Thursday, February 24, 2011
Winning in a Digital Age
WPP Digital recently put together this edition of the Store TV recorded live at the World Retail Congress in Berlin. These videos feature a session lead by Peter Fitzgerald, Industry Director UK entitled "Winning in a Digital Age".
Monday, February 7, 2011
Christmas 2010 & Valentine's Day 2011 Retail Trends
Looking back on Christmas 2010, we've completed query analysis for four key retail areas: apparel, consumer electronics, home and garden and groceries. Download or view the presentation below to see the daily peaks in user queries and discover the year on year growth by category.
Also, with Valentine's Day only a week away there's still time to maximise your campaign strategy. The Google Retail and Travel teams in Dublin recently recorded this webinar with practical advice and key insights into what consumers are looking to buy on Valentine's Day this year.
Also, with Valentine's Day only a week away there's still time to maximise your campaign strategy. The Google Retail and Travel teams in Dublin recently recorded this webinar with practical advice and key insights into what consumers are looking to buy on Valentine's Day this year.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Thinking Beyond e-Commerce Part One: Mobile
Looking to the year ahead in online retail, we review some of the key areas that achieved prominence over the past 12 months and which will help shape e-commerce in 2011. The first is mobile and its impact for retailers and their cross-channel sales strategy.
When considering the further transition of their businesses from “bricks” to “clicks” in 2010, retailers were challenged to include an understanding of m-commerce and the increasingly significant role it plays in multichannel sales.
Modern customers embark on a complex and progressively non-linear journey, shopping across multiple sales channels but with an abiding expectation of receiving a consistent, end-to-end brand experience. Aside from the operational challenges this means for traditional retailers in terms of stock availability and delivery, they are also required to think about engaging with a different type of customer; one with an unprecedented degree of access to product information before, during and after venturing in-store.
The ROPO (reserve online, purchase offline) effect is everywhere, for example, it is estimated that today some 60% of EU sales are affected by web research prior to their purchases on the high street. The advent of mobile with full web browsers means that this trend is set to only increase. During 2010 the mobile web grew at an exponential rate. Five billion devices were sold worldwide with 250k Android devices activated every day; one every three seconds. It is anticipated that by 2015 mobile will be the primary means for customers to access the web.
The mobile web is a powerful sales channel in its own right and a compelling means of driving new customers to retailers’ online stores. Global technology company Usablenet, posited that a fully enabled m-commerce website gave an increase in traffic to some UK retailers’ websites in the region of 50 to 100% over the Christmas weekend[1].
Published research in Internet Retailing by Forsee Results based on 10,000 visitors to some of the UK’s biggest e-retail websites also confirmed a similar picture[2].They reported 8% of visitors to UK retailer websites on mobile purchased something. 47% used mobile to compare prices and research products. 34% used phones to look up product specifications and 15% to view product reviews[2].
However, mobile’s complex interplay with the offline world can also realise incremental sales and advanced demands and gains for multichannel retailers. The notion of the “connected customer” is a relatively recent but nevertheless transformational concept in the changing retail landscape. A recent article published by the Independent revealed that 55% of surveyed retailers believed shoppers were better connected to product information than the sales assistants trying to help them[3].
Tech-savvy shoppers replete with smartphones and comparison shopping mobile apps visit retail stores primed with a greater awareness of the products they are looking for and the prices they are prepared to pay. Consumers have ready access to retailers’ products and prices at any time, not to mention the freedom to compare items in-store with direct competition just around the corner.
67% of surveyed mobile shoppers in the Forsee Results research said that while in physical stores they used their phones to visit the store’s own website, and 26% used their phones to access a competitor’s website, an increase from only 17% of mobile shoppers who accessed a competitor’s site while in-store during 2009[2].
Developing a good mobile experience with mobile optimised sites or apps or both, can mean retailers attain a vital cross-channel impact in their cross-sales strategy. Again, surveyed results from Forsee Results revealed that shoppers who are highly satisfied with a mobile experience are 32% more likely to buy from that retailer online and 31% more likely to buy offline[2]. In itself this addresses a crucial tenet of the multichannel experience; namely how to engender customer loyalty.
Other benefits for multichannel retailers must surely be the constant access mobile provides to potential customers and the ability to offer them individually tailored promotions. Multichannel retailers already engaging with this concept include Marks and Spencer and House of Fraser, both of whom have ramped up their mobile strategies to include pilot tests of proximity marketing schemes with O2[4].
We believe that in 2011 mobile, ROPO and multichannel will be even more closely interwoven, bringing with it a raft of changes that will revise aspects of the physical shopping experience. In the US Best Buy have already begun including QR codes in their stores to help customers learn about the products they are selling.
Across the wider industry, strategies for how to deliver contactless payments via smart phones are already underway. Plans range from full software-only solutions to hardware which could make generating transactions as easy as tapping a handset against a card reader.
