Google continues to take a big chunk of the search engine market share. Not only is there a fight to gain market share, but there is also a battle with online payment systems.
Google Checkout is offered as a convenient, quick, and competitive solution for e-commerce shopping. As a promotion for 2007, it allows businesses to reduce their transaction costs by providing free processing for their sales through December 31st, 2007. Google Checkout not only provides a competitive edge in pricing and costs when compared to eBay’s Paypal system, but it also helps businesses who already are part of the Google AdWords program. Individuals who sign up with Google Checkout and who are already using the Google AdWords program will receive a shopping-cart icon which will appear on the bottom left-hand corner of their ads. These icons show up on AdWords accounts that are specifically linked to Google Checkout and will not show up on AdSense affiliate network sites.
This icon feature is a big advantage. The sponsored ads will do a lot to attract attention. When you receive more clicks on your sponsored ad, you will usually gain better positions for your ad and receive a better click-through-rate (CTR). This should help you receive more conversions and potentially more revenue. The more eyes you receive on your website the better your chances are in converting the viewers to customers.
As a Google AdWords Qualified Company, Morevisibility is eager to incorporate Google Checkout into our client’s campaigns for e-commerce targeting and ad distribution. Contact your Client Strategist today if you would like to learn more about adding Google Checkout as a component to your campaign.
I have been employed at MoreVisibility for one year and it has taken that same amount of time to explain to my parents what I do for a living. They finally get it. At first they thought I was building websites, which took about 3 months to convince them otherwise. In trying to explain internet marketing and search engine optimization to two 70 year olds, there was bit of frustration. However, they are both somewhat computer literate; my father looks up stock market information; my mother shops at her favorite online stores.
After our holiday dinner last week, my father stood up from the table and said “come look at this”. He was referring to a trip itinerary of a recently booked tour to China. I asked how he did the research and he said he just typed “cheap tours” into Yahoo! and clicked the first few listed websites (sponsored listings) that appeared. He now uses the same website to book all of his tours since his first online experience was so wonderful.
My 70 year old father may have just paid in full for the monthly PPC spend of your website. My parents booked a tour to China and a tour to Europe and you just made your money back from your initial investment. And to think that it was MY parents!
At the recent WebmasterWorld Conference in Las Vegas, I attended a few sessions about optimizing e-commerce sites. I will summarize the takeaways in this blog.
Acquiring traffic and driving sales are two different processes that need to be considered. The most common reasons for people leaving a site are: the user intent is not met, poor page design, and dead links. You should look at the search terms that are driving traffic and try to discern what the visitor is expecting of that query, and make sure the content matches that intent.
It is also about the formatting of the content. Be consistent in navigation and use recognized naming conventions, don’t get cute.
There should be multiple navigation options: primary navigation, a site map and an internal site search utility. The internal site search can dramatically increase conversions. This function is also great for reporting the most popular searches & allows customization of search results. Create a custom search. For instance, if there is something you don’t have, instead of yielding 0 results, show similar items that might be of interest.
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