A skillful insight into how to improve conversions via your ecommerce site, with helpful SEO and PPC tips as well.

1. @annstanley
An Integrated Approach to Driving
More Traffic and Sales to Your
Ecommerce Website
by
Ann Stanley
October 2012

2. @annstanley

3. @annstanley
Part 1 - Introduction and
background

4. @annstanley
Ecommerce landscape
On-site Sales
On-site sales
Sales from Search from other sources
marketing
(Email, affiliates, display ads, social,
(PPC, SEO, mobile, shopping comparison,
Merchant Centre) voucher sites)
Conversion optimisation
Other
Shopping platforms off-site sales
& market places
(Social, Mobile, drop shipping,
(Amazon, eBay) daily deals sites)
Off-site Sales

5. @annstanley
How to increase the sales from your website?
• Increase traffic to your website:
– Buy more traffic e.g. PPC or ad serving
– Improve your search traffic through SEO, Google Merchant Centre, Google Places/Local
– Use other marketing techniques e.g. Affiliate marketing
– Make your site is mobile friendly to take advantage of 20-30% users using mobile
• Improve your conversion rate:
– Reduce your bounce rate
– Give buyers the confidence to buy from you
– Provide the information to make the buying decision easy – especially if it is endorsed
by other customers or social connections
– Personalise the user experience so your site is more relevant
– Improve the buying process so you reduce shopping cart abandonment
• Increase sales from each customer:
– Increase average order value
– Encourage customers to buy again or more often (email, loyalty, promotions, social
media)
– Build a community of advocates (sharing, social and incentives)

6. @annstanley
Where do consumers start shopping?
http://go.channeladvisor.com/UK-Website-2011-
Consumer-Survey.html?ls=Website
Source: Hitwise week ending 18/09/2012

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Part 2 -
Quick Wins with AdWords

8. @annstanley
Ad Extensions, Local Listings (map)
and Product Listing ads

9. @annstanley
Integration with Google Merchant Centre
Product Listing ads
(PLA) – the future
AdWords
product
extensions
(these have
generally been
replaced by PLA)
Shopping results from Merchant Centre – will stop in 2013?

10. @annstanley
Summary of different shopping results in Google
Keywords =
Samsonite luggage
Organic shopping Map
results AdWords Products
Product Listing ads and Places/Local
ad extension
(Merchant Centre) listings

11. @annstanley
Product Listing ads in Auto targets tab

12. @annstanley
Remarketing in AdWords (aka stalking)

13. @annstanley
Remarketing results
Client 1 Client 2 Client 3 Client 4
View- Conv. View- Conv. Conv. View- Conv. View- Conv.
Conv. (1- through rate (1- Conv. (1- through rate (1- (1-per- through rate (1- Conv. (1- through rate (1-
Campaign per-click) Conv. per-click) per-click) Conv. per-click) click) Conv. per-click) per-click) Conv. per-click)
TOTAL 445 84 1.7% 2833 220 2.57% 559 118 2.44% 862 1716 1.06%
Brand 39 0 6.7% 413 0 8.99% 433 0 5.13% - - -
Remarketing 9 84 2.3% 54 215 3.11% 15 118 1.34% 179 1716 3.06%
Competitors - - - 216 0 2.01% - - - 184 0 1.88%
Vouchers 29 0 15.26%
• Remarketing In Google is on a CPC basis but its success has pushed the prices up (one
account has increased from 78p to £1.38 in a year)
• Retargeting is also available outside of Google via ad-serving networks or Demand
Side Platforms (DSP) – mainly sold on a CPM basis
• Facebook have just launched Facebook Exchange in the UK (via a limited number of
distributors) - offering Retargeting and Behavioural targeting on a CPM basis

14. @annstanley
Promoted video and YouTube ads

15. @annstanley
Video campaigns in AdWords interface

16. @annstanley
Call tracking & optimisation- dynamic
phone number created with each visit
• Phone tracking software is now available to determine
the keywords that triggered a phone call from your
website
• Ideal for sites where conversions are also taken over
the phone as well as online
• Dynamic code is added to your website, which
generates unique phone numbers every visit
• If the number is called it is redirected to your normal
phone number, with the option to record the call
• The users’ referral data is sent to the tracking software
and a virtual page is fired and tracked in Analytics
• A Goal can be set-up in Analytics and imported back
into AdWords to allow “Call Optimisation”

17. @annstanley
Part 2:
Recent changes in Google and how
to improve your SEO

18. @annstanley
Panda?
LSI – Latent semantic indexing
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2104571/Google-Panda-6-Months-Out-Still-Has-
People-Baffled

19. @annstanley
Google’s Panda update and the need for
‘good quality content’
• In February 2011, Google implemented a rolling algorithm
update known as ‘Panda’, which ‘penalises’ sites that host
poor quality content and/or provide a poor user experience
• The effect of the Panda update was widespread and, with
every update, Google becomes more sophisticated at judging
the quality of content on a site
• Many ecommerce websites were badly affected due to lack
of unique content on these site and duplicate content issues

20. @annstanley
This was followed by the Penguin update
on the 24th April 2012?
Designed to penalise search
spam!
• Keyword stuffing
• Link schemes
• Cloaking, “sneaky” redirects
or “doorway” pages
• Purposeful duplicate
content

