Where Do I Feed/Market My Products?

Guest blog entry from a proud parent, consultant to e-retailers and etail dtail reader:

Hello etaildtail community.  I am glad to share some thoughts with you on where to feed you product catalog data and what to do with it once you feed it to any shopping comparison engine.

Pretend to be your consumer when trying to make marketing decisions about your online business. Ask yourself:

1. Where would your consumers go online and what key words would they type in to search engines like MSN, Yahoo and Google or on search features on online storefronts, even if they are not looking to buy but just interested in browsing?

2. What are my consumer’s interests? 

3. What do my consumers do in their spare time?

As an example, I was speaking to an online merchant the other day who specializes in “baby products.” She wanted to feed her product catalog to a new comparison channel to feed in which there were no other baby products, i.e. she saw that she might have a competitive edge if a consumer came to this shopping comparison channel looking for baby products. Most importantly, she wanted consumers who came to this shopping comparison channel to be able to find her products and brand name easily when they entered a baby related product search.

Being a new father, and having new insights, knowledge and habits of an e-parent, I thought about where I go on the internet when I want to buy something baby related and what key words I type in to find products.  And believe me as a new father I am doing a lot of this as it is fun!

The thoughts that came to my head were the obvious “baby carriage, toys, clothes, stuffed animals”, and other pleasant thoughts. But, I could not get the visual out of my head about each time I get worried about the amount of spit-up or frequency of dirty diapers that my wife and I have had to deal with the past few months. This type of association in my mind, as consumer, is what is important.  Not only did I need to find those fun items associated with my new found father hood but I also wanted to type in key words associated with the more unpleasant side of being a new parent, namely: diapers, sick baby, baby wipes, baby care, infant illness etc…. 

Furthermore, when I did get to a site with baby products I always remember the advertisements on the storefront when looking up answers to my search questions/key words. Those adds were very effective as I will never forget that cute “Little Girl In the Oh-so-Precious Chinese Silk Dress” that just popped up in the side-bar of the online storefront while I was searching for items related to my babies hygiene. Not only would I remember the add and want to come back to it, but being a new father I often would click on this product I did not think we need and, of course, bought it!

The point I am trying to convey is two fold:

1. If you use any shopping comparison engine ensure that you optimize your feed to map all of the categories they have to the products you are trying to feed to them.  For instance, it would be a shame if you had some very cool baby toys that never showed up on the shopping comparison engine because you failed to map your “baby toys” their general “toy” category, and

2.Then think like your consumer thinks when they type in key words at a shopping comparison engine.  If you adjust the situation to your Products and channels you can see the Ingenious marketing Plan that I’m trying to relay through a personal story. Use keywords that you think your consumers would type, that do not necessarily relate to your products.

As an example, for “College Branded Shirts”, use sports keywords. And then put those keywords within the “indexed fields” such as “Product Name.” For “Tool Items” try using the NASCAR company, who sponsors your Manufacturers items, as a keyword in the “Product Name” field.

The bottom line is to not follow the heard. Think outside the box. If you live in the box, you may be lost in a saturated marketplace with the rest of your competitors.

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1. Use shopping comparison sites wisely…just sending a product feed may not work.

2. Think like a consumer thinks when they come to a shopping comparison site, i.e. what key words are they likely to type in to find your products?

3. Map products correctly to the shopping comparison engine’s categories so your products get listed in the proper area.

4. Include certain key words in the “Product Name” field to ensure that your product appears when a consumer does a key word search.

Thanks for the opportunity to share some insights, I hope they help.

BBernstein

More Shopping Comparison Sites = Good News for Small to Mid-Sized Online Retailers

Today I read that yet another shopping comparison site launched this week.  That makes over 100 I know of in the marketplace and justifies yesterday’s blog about the changing landscape of e-commerce, rather than its demise.

The site is called Glimpse and it is focused on fashion-savvy women in their 20’s and 30’s.

I am unsure if there is a need for another shopping comparison site in the marketplace to showcase such products, as we do have wonderful shopping comparison sites that already sell these type of products, but that is not the point.  As I hinted at yesterday, a permutation of online shopping is turning toward niche marketplaces and branding tha marketplace accordingly. 

This in turn leads to building a loyal customer base that comes to a particular shopping comparison site for one specific category of products – namely high fashion clothing and accessories (well at least those who launch niche shopping comparison sites hope that this happens).