The very near future of many in-store purchases looks set to be dictated even further by online customer research, transparency and personal connections driven through mobile. Meanwhile the primary way of making payments could very well be one that is entirely wireless, seamless and with no bank details required.
[1] Usablenet January, 2011
[2]Internet Retailing January, 2011
[3] Independent January, 2011
[4] Marketing Week January, 2011
As these query volumes for liquor and wines show, the holiday season is the main time when people search for their tipple of choice.
Three weeks ago the AdWords policy on advertising hard liquor was changed in the UK. Previously, hard alcohol suppliers could only use search advertising to promote their brand. Now, provided that they abide by strict restrictions, advertisers can promote the sale of spirits and liquor on search. Advertising these products on the GDN remains prohibited.
Some interesting facts:
Like alcohol itself though, these new ads are best enjoyed responsibly and a full list of the new restrictions on alcohol can be found here
In an increasingly globalised world, consumers are ever more advanced in their knowledge of foreign goods. As international frontiers feel less distant and more accessible, consumers expectations of goods available to them also intensifies. The opportunity presented by the interest in new and emerging markets is proving irresistible to the heavyweights of the British high street such as Primark and Topshop who are now putting global expansion high on their agenda.
For British multichannel businesses such as M&S, whose Chairman last month revealed the retailer’s plans to open a number of physical stores in international locations, their online stores function as the ideal sounding board for such a global experiment. Via online channels, these retailers are uniquely positioned to test the penetration of their brand and offering before building new stores. While the British giant already has 320 stores worldwide, the forced closure of its Paris store in 2001 shows that there is still much to be achieved across Europe. Now able to harness the success of online, M&S looks upon Europe with renewed ambitions.
For the UK's Pure Play retailers, going global means new sites as well as increased shipping and delivery options. Given the volume and pace of international sales it comes as no surprise that online fashion retailer ASOS has launched three local sites in France, Germany and the US in the last three months. Until the launch of these sites all orders had been made through the main site which still delivers to 195 countries. Localized sites, however, mean creating localized experiences for customers, which in turn means improved quality scores and better ranking on search and paid listings on Google.
Top Tips for going Global:
When considering the further transition of their businesses from “bricks” to “clicks” in 2010, retailers were challenged to include an understanding of m-commerce and the increasingly significant role it plays in multichannel sales.
Modern customers embark on a complex and progressively non-linear journey, shopping across multiple sales channels but with an abiding expectation of receiving a consistent, end-to-end brand experience. Aside from the operational challenges this means for traditional retailers in terms of stock availability and delivery, they are also required to think about engaging with a different type of customer; one with an unprecedented degree of access to product information before, during and after venturing in-store.
The ROPO (reserve online, purchase offline) effect is everywhere, for example, it is estimated that today some 60% of EU sales are affected by web research prior to their purchases on the high street. The advent of mobile with full web browsers means that this trend is set to only increase. During 2010 the mobile web grew at an exponential rate. Five billion devices were sold worldwide with 250k Android devices activated every day; one every three seconds. It is anticipated that by 2015 mobile will be the primary means for customers to access the web.
The mobile web is a powerful sales channel in its own right and a compelling means of driving new customers to retailers’ online stores. Global technology company Usablenet, posited that a fully enabled m-commerce website gave an increase in traffic to some UK retailers’ websites in the region of 50 to 100% over the Christmas weekend[1].
Published research in Internet Retailing by Forsee Results based on 10,000 visitors to some of the UK’s biggest e-retail websites also confirmed a similar picture[2].They reported 8% of visitors to UK retailer websites on mobile purchased something. 47% used mobile to compare prices and research products. 34% used phones to look up product specifications and 15% to view product reviews[2].
However, mobile’s complex interplay with the offline world can also realise incremental sales and advanced demands and gains for multichannel retailers. The notion of the “connected customer” is a relatively recent but nevertheless transformational concept in the changing retail landscape. A recent article published by the Independent revealed that 55% of surveyed retailers believed shoppers were better connected to product information than the sales assistants trying to help them[3].
Tech-savvy shoppers replete with smartphones and comparison shopping mobile apps visit retail stores primed with a greater awareness of the products they are looking for and the prices they are prepared to pay. Consumers have ready access to retailers’ products and prices at any time, not to mention the freedom to compare items in-store with direct competition just around the corner.
67% of surveyed mobile shoppers in the Forsee Results research said that while in physical stores they used their phones to visit the store’s own website, and 26% used their phones to access a competitor’s website, an increase from only 17% of mobile shoppers who accessed a competitor’s site while in-store during 2009[2].
