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Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition Interviews on Webmaster Radio
Brandy Shapiro-Babin, the co-founder of Webmaster Radio, and Jorge Hermida (aka Brasco), the director of programming and production, asked me to cover the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) in Boston last month.
Now, I’m more comfortable with a video crew in tow behind me. But, once upon a time, I was a radio reporter and newscaster. So, I figured that I could figure out how to use the digital audio recorder that Brasco shipped me before the event. Wrong!
Nevertheless, with apologies for my tendency to blink at the dawn of the digital media era, the folks at WebmasterRadio.FM just posted my eight interviews from IRCE. You can check them out by clicking on Internet Retailer.
In you scroll to the bottom of the list, you’ll find Keynote Overview Part 1 and Part 2. I interviewed Nacho Hernandez, CEO and Founder of iHispanic Marketing Group, to do color commentary and analysis of the keynote presentations. This included opening remarks by Kurt Peters, Editor in Chief of Internet Retailer, plus keynotes by Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, Gian Fulgoni, Executive Chairman and co-founder of comScore, as well as Jeff and Bobby Beaver, co-founders of Zazzle.
In Part 2, Nacho and I discuss Fulgoni’s presentation, which included data that showed unemployment-related searches spiked in March 2009 compared to the same month in 2008. He added that consumers feel it will take more than a year before the unemployment rate will begin to show signs of improvement.
Fulgoni also presented data that showed older mid-to-upper income households are showing softness in online spending, presumably reflecting an increased savings rate. However, younger households continue to spend incrementally. This means internet retailers should segment their audience and target those 18-44 years old.
Finally, Fulgoni said search engines remain the most important sites when shopping, but online coupon sites and jumped into second place ahead of comparison shopping sites.
You will also hear my interview with Hernandez about MexGrocer.com at the end in Part 2. MexGrocer.com is the largest online grocery store for authentic Mexican food. Nacho, who is a regular speaker at Search Engine Strategies conferences, talks about the family business founded by his father.
But wait, there’s more!
I interviewed Bizresearch President Laura Thieme, who discusses her new web-based search analytics platform called Bizwatch.
I asked Angela Nguyen of Microsoft to give a verbal demonstration for WebmasterRadio.fm listeners about the four things to “look for” in Bing.
Abe Mezrich, Communications Manager for Didit, discusses display search retargeting, why he recommends you do it, and how it works for considered purchases and/or impulse buys.
Stephan Spencer of NetConcepts, tells us about GravityStream 2.0, search engine optimization software for online retailers.
Matt Pace, managing director of retail and consumer products for Compete discusses the latest retail trends coming out of the IRCE 2009 conference.
And Michael Briggs, VP Search Strategy at @WebsitePublicity, discusses pay-per-click trends, and his background of PPC going back to the sale of Overture.
Now that I’ve listened to it, I did do as bad a job as I had feared. Who knows, maybe I “look good” on radio … in my blue shirt. (Now, that’s a funny story that I’ll save for another time and another place.)
Travel Search Sites Offer Competing Deals
There’s been a flurry of updates in the travel search world and they all have to do with finding great deals. Whether you’re a travel provider, advertiser, or just plain need great airfare tix to SES San Jose in August, here’s what you need to know:
Mobissimo has added student and youth travel fares to their site. Students can now compare those special fares to normal fares. Hey, you never know when a low-priced carrier might even beat out a student fare on a “bigger” airline. So, definitely check that out.
DealBase.com is all about hotel deals and now offers a personalized newsletter. Get emails that pertain only to the destinations, hotel star ratings, and price range that you select.
Last but not least, Tripeedo.com is a new site entering the competitive travel search niche. Tripeedo is kind of the Dogpile.com of travel search. It searches the search sites, as well as the individual airline sites, hotel sites, etc. However, most of the search sites already offer price comparisons on competing sites. And most of the time, all of the sites have the same prices. What would have sold me on Tripeedo is if they didn’t open the search results in different windows. That’s, again, what all of the other sites do, but that just clutters up my browser and desktop.
Having said that, Tripeedo’s interface is very nice and makes it one of the easiest travel search sites to use. If they ever get the results to load on one page instead of multiple tabs or windows, they might just become my default travel search engine.
Tripeedo has their work cut out for them. In a normal economy, you would see sites compete in this manner, but there’s a certain urgency seen in these updates perhaps related to the current not-so-normal economy. It’s not just about beating the competition these days, it’s about suriviving.
High Shipping Costs Top List of Reasons for Shopping Cart Abandonment
PayPal has released new survey data showing why online consumers leave their shopping carts behind. Survey participants were asked to tell which reasons were “very important” in abandoning their purchases.