The good news for small to mid-sized online merchants is that they now have shopping comparison sites which welcome their “unique” inventory to justify the shopping comparison site's niche marketing strategies.  As Frank Han, CEO of Glimpse states: “[we are]....not a Costco and never will be.”  Thus, for small to mid-sized online merchants selling high fashion women’s products, Glimpse will look to work with you to build out a merchant client base as they also work with behemoths as Banana Republic and Neiman Marcus.  And as more people come to Glimpse, the more opportunity a small to mid-sized online merchant has to make an impression as you now have a “much more focused” consumer looking for “sexy, unique items” -- so the theory goes.

No one knows yet if online consumers really care where they buy some of their “branded” name products, but if Glimpse can offer them a better “experience” and a wider variety of products while shopping for fashion items, why wouldn’t this business model work?

I actually love to go to stores and seek people out who are experts in their field, and I often knowingly pay a little more for special service and a unique buying experience, as I find items that I probably cannot find anywhere else.

But in the end of the day, just listing products with a few "technological bells and whistles" we know does not work.  The path to building loyalty, especially in niche marketing, is creating an experience that consumers will fall in love with and then this experience helps you definf your company brand around that “unique” experience, resulting in consumers returning to you day in and day out.

The real that issue remains for all shopping destination sites is whether they can build a self-sustaining business model by building brand loyalty around a shopping destination site.  Can shopping destination sites create a “Neiman Marcus” online, which we all know has surpassed its competitors because of their superlative human, face-to-face interaction and not because of technology bells and whistles?  For me this i"special experinece" is still very hard to duplicate solely online and remains the “Holy Grail” of building a very successful online business.

In the meantime, while the shopping comparison sites battle it out, the great news for small to mid-sized online merchants is that they now have lots of new, niche destinations in which to market and sell their products to increase revenues and brand recognition…and that isn’t a bad thing, now is it?

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1. Niche shopping destination sites are popping up left and right = good news!

2. New niche shopping destination sites that bring "focused" shoppers can lead to better sales and branding opportunities for the small to mid-sized online retailer.

3. E-commerce is evolving every day and now is the time to get involved, get educated, and leverage what the marketplace offers.

4. Experiment with niche shopping destination sites, the sales results may surprise you!

Bullish on M-Commerce = Competitive Advantage = Don’t Fall Behind

Why I am I so bullish on m-commerce?  The answer is two fold:

1. It leverages the entrenched behavior pattern of the under 30 crowd, namely using hand-held devices for everything but cooking dinner and

2. It levels the playing field for small to mid sized businesses to reach their consumer

I have talked about point 1 before in prior blogs, scroll down and see those entires or click at the bottom of this blog entry on “industry trends” where I talk about m-commerce's growing trend.  So to point 2…

I love doing anything online simply because I get immediate results.  This includes finding out more information about the signing of the Declaration of Independence, “googling” a friend and seeing what people are writing about her, finding out about a restaurant or product, buying tickets to a “hot show”, downloading music, getting a coupon from a company I love, staying in touch with friends or being politically active.  The Internet is awesome and it will only get better and more robust as to what we can access and do online and on wireless devices.

The ongoing issues for small to mid sized online merchants in marketing their products online in CSEs, marketplaces, or with affiliates sites is getting consumers to come their storefront to make a purchase, capturing an online consumer’s information for future sales, staying in touch with the consumer in innovative ways, and branding.

CSEs or other marketing channels are excellent avenues to achieve all of these things but then what?  What methods exist for you to interact with loyal customers to keep them loyal and not lose marketing opportunities?  You need to work the leads you generate intellignetly and not just rely on CSEs and marketplaces to bring you business.

To do this, you are probably doing the following things: general email follow up (boring), company blogs (interesting but takes time to do it correctly), reviews on your site (excellent idea), video tours of your products (school is out on that one still = be careful), special reminders around birthdays and holidays (been there, done that), and of course off line marketing promotions (expensive).  All of these ways to interact are good and I would suggest using some, or all of these methods, still but what makes you unique and, moreover, how do you continue to engage consumers in your business in ways that are in line with new consumer behavior patterns?

All of these aforementioned methods to interact with consumers occur primarily only on the computer, where your consumer is often looking to delete marketing email rather than engage in it. So what to do?  Look for a parallel marketing approach to integrate your existing e-commerce campaigns with m-commerce campaigns to access your storefront and special offers using hand-held, wireless devices.

Keep sending emails and marketing messages received on the computer and do it in innovative ways.  There are many new interesting ways to do this, check out Flimp and their cool video-email tool.  It is easy and they analyze how campaigns are working through a robust back end analytic tool.  But the new way to reinforce your brand, and interact with your consumer directly, is sending them an email, coupon, or special reminder to their mobile device and allowing them to react to that message immediately to make a purchase, while the marketing message is fresh in their mind.

