The 5HITS
Internet Marketing and Digital Strategy Blog
Online Retailing and Strategy
Oct 2nd
Interesting experience in recent days. I decided to by a heart rate monitor, the Polar I had needed a new strap which cost just about as much as the latest model, note the old Polar was bought in around 2003. Anyway one thing led to another and before i knew it I was looking at GPS + HRM in the likes of Garmin and Suunto as well as Polar. To cut a long story short I eventually bought the Garmin 610 and hopefully this will help me on my ongoing road to fitness, thinness and all round healthiness. I will save that for another post.
Online v Offline Pricing
Firstly, finding stores that sell these (offline) in Australia is hard other than for Rebel Sport. Please get optimised or into local search…
So for comparison here are some of the offline and online prices I found:
Polar RS 300X from the thepolarshop.com.au for $139. I found these guys were the exception, most would sell this model for around $189 odd.
Polar RS300X from from Rebel Sport in Top Ryde priced at $249. I note that on Friday the price was the same online and today it is $189 in line with above.
Garmin Forerunner 305 with HRM from GPS R US are $190 and a colleague had ordered from this site and vouched for it.
The same Garmin 305 with HRM from Rebel Sport is $349.99 as at writing this post.
I love Rebel Sport and to be fair ended up buying the Garmin Forerunner 610 as it has the swipe screen and the kind gentlemen who helped me at Rebel Sport got me a 10% discount which on this model matched the online price at GPS R US who I used as my benchmark. The point I wanted to make was twofold from my purchase journey:
- The HRM manufacturers are starting to avoid local pricing by prohibiting retailers from sending product overseas, apparently Suunto has already done this per the salesmen and thus we will continue to get screwed as long as we have a strong dollar and things are cheaper overseas.
- The other common story I had was that the retailer will beat another bricks and mortar stores by 10% but not an online price. So I can see they have the benefit of giving you the product there and then versus a 24 hour wait or more, but really the product is the same offline or online, how can you ignore the online price, are retailers sticking their heads in the sand? In denial that people are actually buying online?
I also happened to be chatting to my wife’s hair dresser who sells a professional range of hair products including GHD and he said most customers might like to see the product but many said they would buy online. A not uncommon story around many products at the moment. His conundrum being should he be cheaper if you buy his products online? If he was he would have to tell customers. If he did he might as well charge the same prices in store, and in fact this was easier anyway as then he didn’t have to pack the item and arrange/ pay for posting. But the customer expectation is that it should be cheaper online.
So what is an effective online retail stratgy?
Well the answer is, you need to find it, by testing, asking your customers and finding the model that suits your customer segments well. I mention segments as not all customers will be web savvy, those with kids may be time poor, spending preferences will differ and so on. You will also need to be competitive pricewise, as you can say I’m not prepared to discount, or we sell a premium product and thats fine, just watch your customers take your advice and walk out the door, or ensure you have a reasonable value proposition and that your offline and online retail experience match up. Maybe in the long term, brands might have a flagship store to allow customers to look and fell but understand they will buy online and reward the channel accordingly. Retail becomes globalised indeed.
This was not meant to be a rant about online retail strategy, rather just an interesting experience as to how offline retailers almost dont see themselves as competing with online retailers, I think to their own detriment in the long term. If you have read the Innovators Dilemma, you would also think, the online retail area should be separate to the offline to survive and compete. Online might cannibalise some sales but in the long term it will most likely save your bacon. Me thinks maybe there are too many managers with lots of offline retail experience applying this on online.
Social Media insights
Jun 20th
PEW Internet & America Life Project released their latest report on Social Networking sites and our lives. Sites reviewed included mainly the following:
- MySpace
Key takeouts include the following:
Usage of social media:
- Usage had doubled since 2008
- Average age of user has gone from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010 (The older you are the later you adopt?)
- 56% of users are female, 12% more in 2010 than in 2008
- Most females are on Twitter as proportion of users
- The males are all on LinkedIn
- 92% use Facebook
- 52% and 33% of Facebook and Twitter users, use the platform daily
- Largest growing age group is 50-65 year old
- The young folk have either moved or are not bothering much with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or MySpace at the moment
What are they doing on Facebook?
- Commenting (42%)
- Liking content (26%)
- Updating their status (15%)
- Sending private messages (10%)
Who are their Facebook Friends?
- High school (22%) – boring
- Family (20%)
- Co – workers (10%)
- College friends (9%)
- Other (39%) – seems like a lot?
Only 3% of friends generally have not been met in person.