21. @annstanley
Optimise for the user –
not search engines
• Making sure a site is optimised to provide a rich, relevant and rewarding
experience for visitors is the best way to avoid penalties, which means:
– No duplicate content - use Canonical tag and Webmaster tools (plus
other technical ways) to ensure Google only indexes pages once (e.g..
when products are listed in >1 categories, pagination issues, repeated
content in tabs etc.)
– All pages should have unique, relevant and useful content (including the
1000s of category, sub-category and product pages on ecommerce sites!)
– Good levels of interaction on site (low bounce rates, inbound links to
‘deep’ pages, social mentions etc.)
– No spam (keyword stuffing)
– Avoid link schemes and develop “Natural links” – e.g.. a higher
proportion of links should have anchor text with your brand name or url
(not just your keyphrase)

22. @annstanley
Ecommerce optimisation –
unique content on category pages

23. @annstanley
Ongoing ‘Fresh’ content
(blogging with social plug-ins)

24. @annstanley
User-generated content
• User-generated content, or UGC, is still a great way to add unique and
relevant content to web pages – especially product pages in the ‘post-
Panda’ search environment:

25. @annstanley
Video integrated with product pages

26. @annstanley
Use of Schema.org and rich snippets

27. @annstanley
Google’s “Search, Plus Your World”
(Google.com)

28. @annstanley
Social

29. @annstanley
Importance of social
• Direct sales e.g. Facebook commerce
• Direct traffic e.g. Brand pages (Facebook,
Google Plus, Twitter)
• Community, loyalty and word of mouth
(Facebook Likes, Twitter, Reddit, Digg,
Delicious) and social shopping sites e.g.
Kaboodle
• Referrals, links and SEO benefit (Google Plus,
Facebook Shares, social bookmarking)

30. @annstanley
Google Plus

31. @annstanley
Kaboodle

32. @annstanley
• Pinterest is a social platform that allows users to ‘pin’ images and videos they like
into pre-determined categories or ‘boards’. Since it’s launch last year Pinterest has
become the fastest site ever to reach over 10 million monthly unique visits.
Therefore, if Pinterest is not part of your social strategy – it should be!
• There are many social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon and
Delicious that are currently enjoying record traffic (Reddit recently announced it
has tripled in size over the past year and now serves 1.6 billion page views per
month). Again, with these kind of figures, if these sites are not part of your social
strategy then perhaps they should be!

33. @annstanley
Pinterest

34. @annstanley
Part 3 - Integrating digital marketing
channels and Attribution Modelling

35. @annstanley
Using PPC data to determine the most
effective keyphrases for SEO?
• It can take 6 -12 months to see the result of your
SEO activities
• We recommend you use PPC data as part of your
SEO strategy
– Narrow down your list to the keyphrases that convert
– Use as many months data as possible and use “See
Search Terms” to see the actual converting phrases
– If you are not currently using PPC then you may want to
run a PPC campaign before starting your SEO, in order
to understand your keyphrase profile

36. Selecting keyphrases for SEO @annstanley
using PPC conversion data
Competition PPC data See search
(Allintitle: Conv. (1-per- terms Total
Keyword Searches (phrase match) "keyphrase") Ratio click) conversions conversions
1 2900 14,200 0.20 307 307
2 27100 2,050,000 0.01 196 196
3 14800 598,000 0.02 185 185
4 2400 3,540 0.68 86 86
5 73 551 0.13 42 18 60
6 1600 472,000 0.01 29 29 58
7 590 82,400 0.01 49 49
8 58 168 0.35 48 48
9 4400 582,000 0.01 47 47
10 260 8,060 0.03 45 45
11 3600 516,000 0.01 44 44
12 880 210 4.19 43 43
13 16 366 0.04 25 11 36
14 260 28 9.29 16 18 34
15 140 10,500 0.01 29 29
16 210 8,270 0.03 16 12 28
17 3600 51,300 0.07 24 24
18 58 6 9.67 24 24
19 73 30 2.43 23 23
20 1600 205,000 0.01 22 22

37. @annstanley
Increase in organic traffic and sales
Jan 2011 - Aug 2012 – monthly visits from organic (dark blue line) vs. revenue (light blue line)
Visits from organic 2011 (dark blue line) vs. 2010 (orange line) – weekly results
SEO project started July 2011

38. @annstanley
Attribution –
top paths leading to a sale
Assisted click – in conversion path
Last click before a conversion

39. @annstanley
Integration of channels
(last click vs. assisted click)

40. @annstanley
Summary
• The ecommerce landscape is more complex and fragmented
with many channels to sell on-site and off-site
• Paid search continues to offer new ad formats for use with
ecommerce sites, particularly Product Listing Ads (integrating
with Google Merchant Centre) and Remarketing
• Panda and Penguin has changed the way ecommerce sites need
to be optimised – content is more important than ever!
• Social is important to generate direct traffic and sales; but also
indirectly due to the importance of social indicators in SEO
• Understanding Conversion Attribution is key to maximise the ROI
from different channels
• Use data from PPC to identify converting keyphrases and use
these for SEO

41. @annstanley
Thank You
See us on stand 1405
Ann Stanley
@annstanley
ann@anicca-solutions.com
www.anicca-solutions.com