The best part of this is that once an e-commerce merchant gets a customer, m-commerce allows them to speak to that customer directly on small devices that they look at all of the time.  It is great to follow up via traditional e-mails, but wouldn’t it be better to receive an email from a merchant you like, then be able to click on a link and take advantage of the special coupon offer right away or buy a product as you wait for your plane to leave -- or better yet walk by your brick and mortar store holding up a coupon that was just sent to a hand-held device?

M-commerce allows the online merchant to be everywhere your consumer wants to interact with you.  And allows the online merchant the opportunity to market themselves more intelligently and proactively.

And the best part about all this is that you already have the product data and information to market anywhere you want. All you have to do is work with the best "soft tools" to send that data to where consumers are viewing, clicking, scrolling, shopping, and listening…their mobile, hand-held devices.

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1. M-Commerce is the best way to ensure you are reaching your customer when they want to interact with you.

2. Behavior patterns of those under 30 show that they live and breath on their wireless devices.

3. M-Commerce is the next logical step to reaching customers easily and compliments your exisiting e-commerce strategies.

4. You have the data to market already, so why not ensure it is available to all marketing channels?

Keywords are Essential to Master When Using CSEs..Why?

Yesterday, I commented on why mapping feeds to CSEs and shopping destination sites is so important to ensure that you are getting your products listed properly on these sites.  Today, I want to comment on how to make sure that your products appear exactly “where they should” on the shopping comparison sites now that you have mapped your data properly and your feeds are going to the CSEs and other marketplaces without error messages.

I am going use the CSE Shopzilla to give you one example of how the proper use of “Keywords” in your data feeds will help you get your products listed in all of the right places.

Shopzilla is one of the largest and most popular CSEs among merchants and consumers.  This does not mean that an online merchant should list their products elsewhere, quite to the contrary, I suggest testing many CSEs but for this example Shopzilla works well.

So what are keywords?  Keywords are associated “words” that a consumer might type into the search feature on a CSE to find your product.  Here is the way I look at identifying keywords. In this sense, I am not specifically speaking about a specific ‘keywords’ field, but instead the grammar and numbers used to describe a product overall.

1. Pretend you are a consumer searching online for your product in a CSE.  What “might” the consumer type to find your digital camera? Obvious choices: digital camera, Sony (manufacturer’s name), zoom lens, 500 s (product code or model number), powershot (product name). Less obvious choices (but very important): gift, 5 mega pixel, digital zoom, etc.  Get the point? There are no right keywords, only ones that you think match what a customer may queries when they go online.  And remember big companies spend thousands and thousands of dollars per month on consultants with their “computer programs” to help them with this feature, so don’t feel bad if you don’t get it right the first time.  Lots of time keywords are trial and error, asking your marketing rep at the CSE for their advice, and using a little ol common sense!
2. Think like Shopzilla, who is also trying to think like a consumer. Shopzilla reps work hard to do the exact same process as in point 1 above.  Hopefully you are in sync in the way Shopzilla identifies and tracks keywords. This not perfect science so be patient.

Shopzilla allows the online merchant to list their products in categories and at the product level.  Also, Shopzilla has an “attribute system” whereby essential “word choice” in product definitions allows you to ensure that a certain product is listed at a deeper granularity of search.  In other words, Shopzilla has included an additional level of category information that is not defined formally in their category structure, but rather is sourced and then sorted from terminology in the product information description.  Makes sense?  Here is a real life example.

Let’s look at Shopzilla’s ‘Golf Gifts & Equipment’ category. To do this, and follow along, type in “golf clubs” in the search feature on Shopzilla.  This is the resulting page:

http://www.shopzilla.com/8B--Golf_Gifts_Equipment_-_cat_id--12070300__keyword--golf%20clubs__search_box--1__sfsk--7

This is the end of the category system, but in this category, there are several other groups created by terminology [see left hand side of page] such as “Sets”, “Divers”, “Iron Sets”, “Irons”, “Sets with Bags”, “Fairway Woods”, “Wedges”, and “More”.

[An aside, as a former professional golfer, a long, long time ago, we all know that no one uses “fairway woods”, but rather “fairway metals”…but nobody is perfect!!!]

Anyway, all of these “sub-groups” are populated not by category assignment or feeding of Shopzilla’s category ID#, but instead by keywords and terminology included in the product name and description fields, ergo in the marketing description fields that you send to Shopzilla in your original feed.