Developing a good mobile experience with mobile optimised sites or apps or both, can mean retailers attain a vital cross-channel impact in their cross-sales strategy. Again, surveyed results from Forsee Results revealed that shoppers who are highly satisfied with a mobile experience are 32% more likely to buy from that retailer online and 31% more likely to buy offline[2]. In itself this addresses a crucial tenet of the multichannel experience; namely how to engender customer loyalty.
Other benefits for multichannel retailers must surely be the constant access mobile provides to potential customers and the ability to offer them individually tailored promotions. Multichannel retailers already engaging with this concept include Marks and Spencer and House of Fraser, both of whom have ramped up their mobile strategies to include pilot tests of proximity marketing schemes with O2[4].
We believe that in 2011 mobile, ROPO and multichannel will be even more closely interwoven, bringing with it a raft of changes that will revise aspects of the physical shopping experience. In the US Best Buy have already begun including QR codes in their stores to help customers learn about the products they are selling.
Across the wider industry, strategies for how to deliver contactless payments via smart phones are already underway. Plans range from full software-only solutions to hardware which could make generating transactions as easy as tapping a handset against a card reader.
The very near future of many in-store purchases looks set to be dictated even further by online customer research, transparency and personal connections driven through mobile. Meanwhile the primary way of making payments could very well be one that is entirely wireless, seamless and with no bank details required.
[1] Usablenet January, 2011
[2]Internet Retailing January, 2011
[3] Independent January, 2011
[4] Marketing Week January, 2011
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Alcohol Policy Changes - Hard Alcohol Available Online Through AdWords
As these query volumes for liquor and wines show, the holiday season is the main time when people search for their tipple of choice.
Three weeks ago the AdWords policy on advertising hard liquor was changed in the UK. Previously, hard alcohol suppliers could only use search advertising to promote their brand. Now, provided that they abide by strict restrictions, advertisers can promote the sale of spirits and liquor on search. Advertising these products on the GDN remains prohibited.
Some interesting facts:
- Liquor and wine queries are up 39% and 33% YoY respectively
- Out of the top 100 drinks related queries within the Liquor category, 60% of the queries were whiskey related and 10% liquer related
- Queries for alcohol are predominantly done for specific brands rather than using generic keywords, indicating a high level of brand loyalty
Like alcohol itself though, these new ads are best enjoyed responsibly and a full list of the new restrictions on alcohol can be found here
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
British Retailers Set Their Sights on International Markets
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| photoxpress |
In an increasingly globalised world, consumers are ever more advanced in their knowledge of foreign goods. As international frontiers feel less distant and more accessible, consumers expectations of goods available to them also intensifies. The opportunity presented by the interest in new and emerging markets is proving irresistible to the heavyweights of the British high street such as Primark and Topshop who are now putting global expansion high on their agenda.
For British multichannel businesses such as M&S, whose Chairman last month revealed the retailer’s plans to open a number of physical stores in international locations, their online stores function as the ideal sounding board for such a global experiment. Via online channels, these retailers are uniquely positioned to test the penetration of their brand and offering before building new stores. While the British giant already has 320 stores worldwide, the forced closure of its Paris store in 2001 shows that there is still much to be achieved across Europe. Now able to harness the success of online, M&S looks upon Europe with renewed ambitions.
For the UK's Pure Play retailers, going global means new sites as well as increased shipping and delivery options. Given the volume and pace of international sales it comes as no surprise that online fashion retailer ASOS has launched three local sites in France, Germany and the US in the last three months. Until the launch of these sites all orders had been made through the main site which still delivers to 195 countries. Localized sites, however, mean creating localized experiences for customers, which in turn means improved quality scores and better ranking on search and paid listings on Google.
Top Tips for going Global:
- Use Analytics Geo Report: Track the traffic per location to the customer site. Simply put, any country that drives traffic to the website is a country with potential customers. Look for vistor volume and bounce rate.
- Traffic estimator & Google language tools: When used together these tools are great for estimating potential traffic and costs for a given product in a given location. Adding queries in the traffic estimator is easy but what do you do when you want to explore demand in a language that you are not familiar with and that your customer has not even translated his site too? Easy, just go to Google language tools where you can translate a query list or even the whole website.
- Export Tool: This tool allows you to easily explore search volumes and CPCs around the globe.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The Twelve Days of e-Christmas: Day 12 Always On
The final part of the “Twelve Days of e-Christmas” concludes our series by looking at “Always On”. Limiting your daily budget reduces the number of times customers see your ads, effectively closing your shop to Christmas customers. Managing your spend through bids – rather than budgets – can give you many more clicks for your money. Find out more in the slides below!
Monday, November 8, 2010
The Twelve Days of e-Christmas: Day 11 Bids Strategy
Day 11 of the “Twelve Days of e-Christmas” focuses on bid strategy and how crucial it is to get it right over the festive period. Discover the tools that can help you boost market share, while remaining profitable and the best ways for you to test altered CPCs while encountering minimal expense.
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