact of the matter is an abandoned cart is more likely than not a symptom of a wider issue.   

Shoppers, online or otherwise, rarely show interest in a product that they have no intention or desire to buy, and if they go so far as to place it in their cart you can bet that they’re keen. A high cart abandonment rate infers that something during the check-out process is putting potential customers off, prompting them to search for a more agreeable alternative elsewhere.

Adverts targeting abandoned carts provide positive results when a preferable option does not present itself, but falter when customers are able to find another option that better suits them.

Minimising cart abandonment is the name of the game.

The age of the consumer

Starting with one of the famous seven Ps of marketing, the price that a product is offered at is always going to be a major deciding factor to consumers.

The way that products are priced online has changed a great deal over the years in order to adapt to changes in buyer expectations and comes across as more appealing within the layout of search engine adverts. At the end of the day, however, businesses have margins, overheads, and targets to think about, which cannot help but be reflected in their pricing.

Unfortunately for retailers everywhere, we have entered into what is widely being referred to as the ‘age of the consumer.’ Shoppers are more savvy than ever and online marketplaces are overflowing with sellers happy to take a hit on price in favour of a higher sales; leading to many e-commerce outlets feeling like they have little choice but to get creative with their pricing. This is where cart abandonment rates start to rise.

One of the most common tactics sellers employ is to spread their costs over multiple pricing points. For example, product listings might be priced at a loss to encourage buyers to fill up their cart, only for 20% VAT and a high delivery rate to be added on at the last stage of checkout. Some customers may not mind and place the order, others may not realise until it is too late, but a good many will simply close the page and start their search from scratch.

Duplicitous pricing strategies may appear to pay off when or if a sale is made, but analytical data will inevitably prove that the majority of potential buyers are fleeing before completion. Don’t believe it? Log onto Google Analytics, and all the information you need can be found at Behaviour > Site Content > Exit Pages.

Careful with shipping

Delivery is another common cause of cart abandonment, and while cost will no doubt factor in, there a lot of other possibilities for online retailers to consider. The reputation of your courier, for instance, plays a massive role in the decision-making process. A site can promise free next day delivery all it likes, but if customers are convinced that a particular courier service is prone to delays, or are likely to damage or lose parcels, they are unlikely to complete the transaction.

The time it takes for a delivery to arrive is another point of consideration. Some buyers will be happy to wait over a week if it means making a saving, whereas others would rather pay a little extra for same day or next day delivery. In any case, cart abandonment rates have been shown to increase when customers are not offered several shipping options to choose from and rise further still if the estimated delivery date range is unreasonably wide or ambiguous.    

Price and delivery, while important, are not the sole cause of abandoned carts. Many buyers, for example, are accustomed to certain payment options and will leave a site if they cannot pay through a preferred third-party payment service. Others may be discouraged from placing an order if there is no guest checkout available and they’re only able to make a purchase after creating an account.

No website will be able to please everybody, but reducing the number of barriers between potential customers and the end of the ordering process will result in a vast reduction in the number of abandoned carts.    

Reducing the rate

As you can see, there are numerous reasons why a customer might abandon their cart, but essentially they all boil down to the following: cost, shipping, convenience and distractions. There is not much a website can do to prevent users from becoming distracted by external events, however, it is possible to streamline the ordering process so that there is less opportunity for distractions to occur. One-click checkout would be perfect in this case, as it encourages impulse buying, but eliminates the opportunity for distractions to arise.

Reducing prices and the delivery charge so that services can be advertised transparently is the ideal solution to cost-related carts abandonments, however, what is ideal is not always what is possible. A credible alternative to lowering prices would be to provide customers with added value; be it through ongoing after-sales support, tracked delivery, warranties and so on. Adding value will not eliminate cart abandonment, but its effect on the online baskets left at the checkout rate will be directly linked to how much worth these additional features are perceived to have by customers.

Another means of reducing the overall cost of your service would be to negotiate a rate reduction with your courier, or find a less costly delivery service provider. Couriers and online retailers have a symbiotic relationship, which is to say they rely equally upon one another for their success. When an e-commerce platform advertises its delivery rates and capabilities what it is in fact doing is advertising the courier’s delivery rates and capabilities, so it is in the courier’s interest to offer various shipping costs and options. Of course couriers have overheads too and can only offer so much, but a successful website makes for a great partner so a competitive service is in the interest of both parties.

Lastly, convenience. It’s easy to confuse minimalist with convenient, but by keeping things straightforward and ‘uncomplicated’ you may well be depriving customers of a service or option that they prefer. Let’s take the payment issue mentioned above. You might think that by offering a basic on-site payment process you are appeasing everyone, but not everyone will trust it.

You might have developed and implemented the most secure and efficient payment service ever conceived, but shoppers trust what they know and what they know are things like SagePay, WorldPay, PayPal, Pay With Amazon, Apple Pay, Android Pay, and so on. Integrating one or more of these services with your site may seem unnecessary when there is already a payment service in place, but appeasing the whims of potential buyers will always get you further than being obstinate.         