High shipping charges: 46% Wanted to comparison shop: 37% Lack of money: 36 percent Wanted to look for a coupon: 27% Wanted to shop offline: 26% Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24% Item was unavailable at checkout: 23% Couldn’t find customer support: 22% Concerned about security of credit card data: 21%
The price tag associated with the average abandoned shopping cart was $109. That’s a number merchants should be concerned about.
“Merchants who don’t welcome back abandoners with open arms are leaving hundreds of dollars per shopper on the table,” added Davis. “Merchants need to remember the items that customers abandon and make it easy for them to buy when they return. Sweetening the deal with free shipping, coupons and special discounts is also a great way to encourage online shoppers to complete their purchases.”
I can attest that exorbitant shipping costs. I was recently shopping online for a certain type of single cup coffee packs. While I found a great price, the shipping costs made the total cost higher than purchasing offline.
You have to make shopping online more appealing than offline if you want shoppers to complete the purchase process. Since shopping online requires people to wait for delivery, price is where you must be competitive.
Facebook adding payment platform?
Chris Crum at WebProNews.com has pieced together some very interesting pieces of information regarding Facebook, a former Googler and a new payment system.
Facebook in May announced that it was testing a new payments system that would deal in real money, rather than virtual currencies that it had been using for any number of applications. This might work fine for Mafia Wars and other light games that Facebook has increasingly added, but if you were to want to move into, say, storefronts or product comparisons, you’d clearly want to be able to deal in real currency.
Enter announcement two: Facebook has hired an ex-Google Checkout director to develop these payment systems. Given Facebook’s immense and growing popularity, its standing as place for sharing opinions and favorites, its open platform and an army of marketers desperate to monetize work on Facebook, it could wind up being an absolute perfect storm.
Imagine classified ads or, bigger yet, entire storefronts integrated directly into a social networking site a la A Small World – except instead of a half million very exclusive members considering five and six-digit purchases in between their social networking activities, it’s 200 million+ people worldwide who could have their friends’ opinions of a product just a click away from being able to purchase it.
Chris has screenshots and more details – worth checking out.
What do you think? Would you purchase or shop on Facebook? Would your customers?
152 Million U.S. Internet Users Watched 16.8 Billion Online Videos in April
comScore has just released April 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, which shows that nearly 152 million U.S. Internet users watched 16.8 billion online videos during the month, representing an increase of 16 percent over March. This means 78.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in April, and the average online video viewer watched 385 minutes of video, or 6.4 hours.
According to a press release, “A significant increase in video viewing at YouTube during April contributed to the month’s sizeable gains.”
107.1 million viewers watched 6.8 billion videos on YouTube.com — which is 63.5 videos per viewer. By comparison, 49 million viewers watched 387 million videos on MySpace.com — which is 7.9 videos per viewer. About 45.4 million viewers watched 355.2 million videos on Yahoo! Sites — which is 7.8 videos per viewer. And 40.1 million viewers watched almost 397 million videos on Hulu — which is an average of 9.9 videos per viewer.
In other words, YouTube not only has an audience that is more than twice as large, this audience also watches six to eight times more videos per month.
At SES London 2009, I interviewed Li Evans about online video. She was with KeyRelevance back then, but is now the Director of Social Media at Serengeti Communications. Li talked about how putting your brand out via YouTube is becoming a new marketing channel for companies.
Li will also be one of the panelists at SES Toronto next week in the session “Optimizing for Video Search: Virgin Territory?” The other panelists will be Gregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative, LLC, and Amanda Watlington, Owner, Searching for Profit.
This page contained an embedded video. Click here to view it.
Liana Evans, KeyRelevance, on video branding strategy at SES London
The moderator of the “Optimizing for Video Search: Virgin Territory?” session will be Mona Elesseily, Director of Marketing Strategy, Page Zero Media. If you go to SES Toronto, remember to compliment Mona for having, “Nice shoes.” I forgot at one conference and paid dearly for my oversight.
Mona Elesseily of Page Zero Media and Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR compare their “nice shoes” at SES New York.
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Google Trends Releases Embeddable Widget
Google Trends has released an embeddable widget that you can place on your website. The annoying thing is that you can’t set what terms you want to appear on the widget. So, I’m stuck copying and pasting code featuring the default terms, which today are the top four contestants on American Idol (which was reduced to three last night), when I’d rather compare teams who made the playoffs in the NHL!
Still, users, if they know what the heck they’re doing, can click the “edit” button next to the terms and enter their own terms to compare. Try it for yourself below:
[ http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/trends_gadget.xml
Related Reading:
Does Google Analytics Share Data with Google Trends and Ad Planner?