Shopzilla then identifies these “key word attributes” and ensures that your product also is listed in their “sub categories”, but only if their algorithm identifies the keywords in other fields you originally send.  Just so you all know, these sub-categories are wonderful and are very helpful for an online consumer better refine their search to find the exact product they are looking for, so we like this. 

The issue for merchants is that because these “sub-categories” are not fields that you can assign products to in your feed from the start, but rather they are organically searched for by Shopzilla’s “algorithm” and then listed automatically, how do you ensure that your all of your Drivers get listed under “golf clubs” and ALSO “the sub category of “Drivers?” 

Easy…add the “key word” of “Driver” in the product SKU description and/or fields where you can describe your product. Then your “Drivers” will get listed in the proper general category and in any sub categories that Shopzilla creates to better assist an online consumer to find the driver they are looking to buy.  If you do this your drivers will be listed in the url above AND here:

http://www.shopzilla.com/8B--Golf_Gifts_Equipment_-_att361176--210148-__cat_id--12070300__keyword--golf%20clubs
 
So a mastery of keywords as they relate to your products is essential to ensure that the products you send these in your original feeds are then mapped in fields, categories, and all sub-categories that CSEs have created on their site.

The next question you probably will ask is why don’t CSEs just give you “all” of these options to start with? 

Good question and the answer is…they are beginning too, but be patient it takes time to figure out the best way to categorize certain products and then get that new taxonomy to their tech team to program and then to online merchants.

It is a process and nothing is perfect and maybe, someday, if the CSE’s can actually categorize on many levels based strictly on an attribute and keyword systems and remove a need to send CSE specific taxonomy, that will make life easier for everyone.  Just an idea for any CSE reading out there!

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1. "Key Words" are essential to master as they help you ensure your products are listed in the right places and all appropriate places on CSEs.

2. There are no right key words...you have to get inside the head of the consmer and the CSE and think like they think...what key words would you type in to find your product?

3. ALL CSEs will identify key words and then list your products on their site accordingly...so use key words!

4. Whatever system, product, company or person you use to send your data feeds make sure that they are able to send your products with key words easily...and then make sure they manipulate and update those key words over time to ensure that you are up to speed with the marketplace and your CSEs new sub categories.

Importance of Mapping Product Catalog Feeds to CSEs and Shopping Destination Sites

Many emails have come in the last few weeks asking advice and help in regards to getting their product catalog listings properly listed on shopping comparison sites.

[To clarify, and as I have said before, shopping comparison sites comprise are any online destination where online merchants market their products outside of their actual storefront.  These include marketplaces as Amazon, Overstock, Shop.com, Underbid and others and comparison shopping engines (“CSEs”) such as Become, Smarter, Yahoo! Shopping, PriceGrabber, Shopzilla, Pronto, PriceFish, PriceRunner etc….].

The quick response to the above issues is to make sure that your data is configured properly to match the categories that each shopping comparison site requires. This sounds intuitive but it is commonplace where merchants send the price of product in the “column/field” that is supposed to have the manufacturer’s name or code number. 

This is not because online merchants are dumb, nor that shopping destination sites make it overly confusing to send data, but rather that there are often dozens of fields to consider for just one product SKU let alone a catalog of thousands of products. Then multiply this confusion across 3-5 different shopping comparison feeds, all of which require your product catalog data to be configured in a different way with varied but similar fields named differently and it is easy to see why you might have improperly formatted feeds.  Then add to the mix, a merchant changing around their product catalog – dropping some products and adding new ones -- and the same issues raise their ugly heads again. 

My recommendation to having properly formatted feeds is to ensure that you have a dedicated person managing the technical aspects of your feeds who knows (and loves) working with and manipulating data.  Once they understand each shopping comparison sites specs, parameters and rules then it becomes more manageable.  The problem of course with this solution is cost and lost resources managing technical details rather than focusing on marketing products.

There are service based solutions in the marketplace that can help with these IT headaches, although they can run you thousands of dollars per month, primarily because they also help you with other online marketing needs. They include Channel Intelligence, Channel Advisor, Mercent, Performics and others.  There are also tool based solutions that you can bring in-house.  They include FeedPerfect, SingleFeed, MerchantAdvantage and others. 

If you are just trying to get a handle on marketing using shopping comparison sites and have the rest of your marketing issues under control, try the tool based solutions.  If you do just make sure you have a full understand on their pricing (make sure there are no hidden fees or locked in contracts), ongoing IT support, great hosting, back-end reporting and analytics (it is useless to just feed your data without the ability to see how it is performing in real time), and that they allow you to market anywhere you want online without charging you for it. 

