The Search Buying Cycle
On October 31st, 2008 Matt wrote on the subject of SEO,Usability.
Before you can make decisions such as keyword targeting and page optimisation, it is first important to understand the search buying cycle and how this can impact on your keyword queries and landing pages.
Going back to my days in offline marketing, the sales and marketing funnel looks rather like the image on the left.
During the sales process there are several possible points of contact for the seller to influence the buyer. Everything from casual interest at the top of the funnel, though evaluation/research/comparison, and hopefully all the way to sale/commitment and possible referral.
The ability to understand this process is vital to an online marketing campaign, not just during the SEO process, but it should also impact on the website structure and build.
The Buying Cycle
Firstly think about how you yourself might behave online when you’re researching buying a product.
Taking a typical online purchase for something like a television. You might start with a search query for a very general phrase like TV or television. You’ll see that there are several irrelevant results for our purpose such as the BBC and ITV results, but using the informational properties such as Wikipedia, or the Google shopping results you may then make a decision that you’re looking for a plasma TV rather than an LCD TV.
Of course you may also decide to visit one of the commercial websites listed for these queries, or buy from the PPC listings, but it’s more likely you’ll want to research a bit more first.
Next you’ll probably search for Plasma TV, this is looking a bit more promising, there are several relevant shopping results some reviews websites and a few more relevant commercial sites appearing. After reading a few of the sites you decide that the Panasonic 50PZ800B looks fairly impressive and you want to find out a bit more about it.
Of course you search for it, possibly adding terms like review, test or comparison to bring up the more informational resources.
It’s about now that you feel you’re happy with your choice, you’ve compared it against other makes and models, you’re happy that it’s what you’re looking for and you want to go ahead and purchase.
To find online shops selling that specific model you may use buying trigger search terms such as buy or cheap, or possibly even adding geographic search terms such as London or UK.
Points to note…..
- A typical online sale is unlikely to result from one specific query, but is made up of several queries
- Some studies have shown up to 12 separate searches may be made before a purchase
- This process may take several days or even weeks
- At any point in this cycle the customer may decide to buy
- The process may crossover several mediums, the eventual sale may come from a phone call or a shop purchase
- The further into the cycle the higher the chance of a purchase
- The further into the cycle the lower the number of searchers
So how does this affect your actions when it comes to building and marketing your website?
Firstly you need to ensure that you’re targeting a range of search phrases that cover the entire sales process. If you’re only targeting the more general phrases such as TV and television then you’re probably missing some low hanging fruit in terms of the sales trigger phrases such as buy and cheap. Similarly if you’re only targeting the specific phrases then you’re also missing a lot of traffic that can be converted into sales.
Bearing the sales process in mind when building and organising your site can have a dramatic effect on sales and conversions.
Treat your site hierarchy as a representation of the sales process. Undecided visitors making generic searches need to be sent to the homepage where then you can influence their decision and funnel them further into your site using tools like buyers guides and FAQs or offers and other calls to action.
Visitors making more specific searches should be sent to relevant category or sub-category pages.
Product specific searches should of course be sent to the product page. Minimising the number of clicks that the visitor needs to make before buying will have a dramatic impact on search engine visitor conversion rates.
Although all of this sounds obvious, I constantly lose count of sites that try to optimise their homepage for as many phrases as possible when there are far more suitable landing locations on internal pages.
Blogging Goes Mainstream
On October 30th, 2008 Matt wrote on the subject of Blogging,Industry News.
One of the main obstacles to overcome when trying to convince a client of the merits of corporate blogging is the view that it’s a niche medium and it’s really read by visitors.
Recent figures released by ComScore indicate otherwise. A huge 41% of the total internet audience visited at least one blog in August 2008.
“Blogs have become part of the essential fabric of the Internet today,†said Herve Le Jouan, Managing Director, comScore Europe. “They live and breathe in real-time, helping quench media consumers’ thirst for the most up-to-date breaking news, information, and analysis. It should not, therefore, be particularly surprising that they’re increasingly displacing traditional media usage and carving out an ever-increasing slice of the online advertising pie.â€
It’s no surprise that the most visited properties were technology and entertainment based with Engadget and UnrealityTV being the most popular.
Why Do Print Designers Think They Can Design For The Web?
On October 21st, 2008 Rob wrote on the subject of Design Ideas,Usability.
Please excuse the following rant but I’m increasingly frustrated, bored, let down, despairing, incredulous that there are still “graphic designers” out there who have no concept of how to design for the web, but who insist on designing websites for their clients
It’s fine if they stick to Quark and what they are good at, and all credit to them, but for some reason they think they have carte blanche to roam into areas which are not their concern.
For example, let’s say that you wanted to design a new boat. Who would you go to first? Would you go to a designer of aeroplanes? No, you would seek out people who have experience in boat design, because what you want is a boat, and you need someone who understands nautical things like waves, water, ballast, the pros and cons of different hull shapes, propellars, and the like. Would you really want to go to sea in a craft designed by a designer of aeroplanes? I think not.
Do you work for a web design agency? Does this happen to you that clients get their so called “brand” guardian to do the web design or the guy who did their brochure and aks you to implement it as a web site.
And is it just us or do you receive a complete load of tosh that disobeys practically every law of web accessibility, search engine friendliness, usability, extensibility and future proofing, font usage and image sizing hell?
What planet to these people live on? Why don’t they put up their hands to their clients and say we can give guidance on the design but we are graphic designers for print and you need a professional web designer who can take into account the requirements of the web. Because they work in the web every day they will know what is the right way and what is the wrong way to do things. Do web designers try to do design brochures?