Google Trends for Websites Adds to Comparison Sites Confusion
New Version of Google Trends Released
NADAguides.com Offers Comprehensive Car Search Tools
NADAguides.com has completed the development of its comprehensive car buying tools. The tools are designed to be intuitive to the research, decision-making and buying process. Here’s what to expect:
Vehicle Search - This is a good place to start if you don’t already know what type of vehicle you wish to buy. Search by custom criteria including price, body style, manufacturer, MPG and more. The results, of course, will return back vehicles matching those specifications. Vehicle Comparison – When you know a few models you’re interested in, you can compare up to four at a time with this handy tool. Compare makes, models, trim levels, or years. Total Cost of Ownership – This is a useful tool because it includes things that are often forgotten during the car buying process. The tool calculates the cost of owning a given vehicle over a 5 year period including depreciation, financing, insurance, maintenance and opportunity costs.
This type of search emphasizes the idea that marketing begins with the product. Vehicles that do well in NADAguides.com search tools will be the ones meeting customers desires and needs.
Related Reading:
AutoTrader.com Sees Record Traffic in March 2009
Cars.com Adds DealerChat to Online Advertising Packages
February 2009 Sees Increase in Search Queries
comScore has released search rankings for February 2009. When they release rankings, they compare them to the month before. Of course, that’s a bit of funky methodology since the two months will inevitably have a different amount of days (with the exception of a July/August comparison).
In this case, February needs even more careful inspection. Yours truly has taken a look at the numbers from last February, a leap year, and compared them to this February.
The following numbers are by the million. For example, the total number of searches for February 2009 was 13.1 billion, but below, it’s represented as 13,104:
(Click on the image to view larger graphic)
Here’s the data comparing to January 2009:
Here’s a comparison of the search market share. As you can see, Google continues its dominance:
Related Reading:
U.S. Online Search Behavior Mimicks Economy
Yahoo! Steals Search Share from Google in January 2009
Google Holds, Yahoo Gains Search Ad Share in Q4 2008, According to Efficient Frontier
Efficient Frontier has released a search engine advertising report for the fourth quarter of 2008. They found that Google held onto its 76% market share while Yahoo gained 3%.
Here are additional trends they found:
Large vs. Small Advertisers: Small advertisers in the U.S. accounted for a greater decrease in search advertising spend than larger, more established brands. Advertisers spending less than $50,000 per month cut spending by 23 percent year-over-year, with many of the cuts coming between Q3 and Q4 of 2008. Companies that spent more than $200,000 per month only reduced spending by 9 percent over the same time period. These margins are typical during a recession when larger, more sophisticated brands aggressively utilize the search channel to drive revenue and sales while strengthening their position. Overall Impression Trends: Overall impressions for search engines are down 6 percent year-over-year. From Q4 2007 to Q4 2008, Google experienced a 3 percent decrease, while Yahoo lost 13 percent impression volume. Microsoft Live garnered 21 percent more impressions in Q4 than in Q3 2008 and gained 18 percent more impressions year-over-year. Click-Through Rate Trends: Overall click-through-rates (CTRs) in search were relatively flat year-over-year, gaining only 2 percent. While Microsoft Live Search had higher CTRs than all other search engines from Q1 to Q3 of 2008, it dipped below Google Search in Q4 2008. Google Search CTRs decreased by 2 percent year-over-year, while Yahoo CTRs improved 3 percent year-over-year. Google Content CTRs increased 150 percent year-over-year. Cost-Per-Click Highlights: Overall search cost-per-click (CPC) is down 5 percent year-over-year. In the last quarter of 2008, Google Search’s CPC declined by 8 percent, while Microsoft Live Search declined by 3 percent and Yahoo Search declined by 1 percent. Microsoft Live Search has consistently maintained a higher CPC than all other search engines, indicating that advertisers are willing to pay a premium for a high quality, albeit smaller audience.
Here are some niche-related findings:
Automotive: 15 percent decline in spending over 2007, due primarily to lower impression volume, reflecting weakness in consumer demand. Finance: 25 percent decline in spend over 2007, with impressions up by 5 percent reflecting high customer demand for financial services, with but fewer qualified conversions. Retail: 9 percent increase in spend over 2007, reflecting the strength of the channel in price comparison and shopping efficiency, particularly for more established online brands that increased spend to reach revenue goals. Travel and Entertainment: 24 percent decrease in spend year-over year, primarily due to reduced traffic volume, which is down in by 18 percent in the sector year-over-year.
“Search engine marketing remains the most accountable sales and client acquisition channel on or offline,†said James Beriker, President and CEO of Efficient Frontier. “To continue to achieve stellar results, the current recession has made it even more critical for search marketers to know their metrics and manage campaigns based on actionable market, sales funnel and conversion data. The reason we work with more than 150 of the most sophisticated search marketers in 20 markets worldwide, and manage more spend than any other firm, is that we use math to automate the process of accurately modeling data and making the right overall strategy and keyword bidding decisions to deliver optimal performance, no matter the market dynamics.â€
Related Reading:
Online Display Ad Pricing Drops in Q4 2008
AdGooroo Releases Q4 2008 Search Advertising Data
Paid Search Spend up 12% in Q4 2008
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