I have said this before -- I have 100+ shopping destination sites on my whiteboard and anybody that tells you that you can only make money on the top 5 or 10 largest of these marketing channels is not telling you the truth or have not built the right tool to really help you. 

Tomorrow…I will talk about the importance of Key Words using shopping comparison sites.

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1. Most product catalog feeds do not work properly because the "fields/columns" in the data your are sending don't match what the CSEs require.

2. Configuring/Mapping your feeds to match shopping destination sites' specs is essential and can be done internally although when managing more than 1 shopping destination site can be tedious = there are cost effective tool based solution to help.

3. The only way to ensue your products are listed where they SHOULD be listed on shopping compariosn sies is to ensure that each SKU is mapped properly to each and every "category" that might be applicable to that product.

4. Services tpo help you do this are excellent but can be pricey for small to mid-sized online merchants. Check out tool based solutions but make sure they "give you" what you need, give proper support, have analytics, and have no hidden fees.

Pay-Per-Click Internet Ads: What are they? Why use them? And Keyword Use is “Essential/Mandatory”

Earlier this week on eTaildTail I commented on why “keywords” are critical when using CSEs.  Since then I received a few mails about using “keywords” when creating Internet Ad campaigns, so today let’s cover this area.

The most important thing to know about “Pay-Per-Click Internet Ads” is they can be very effective if you know what you are doing and how they work.

What are Pay-Per-Click Internet Ads?

Pay-Per-Click Internet Ads are what Google (Ad Words (you put out)/Ad Sense (you put on your site) pioneered, or least took to a whole new level!  Yahoo! (Yahoo Advertising), Microsoft (Ad Center) and others also do this very well – yes, there a lot of them out there and consolidators as Local.com, who will syndicate your ad words, exist, but for this blog let’s keep it simple.

Pay-Per-Click, for this entry, are simply small pieces of text (and Google is now beta testing video applications) that allow any company to advertise their company and products on the search engines and on websites, when those website decide to participate in programs that place ads on their sites.  Most look like this:

Designer Clothing Store
50-75% OFF on VERSACE D&G PRADA ARMANI Latest 2007 Collection!

Most Versatile Crew Truck
Get Free Info on Most Versatile Crew Truck. Review, Ratings & Prices.

These “snippets” show up on the search engines when a company participates in “paid” advertising programs on search engines and they ALSO show up on various other sites when these sites decide to act as an “agent”.  In the latter scenario, search engines place these ads on other sites using algorithms.  They take this a step further by trying to place the “right” type of ad on other sites that have something to do with ad. For instance, an ad about “services for landscaping” would appear on sites that have something to do with gardening, home care, and providing equipment for landscaping purposes and probably would not appear on a website selling baby care products.  This “intuitive” ad placement is all handled by the search engine.

The goal is to try and reach customers that are searching for a related product or service on one site to then click on your ad because they are interested.

Do these Ads Work?

We all know that Google, MSN and Yahoo! are all billion dollar companies and lots of their revenue come from these type of ads, so let’s just assume they work. Also, as reported by /Price Water House/Interactive Advertising Bureau online ad revenus for 2006 was $16.9 -- something is working -- with 62% of that amount attributed to keyword search and "display" advertising I outline below.

A company can benefit from these ad campaigns primarily because they can be relatively inexpensive and lead to excellent leads.  Let me show why these campaigns can be inexpensive.

Doing a simple cost/benefit analysis:

A. Pay $50 per month using a Pay-Per-Click Google ad campaign
B. You pay $.25 per click
C. 10 leads click on the ad lead and come to your site in one month
D. Those leads cost you $2.50
C. 2 of those leads translate to sales/clients
D. Acquisition cost of the client is $1.25
E. You have $47.50 left in your Pay-Per-Click Ad campaign for future clicks.

This is great if you provide landscaping services for $25 an hour or sell products that are more than $5.00 because:

1. You have made a sale = paid for ad campaign
2. You have a new client = ongoing revenue
3. You can market other products to that new client forever = upsell possibilities
4. Branding.

So why wouldn’t you do this? 

People often site these reasons: Click fraud, to get my company listed higher in Google is too expensive, this is too high a price to pay to acquire a client, my product margins are small and these clicks don’t lead to significant sales, and other methods of advertising work better for my company (newspaper adds, radio ads, yellow page adds, local advertising in other tabloids…etc..).

My reaction to this is simply, try it! I have never been a fan of paying a high price to get listed higher on search engines, especially for a small vendor who is often "out bid" by the bigger companies with bigger pockets. I will leave that decision up to all of you if you want to start figuring out how to get listed higher on search engines.  What excites me is the very inexpensive ads that pop up on other people’s sites, which can cost you from $.10 a click to $1.50 a click, pending on products and how you want your ad listed.