Australian Social media Stats
Sensis and AMIA have also one a report here. Key findings were:
- 62% of internet users have a presence on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or LinkedIn.
- Facebook captures 97% of social networking users and 60% of all internet users.
- The average Facebook user spends more than five hours a week on the site.
- The top reasons people use social media are catching up with friends and family, sharing photos or videos, and coordinating social events.
- Many consumers take no notice of advertising on social networking sites.
- 12% of social media users said they use social networks for researching products, 36% said that the last time they used social media to research a product or service resulted in a purchase.
- The types of products and services most commonly researched on social networking sites are clothing/fashion, electrical goods, furniture/things for the home, computers/software and music.
- Social media users are most interested in what businesses can give them in the form of discounts (57%), giveaways (45%), invitations to events (41%) and product information (41%).
- Blogs and reviews have a notable influence on buying decisions, with 63% of social media users reading reviews before making a purchase decision.
- On average, people read six reviews before making a decision. However, only 24% of online users post blogs or reviews, so reaching that 24% of ‘influencers’ is key for marketers.
- The majority of social media users (64%) don’t follow any brands or businesses on Twitter, suggesting that marketers need to carefully plan their Twitter strategy so it connects with their audience.
Some considerations for Businesses
- Much household product or service research is done by women and while they may not make the decision alone they would be a strong influencer in the final outcome
- Females are generally better at relationships than males, I say that in a very general way and thus it is no surprise they use social media sites more, other than LinkedIn which is dominated by males and really more about business, networking and selling than sharing
- Social media sites, while not there for product search will influence outcomes
- Users are ruthless and want stuff for nothing from companies on social media sites
- The opportunity exists to connect with these people the challenge is the strategy and how best to connect
Can you afford not to be on Facebook? No, is it clear exactly what you should be doing on Facebook? No. But getting your contact and brand shared between trusted communities is powerful. The volumes and final impact or ROI will come out in the wash as more data is collected over time.
Paid Links – Don’t do it… Again
Feb 13th
So the first high profile paid link hit has occurred in JC Penney. Just maybe not as we expected, the NY times had to do an expose on paid links for something to happen. Mat Cutts of Google also admitted some manual adjustment to search results. Bruce Clay himself has also been talking about why you should not buy links.
Link buying or media spend, conveniently forgetting the rel=nofollow is common in Australia and we have this discussion on a weekly basis with clients, as to why we do not buy links and that this is against Google’s terms of service. When everyone is doing it and it seems getting away with it, it is tempting to join the so called club. After far too long, maybe there will be some change.
What will be interesting to me is the following:
- Whether clients are aware their agencies back linking practices?
- If they are, and they are buying links, are they going to stop? Roll back these links?
- More rigour into SEO firm selection given the potential reputation risk involved?
- Insist on a code of ethics
So if you are a large corporate and are uncertain about the practices of your SEO company, I would suggest the following:
- Find out what linking protocols and policies are in place for your website
- Get your SEO agency to confirm they are not breaching Google’s terms of service
- Understand your SEO agencies link building strategies in detail
- Analyse your back link profile and anchor text, Yahoo Site Explorer is a good place to start
Don’t forget Bruce Clay 1 day SEO training on the 23rd Feb in Sydney and 2nd March in Melbourne. We will be covering this…
The CEO Institute
Jan 22nd
Th CEO Institute Big Day Out
Had the pleasure of attending the CEO Institute annual get together on Thursday in Sydney, an excellent day indeed.
First up was Saul Estlake, his key points on the economy included:
- Expect more sovereign debt crisis in Europe
- The Floods may cause -ve GDP growth in March
- The Floods will help drive further growth in quarters that follow
- House prices should hold due to low unemployment and housing shortages
- The Australian economy now correlates more with the Chinese economy
- Australia is in a strong position the key challenge is now managing this prosperity
- Reserve bank expects growth with concern around labour and price expectations
- Should have dollar parity for at least 12 months
- Productivity remains a problem and is going backwards
- Expect interest rates to continue to rise
Next followed a panel discussions moderated very well by Ellen Fanning. The panel included Paul Cave (Bridgeclimb fame), Graham Bradley (Various Boards and Perpetual Trustees), Carla Zampatti and Kevin Rodney (HP). A great of mix of professional managers and entrepreneurs, from Graham Bradley concerned about risk and shareholder returns to Paul Cave, a true entrepreneur, driven by growth and new business models. Key points from this forum included the following:
- Entrepreneurs are not good managers and need to now when to move on
- In business, sometimes its better not to know.