I won’t get started on programmers who think that they are web designers as I’m far too angry. Just for the record, in case you are a print designer and you are still wondering where you went wrong here are few tips:
- Decide the width of your design and what happens to the site when viewed on different size monitors
- Think about usability and consider tried and tested conventions. No need to think of your own “unique” style of navigation. There’s a reason for some of the conventions.
- Think about search engine friendliness. Not enough space here to explain but be aware that 60-80% of traffic and sales on most e-comms might come from search engines.
- A little flash can be nice, it can look good. A whole site built solely is flash is pointless – just drop it. Nobody is interested in seeing your logo sliding in and out.
- Think what happens in the future. What happens if more menu items, or product lines are added.
- Think about who will administer the site and how many image sizes you really need. It’s a pain creating 4 different size images for each new product, (although yes there are ways round this programmatically).
- Splash pages – why? What are they there for? Why do you feel the need to make people click an extra time to get to where they are going?
- Consider the online audience – they do not know your company probably so help them help you by giving as much information about yourself and don’t try to be so cool that they have to be Sherlock Holmes to find out what you do.
Thanks for reading, I feel better now
We Are Recruiting! Looking For A .NET developer
On October 21st, 2008 Rob wrote on the subject of Company News.
Yes, yet again we are recruiting for a .net developer. Do you know any super geeks or just normal people who would love to work in an expanding web development agency, who can think on their feet and work tirelessly from morning to nightfall and beyond. More details about the role are on our main site
Your Content Development Strategy
On October 20th, 2008 Matt wrote on the subject of Blogging,Online Marketing.
Websites have come a long way, not just in terms of design and technology, but also in their intention. A few short years ago your website was just an extension of your offline promotional material. You had a bit of an introduction, a few pages about your services and contact page, and you were ready to go. That would do for a few years, after all, your services don’t change that often right?
These days you really can’t get away with that kind of static approach to web publishing. Websites aren’t brochures anymore. They are resources, communities and communications channels that are updated on a regular basis.
Why is content important?
Website content is important for several reasons.
It drives visitors – Search engines love text content, the more good, unique and relevant content that you have on your site, generally the more visitors you can expect search engines to be sending you.
It encourages links – Great content encourages people to link to it. Try to develop your site as a ‘resource’ offer free information, stats and tables, guides and tutorials. The more useful content that you have the more sites that you will find will be happy to link to you – it is these links that send traffic and will also increase search engine rankings.
It ensures return – Better quality content encourages return visitors, the more people return to your site, the more likely they are to buy from you.
It strengthens branding – Great content will help to strengthen your brand and brand recognition. Not just through search engine rankings, but also through word of mouth and referrals. People are not only going to be talking about how great your products and services are, but also how useful your site is and how their friends and colleagues must go and take a look at it.
It creates trust – Writing on your area of expertise is a great way to demonstrate how much you know your topic. You’re more likely to buy from someone that is knowledgeable and generous with their expertise right?
How can I develop content on my own site?
Okay, now we’ve established that content is important and vital for commercial sites, but how do we go about creating a content development strategy of our own?
Below we have put together a list of tips on how to go about developing a content strategy for your own commercial website.
- Leverage your people. The more people you have helping to create website content, the more ideas, variation and knowledge that you have. It’s also far less of a workload to have 8 members of staff generating one article each per month, rather than one person having to write a couple of pieces every few days. Set out a timetable that people are encouraged and rewarded for adhering to.
- Consider your platform. It’s imperative that your have an easy publishing platform that your staff members can use and you don’t have to wait for developers or designers to get involved. Using a blog platform like WordPress will mean even your less tech-savvy staff will be able to publish their own content in a matter of minutes.
- Pitch it right. Make sure your content isn’t overtly promotional. Sales pitches don’t generally interest people, neither does it tend to encourage people to link to it. However nobody expects you not to link to or mention your commercial activities. Finding a happy medium that works for your site can sometimes take a little time.
- Brainstorm – Involve others in coming up with article titles and ideas. A monthly meeting should be sufficient for coming up with a few weeks of article titles and content ideas. You’ll find that some of the more wacky and off the wall ideas work the best.
- Get involved. Make sure you get involved with your industries online community. Don’t be scared to link out to other industry sites. Comment on their blogs, offer to write for industry journals, invite industry figures to write for you. All of these activities will help to develop your online brand and increase the number of websites that are linking to your own.
- Keep abreast of industry news. I recommend subscribing to as many industry newsfeeds as possible using an RSS reader. Not only does this easily keep me up-to-date with what’s happening in my industry, but also it gives me lots of topical subject ideas for relevant industry comment.
- Look at sites within your own industry. What kind of content do they provide. Do they do anything that you’re not doing? Can what they’re doing be improved upon?
- Look at sites in other industries. Are other sites doing anything that may be reworked to crossover into your industry? Can you apply things like video, community, social media, images or widgets to stay one step ahead of your competitors?
- Demonstrate your knowledge. Consider adding content that displays your knowledge of your topic. Ideas like FAQs, guides, how-tos, client Q&As and critiques are great ways of demonstrating the experts at your company.
- Be keyword conscious. Know which keywords people use when searching for products and services in your industry. Bear these in mind when developing your content writing timetable and article text.
- Content isn’t just writing. Although you’ll find the bulk of your website content will be text based, don’t ignore the benefits of image and video content. Some of the best corporate linkbait is image based.
Some examples of corporate content ideas in action
Best Western – The On The Go With Amy travel blog.
Dell – A good example of FAQ pages
HSBC – The HSBC business network connecting businessmen using blogs and forums.
Nike – The Loop’d community connects extreme sports fans.
Office Furniture Express – The 6 coolest offices.
OfficeMax – Elf Yourself
Phillips – Shave Everywhere
Shock Absorber – The Shock Absorber sports bra. A product aimed at women with linkbait aimed at men!
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