Finally, and probably the most important to small to mid-sized businesses is that the cost to see how Pay-Per-Click advertising can work for you is so inexpensive.

It is inexpensive to set up, inexpensive to create ad language, and inexpensive to track to see if it is working for you compared to other forms of advertising.  Oh yeah, and if it does not work and you get no leads you are not locked in – stop the campaign.  How simple is that?

And if the above did not convince you to at least try it here is a quotation from one organization:

“Bandworks, an Oakland rock msic school, pays an average $.25 per click when its ads pop up during a search for “rock music camp.  The school drew 17 visitors to its Web site during one week for a total all in cost of $9.00 and we had 6 sign up.  The best part is that we are able to track those leads and we were able to change our ad campaigns midstream to reflect special pricing and other fun stuff.”

Do the math…Bandworks paid about $.53 for each lead….can you do that anywhere else and be able to change your marketing language instantly and stop marketing campaigns any time?

As for click fraud…well it does happen and it is trackable. You can see if clicks are coming from the same or similar IP addresses too frequently and then the Google, Yahoo! etc…will help you with this issue.

But if you are not big company, I wouldn’t worry about it too much unless you have a next door neighbor who holds some sort of grudge, knows what you do, has a computer, has the time to “ruin you” by just clicking away on your ads!!!

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1.Only one tip! Use Pay-Per-Click Internet Ad Campaigns because:

• they are inexpensive
• easy to set-up
• easy to see if they are working
• easy to reedit marketing ad campaigns in seconds
• let you reach people you can reach no other way,
• no long term contracts, and
• you can stop and start campaigns any time you want without penalities.

Bucket-O-Data: Categorize & Subcategorize Product Catalog Before Sending to CSEs

In digesting different marketing ideas to help etailers better use comparison shopping engines (“CSEs”) I recently came across an interesting marketing strategy from a client that might help you better market your products into CSEs.

This client has an online mall that markets approximately 40 different categories and subcategories of his product catalog.  He does this because he is trying to have each specific category contain the best marketing language and keywords associated with product descriptions to then appeal to a different “type” of shopper that comes to CSEs to find his product.

In order to create these “unique” categories, he manipulates the product catalog data in different ways to ensure that all of these “categories” are displayed accurately on each CSE respectively.  So he does not have to worry about each category that he creates in his master data base, matching various technical formats required by each CSE, he uses the Channel Management application from MerchantAdvantage.  This way he only has to worry about marketing his new categories not IT headaches mapping those categories to match each CSE taxonomy specifications.

So this client essentially breaks down his own site into categories first before sending data to CSEs or other marketing channels. Another way to look at categories is to see them as buckets of related products with general names associated with them.  Each bucket of products can then be marketed in its own way to a CSE and tracked accordingly. And nothing is more empowering than control, manageability, and tracking product catalogs and marketing.

Far too often etailers simply put up all of their products on their storefront site without considering important marketing language and keywords associated with each product and then defining categories and subcategories to make it easier for a shopper to find the right product. The importance of proper marketing language/keywords and creating categories for products on your site is that it is then much easier for the CSE to market your product catalog PROPERLY and EFFECTIVLY.  Having worked with hundreds of etailers, non-optimized, product catalog data is detrimental to good channel management marketing campaigns and it also makes it harder for search engines to properly identify your site through organic search on their search engine.

So, don’t let this happen to you. May I suggest that “The Homework of the Day” be to break out your whiteboards and starting thinking and planning strategically. 

First: take your whole product line, and break it up. Categorize your data into “categories/buckets”, as the client did above.   

As an example, take a “theoretical” electronics megastore e-seller. They sell 65,000+ products. Management nightmare, right? Not with buckets. This etailer might break down their product catalog let’s say into 10 main categories.

Second: Break down each of these categories into 10 “subcategories”

Third: Granularity (get familiar with that word) is EXCELLENT when optimizing your site catalog information.  The more you define each product and then put them into other categories, maybe even 10 more sub-sub categories, the more options you have to get your products listed across the various categories defined by the CSE and the greater likelihood that organic search engines will find you.