(Paul Cave talking about the fact that it took him 9 years to get permission to climb the bridge) - Good people know that they don’t know it all and must know when to reach out
- Hard to find growth where there is no leverage, competitive advantage or innovation
- Deal with failure quickly
- Diversity, cashflows from different businesses reduce the impact of downturns
- Managers require decisiveness, being able to relate to people and communicate, humility, clarity of mind and direction and being able to paint this picture for others and motivate them toward this
- Competition never gets less, pressure on spending never goes away
- Set your direction and show conviction
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Guy Rosso, the ex MD of McDonalds, apparently he worked there for 33 years, which means he started when he was 14. Quite a career, and now the MD of Kmart, part of Wesfarmers and also involved with Half the Sky Foundation in China which looks after orphaned kids. Hope I got all that right.
This was by far the most interesting and inspiring talk of the day. Guy is a humble, down to earth man, who is no doubt very smart and focussed when it comes to business. From the talk:
- Came into retailing with no retail experience
- Brief was “fix it” and “returns to shareholders”
- Many established ways of doing things in the business
- Low trust from customers due to discounting practices
- Stores were in a poor state
- Had had 4 CEO’s in 10 years
Spent the first 100 days listening and asking “Why?” Then chose his team from internal people.
Then modeled the business around the 6 P’s (Price, Profit, Product and Promotion) as well as 2 extra being Place and Customer. They then made a list of everything to do and prioritised the top 10 worth things they were doing and each had to fit under one of these. Always only had 10 things on the list and gt these done.
The outcomes were significant changes to the business, which was complex. Guy talked a lot about keeping things simple and the fact that he was a simple guy (no pun intended) Examples included reducing SKU’s removing certain brands, changing pricing strategy, supply chain, pricing etc etc. I wont go into detail, not sure how much of that should be in the public domain, but fascinating stuff.
Listening to this, there must have been some hard decisions made, which Guy could not have relied on past experience as to whether they were the right decisions. I asked him the question as to how he made these decisions and his answer was to keep on asking ”why?”. Why do we do this, why that and changing the model using I assume his past business experience and common sense. He mentioned a process of decision making, rather than 1 big decision.
Kmart now stands for families with the quality you would expect for the lowest possible price. Guy has also tried to ensure Kmart becomes true to the customer, giving them the lowest price, not trying to price high and then discount the items. Truthful to customers on price and product.
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Interesting lunchtime chat with Geoff Huegill and how he has turned his life around. One thing, business men know about business, they are interested in the sports side and the challenges, this is what is interesting, Geoff tried to relate to the business side too much at times, when I think people wanted to hear more about his challenges than his business acumen, Interesting talk, great comeback. Good luck at the Olympics.
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Excellent and informative day, thank you to the CEO Institute and Yvonne Howie and her team.
Conversion Rate Optimisation
Jan 19th
Buzzword or compelling business requirement. Interesting talking to a European counterpart recently. In Australia we get the traffic to the site first, then use the data to improve the site to increase conversions, in Europe it appeared to be the opposite, fix the site then get the traffic so they convert.
Whichever way you do it, increasing the number of users that convert is often easier than you think just with some common sense and testing. Increasingly clients are wanting to talk about conversion rate optimisation and how they can improve whether it be sales, subscriptions, Likes or something else. Conversion can be different things to different people depending on your business model. Whatever your conversion requirements, start thinking about conversion rate optimisation to improve the ROI from your current website.
Conversion Rate Optimisation and Usability
Conversion Rate Optimisation or CRO does not equal customer experience or usability although the principles in certain areas are aligned. Making my website easier to use does not mean more people will convert. Making it easier to convert and giving compelling reasons to convert will. These objectives can be balanced and both must be considered.
CRO Activities
To start your CRO project think about the following general steps of activities. If the site is yours and small, you may just apply commonsense and test, if you are working in a larger corporate environment as we mostly do, information gathering, testing, prototyping all become more important to support recommendations, implementation and outcomes. Experience is also important. As they say, the problem with common sense is that it is not always that common.
The following process is common when undertaking a CRO engagement. Obviously there is a lot more detail under each area.
- Confirmation of Business rules, objectives and requirements
- If you have experience in CRO and have a poorly optimised site from a CRO perspective, then Quickwins are possible. Fixing some of the obvious stuff, based on experience can help in the short term, but be careful and remember to test….
- Information gathering from feedback, heat tracking, eye tracking, analytics, customer complaints, sales people and more. More information in a future post on supporting CRO tools. Being clear on business objectives helps focus the information gathering in relevant areas.