Cart abandonment is one of the final hurdles that e-commerce websites have to overcome, which is why it is generally not covered as often as SEO, PPC, and other methods of attracting site traffic. Fact of the matter is there’s no point covering either without the other, at least as far as optimising shopping platforms is concerned.

None of the options recommended above are fool-proof, but implementing one or more of them will result in the reduction of abandoned carts and an improved e-commerce conversion-rate.

The post How Cart Abandonment Boils Down to Some Pretty Obvious Flaws appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Let’s face it – one of the biggest determinants of what gets found on the web today is still the Google algorithm. If your content is optimised for Google, it gets found. And if it’s not, it doesn’t.

So does Google’s content algorithm favour long-form journalism or just quick tidbits that happen to be SEO-friendly?

Changing behaviours

To answer this question, you have to understand that in today’s digital environment user behaviours on the web are rapidly changing. The way people consume content has shifted markedly in just the past five years. The average duration of the time spent browsing on the internet in a single session is decreasing, while the number of individual sessions has increased.

From this observation, it’s possible to deduce that our online habits have evolved so that we are actually consuming more information in a shorter amount of time.

In the race to get more and more information, we are demanding that content becomes easier and easier to digest. And, since we’re carrying our mobile phones everywhere, we’re also demanding this content to be optimised for a smaller screen.

For example, consider what’s being shared these days. Videos and images are becoming increasingly popular, more so than lengthy articles. It’s just too easy to click “like” or “share” for an image or video after a second or two of viewing. It’s a bit harder to do this when it comes to a piece of long-form journalism that might take minutes to digest fully.

Is less more?

You can see the combination of all these behaviour trends as a disadvantage of writing long-form content. People are consuming content faster, and they are opting for visual content over text. As a result, it’s getting harder to create long-form pieces that people are going to look for and find online.

In other words, Google’s algorithm is not going to reward content that nobody’s interested in reading and sharing due to shorter attention spans and smaller screens.

That raises an interesting question for content creators: what if you spend a lot of time creating high-quality content, only to realise that people aren’t actually reading it?

After you have created long-form content, there’s no guarantee that people are going to read it. And if they aren’t, Google won’t consider the piece worthy of a better spot in the ranking. So, a big word count doesn’t necessarily mean a higher SEO ranking. It can either be a virtuous circle (if you are creating the “right” type of content) or a vicious circle (if you are creating the “wrong” type of content).

The right content

That one observation has huge implications for the type of content that you should be creating for online audiences. After all, the basic metric for evaluating how well your content is performing is how well it’s doing in Google search. So, you need to be producing the type of content that will perform well on Google.

It’s important to remember that Google’s algorithm is friendly to content, but the type of information that rises to the top continues to evolve. It’s not just a matter of cramming in more words and assuming that Google is going to reward all that keyword stuffing with a higher ranking.

Personality and style, for example, should also determine what type of content you create. This often calls for shorter, punchier text. Or maybe just a good meme or GIF that can be quickly digested before moving on to the next viral news item.

Moreover, what are the goals of your content? Are you aiming to drive traffic, shares, a higher SEO ranking, or more discussion? If you’re trying to boost traffic and shares, shorter content may work better. If you’re interested in more discussion online, though, you may want to think about longer forms rich in ideas and arguments.

You also have to keep in mind the end consumer – is it someone who wants to absorb content quickly or will he or she spend a long time reading it? The statistics show that most people only look at the first paragraph of any article, and may even share it without reading the full piece, based on the headline alone. In fact, some websites now have a clock that tells you how long an article will take to read, just to convince you to invest more than 30 seconds on a page.

Optimising for mobile

Another huge factor to keep in mind is the platform the content will be consumed on – desktop, mobile, tablet etc. We’ve reached an inflection point with mobile where more people are using their phones than desktops to access the web.

The smaller screen matters, as does the way users will interact with content. The swipe left/right phenomenon favours quick tidbits of content, while the continuous scroll actually gives preference long-form content that you read by constantly scrolling down the tiny mobile screen.

To address the small screen problem, content creators have come up with a number of original solutions. Say, for example, if the requirements of the topic call for details and more information, you might think about an infographic. Or, if it has to be entertaining, you might think of an Instagram photo, a YouTube video or a GIF. Mobile devices, in fact, are perfect for watching lots and lots of video.

A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words, and especially in today’s digital environment. Platforms such as Twitter, Snapchat and Vine have excelled in a world where consumption of small quantities of information is arguably more popular than the in-depth nature of that content.

As a result, I believe that Google content is for SEO purposes and improving user experience rather than championing online journalism. Long form has been the target for many content writers and SEO-focused persons, however, it shouldn’t be written based solely on the minimum number of words. Instead, the focus should be on the end goal.

When it comes to information online, what works and what doesn’t continues to evolve, but for now, it looks like short-form content is winning in the war with longer forms.

The post In the Era of Google, Short-Form Content Is Hitting It Big appeared first on PerformanceIN.