To get a handle on all of this, start by drawing the 10 main categories on your whiteboard.  Let’s say it looks something like this:

1. Computer hardware
2. Electronics
3. PCs
4. Mac
5. Notebooks
6. Software
7. Networking
8. Audio
9. Video
10. Music

Now take each of these categories and define sub categories.  For example, under Software, you might have the following subcategories:

1. Business
2. Home
3. Enterprise…
4. etc….

You get the point. There is no exact science and this all can take some time but it is worth it. You are now optimizing your data in ways that ensures that your products get listed in the various categories and subcategories that exist on the CSE.  It would be a shame to have your PC’s listed in the “PCs” category and then not come up when someone looks in the “Notebooks” category.  You can solve this by mapping your products and by defining them with a deeper granularity into sub categories.

Many third party companies can do this for you, and do an excellent job of it, but can you afford it, and is it really that complicated? Use a tool based product that helps you manage all of this for you and watch your CSEs start performing better than they ever have before.

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1. CSEs can help you increase sales but not if you don't understand their logic and how they market products.

2. Creating better onsite taxonomy (subcategories of global categories) of your product catalog makes it much easier to market that catalog data to CSEs.

3. Ensure your products are listed in all avaliable areas that a CSE might display your product by using subcategories. 

4. This level of marketing is advanced, but get used to it and learn it = once you get up to speed online hits from marketing channels to your storefront should increase.

Google Cracking Down on AdSense Arbitrage

I normally don't like to just post stories, unless they are of great importance to small to mid-sized etailers. I think one merits a listing. -- Ed

Several AdSense publishers have received notice that their sites, which are mainly of the AdSense arbitrage/made for AdSense (MFA) variety, are being kicked out of the AdSense program as of June 1. According to Jennifer Slegg, the letter explains that the site involved has an "unsuitable business model," and most of the targeted publishers are earning significant amounts of money from AdSense. (Though how much of that money is being pumped back into AdWords to drive traffic to the site is not known, of course). Google will pay the publishers through the end of May.

Slegg notes that this could be good news for advertisers, since it should help clean up the content network:

From a business perspective, it does make perfect sense for Google to make this move, since so many Google AdWords advertisers refuse to advertise on the content network because there are so many "Made for AdSense" style sites as well as those doing arbitrage. So in the long run, it could mean more money for publishers if/as advertisers return to the content network.

In the short-term, this could affect publishers not engaging in MFA sites, since these large-scale arbitrageurs will take their ads out of the program. These publishers could see at least a temporary drop in earnings, but a better-quality content network could bring in more advertisers in the long run, Slegg said.

The discussion is ongoing at Webmaster World and Search Engine Roundtable.

UPDATE: According to a Google spokesperson, this is part of an ongoing quality initiative on its content network: "At Google, we are always focused on how we can make the user experience as positive as possible while still providing value to our publishers and advertisers. As part of this effort, we continually conduct automated and manual reviews of publishers and sites that violate our policies. In some cases, violations of our program policies will result in termination from the AdSense program."

It's not clear how many sites were affected in this batch of reviews.

NPR Radio Talks About Growth in Online Shopping!

Well, it is always nice to know that a business, namely ecommerce, that I believe is going to continue to grow and change the way people shop is finally being recognized by the mainstream press more and more everyday. This is good news for all online merchants and those of us who love ecommerce.

Also, for my sake, it is nice to know that I am not living in a bubble and I am the only one that thinks that Wall Street analysts are too conservative about the growth of online shopping over the next decade. I have stated over and over again that Wall Street analysts’ predictions that online shopping will represent 5-7% of total retail by 2015 is off by about 100%.  I think it will be 15% of total retail and here is why. 

Behavior patterns meet technologies that take online shopping to a new level.

As reported on NPR Radio this morning :

“For the first time online shoppers bought more clothes than computer hardware and software, demonstrating consumers have reached a new level of comfort buying merchandise over the Internet. Merchants have made it easier for consumers by installing features such as a virtual dressing room, and also offering free returns. Technology writer Mario Armstrong talks with Renee Montagne about new trends in online shopping.”

Okay so what does this all mean. 

1. It means that consumers have no problem with shopping online and are willing to do it as long as etailers make it exciting and fun and interactive  (even though they remain concerned about other people getting their billing information)
2. It means that, as in any business, consumers expect more from companies that what they got last year, especially in the online world… and those companies that make it fun and exciting to shop will win
3. It means that old technologies are just that…old, boring, and stade…and that online retailers must invest in new technologies that make shopping online unique and more fun than actually shopping in a stores to stay ahead and leverage existing behavior patterns.

The part of the NPR story that really caught my ear was when they spoke to etailers using technologies that make an online shopping experience more fun and interesting than actually going into a store.  Is this possible? Yes.

When I attended the 2007 National Retailer Federation trade show in New York City, I tried out a technology that put me in front of a mirror and then clicked on clothes that came up as reflections in the mirror on my body. It was amazing!  The problem I thought was that while very cool, how many of these “new mirrors” could you fit in a store and how long would I have to wait in line to test it out if I was in a store?  All it takes is one “fab diva” to spend an hour or more trying on clothes.  LOL

In comes, etail.  Well lo and behold, I can do the similar thing today online via a “virtual dressing room” (as referred to on NPR Radio) and for those etailers selling furniture, how about a “virtual show room” and “point and click features” that place a couch in a room that looks just like your room at home?  You can ONLY do this on a computer and why race down to the store to do it on your computer when you can do it online from the comfort of your own home?

What’s is even better is once you have decided what “dress” or “couch” you like best you can immediately email that “image” to your friends for approval and voila, the instant gratification communication feedback that we all love today in the form of text messages, IM’s, phone pictures and videos is now leveraged to the hilt. Get it? 

Online shopping is here not only to stay but grow. 

The sooner etailers get on top of how to better engage and interact with their customers in a fun way that leverages our “known behavior pattern” of using wireless PDAs, Blackberry/Trio type of devices, video, mobile commerce coupons, and yes even music downloads as incentives to buy products the better chance you of have of staying of ahead of your competition, saving thousands of dollars on ineffective offline marketing campaigns and interacting with a customer base that you can market to over and over and over again once you have their email address!

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1. Shopping online is growing faster than so-called experts predict = because new technologies are leveraging new behaviour patterns.

2. Etailers would do well to see that simply clicking and buying a product on your storefront is getting stade, old and boring = leads to losing customers.

3. Embracing new online technologies to reach customers can be more cost-effective than off line marketing efforts, especially when you have ANALYTICS to see how it is all working.

4. Online shopping can actually be MORE fun, entertaining, and unique than an in-store experience = businesses that are creative online really do well!

Marketing Experiments Landing Page Optimization Course...

"….significantly increase revenues from your e-commerce landing pages..."

Okay that is their tagline, not mine! But....

Marketing Experiments ("ME") is an excellent company and while the seminar is NOT free, it costs $595; I believe it can be a very, very useful use of your time and money primarily because ME does excellent work.  My prediction is that the money you spend you will make back quickly in optimizing your site. But those are just my thoughts.

I do not get anything for giving all of you online merchants this information, but the satisfaction of knowing that you all might increase your online sales.

I hope the seminar helps as I can vouch that every time I have attend an online ME couse/seminar/webinar it has been very helpful.  I know we are all deluged with “sources for information” but Marketing Experiments is one of the tops, outside of eTaildtail.com of course! LOL

Oh yeah, and eTaildTail.com is free…so maybe just keep reading here.  No, in all seriousness, please see if this seminar may be right for you, as ME is really very good and recognized as industry experts by many of us who have been doing online retailing for years.

Here are the details of the seminar, as they were sent to me, and no I do not make commissions or kick backs if you sign up! Promise! :-)

Have a great weekend. -- Ed

“Dear Marketing Experiments Subscriber,

Our Landing Page Optimization Certification Course for e-commerce sites begins on May 24, 2007.
This is a seven-session, on-demand certification course, during which you will learn proven strategies to optimize your e-commerce landing pages. Click here for more details:

https://www.marketingexperiments.com/secure/offer.php?id=135

Over the last five years, after conducting thousands of tests for research partners across a broad range of industries, we have developed the Marketing Experiments Conversion Index. This unique and proven Conversion Index forms the basis of what we will teach you during this course.

Here is just part of what you will learn:
• How to develop a value proposition that will motivate your page visitors
• How to reduce friction and encourage page visitors to move forward and take action
• How to increase page relevance and reduce visitor anxiety
• How to design landing pages that engage and hold the attention of your readers
• How to test and track metrics regarding your pages and analyze results to make further improvements

In addition to the on-demand resources that are provided in the online Learning Lab, we will also assist you one-on-one if you need additional help.

In other words, we do all that we can to make sure you learn the course content and pass the final exam.
Upon your successful completion, we will provide you with a credential of professional certification which you can add to your resume, or display in your office.

Register now... we cannot accept registrations once the course has begun on May 24th. To maintain the student/teacher ratio, the number of seats is limited, so we strongly encourage you to register now. You will find more information and registration details on our Landing Page Optimization Professional Certification Course information page.

https://www.marketingexperiments.com/secure/offer.php?id=135

If you have any questions before enrolling, please call us at
(904) 305-6524.

Sincerely yours,

The Marketing Experiments Team

P.S. Remember, this course begins May 24th, and we cannot accept applications once the course has begun. Please register immediately to reserve your seat.”