- Analysis of data gathered and relevance to conversion objectives and available products, offerings and deals etc. Beware of analysis paralysis.
- Recommendations and specifications for content, processes and user paths
- Implementation including A/ B testing (Always test everything)
- Monitor, test and report
If you are going to do CRO, make sure you use a proven methodology and work through the steps rather than a haphazard approach, which can lead to incorrect conclusions.
Getting Results and Common Issues
What gets measured gets done. From the engagements I have been involved with, I have found the following are the general issues organisations have to change or deal with:
- Buy process or forms to be completed, which usually haven’t been looked at for years and are assumed to OK. Watch out that you don’t step on any toes here! Also, sites doing SEO are also usually heavily focussed on spiderable content pages not forms requiring input or forms under forms and this mentality often means these can be ignored.
- The Offer, keeping this simple and clear, outlining the benefits and cost in simple formats users are familiar with and can understand
- Not over engineering common elements. “Search” is “Search”, not “Quick Search” (Is there a more comprehensive search elsewhere?) or “Buy” is “Buy” not “Buy me now” (Is there a buy me later button as well?). Keep it simple stupid…
- Dealing with reasons people will not convert. Are my personal details safe? Are you a real site or will you steal my money? Can I see exactly what it is I am buying?
- Making minor changes, which really in most cases achieve minor results. Think about prioritising based on potential impact.
- Not using the most appropriate tools, mis reading or misunderstanding analysis or the output from the tools with respect to conclusions and recommended changes. Testing can mitigate this risk to an extent.
- Not testing and monitoring changes
- and many more….
Conclusion
If you haven’t considered conversion rate optimisation, you probably should. Start by ensuring you have your analytics package correctly configured to measure conversions, whatever they may be and looking at what your current conversion rates are by traffic type and any feedback you get on your site if available. Conversion rates will vary by type and industry, as well as traffic type, but in most cases can be improved.
SEO Copywriter Training
Sep 29th
Just so you know. SEO copywriter in Sydney on the 12 October 2010. Great way to spend a morning, even if I say so myself, learning about engaging structure, keeping people on the page and use of keywords and associated words.
Find out more about SEO copywriter training at Bruce Clay Australia
Taking content from good to great
Jun 30th
Fact 1: The cost of publishing online is cheap. If you are too tight to even pay for hosting, you can use blogspot or even Google sites, but hosting is essentially free these days.
Fact 2: Content is cheap and getting cheaper. The going rate for very at times average articles from India is around $10. That is cheap.
Fact 3: Google keeps on saying, “Write unique content for your users, or that people will link to, or that people will enjoy”
So how can we differentiate content. Huge slabs of content are daunting when a user lands and yet all too familiar. Users are lazy, full of self interest and are arriving at a remote server, with no word of mouth referral and you expect them to read 1,200 words in a single paragraph. Don’t let the click hit the close tab button before you’ve had a chance to get your message across. Getting people to your site takes effort and actions. Why waste this?
First things first. make sure you have done your keyword research and ensure your site is logically structured to allow people arriving to find familiar keywords and that the site hierarchy supports great search engine optimisation (SEO) for data retrieval and indexing purposes by the search engines.
Then think about what makes great content:
- Using headings
- Using bullet points to break up facts
- Using numbered points to show prioritised lists
- Short paragraphs and bolding to facilitate scanning
- The clever use of images to keep the reader engaged, not just smiling faces which add no value
- Conversion placements and options
- Alternate user paths to navigate the path from any page
When a user reads a page on your website, what do you want them to do?
Generally you want to communicate a certain point, and then get them to perform an action. In many cases unfortunately this action is seeing the footer and being not sure what on earth to do next.
Engage with your users, let them get value from your content and finish the page with a need for more.
A KPI alwasy available and seldom used is pages viewed and time on site. Surely, this should increase as your content improves? Look at the time on site for a specific page, look at the number of words on the page and calculate how many users are actually reading at an average reading rate of around 250 wpm. You may be shocked. If you are serious about user engagement, its not always about the biggest website but increasingly about the stickiest content. Watch Google make it so in coming months.
The Ipad after 1 week
Jun 5th
The Ipad has survived its first week in the house. Some facts and findings you may, or may not find interesting, but here they are:
- A single Mobileme account can support both your Iphone and Ipad, set it up in your Ipad then on Mobileme. Got to add an account in settings in the Ipad, then let Mobileme find the Ipad at mobileme.com/find
- Entourage is still the worst email system and will not properly integrate with Mobileme but Office 2011 for the Mac is apparently due in June 2010 with Outlook and which should rectify this
- Turning the Ipad to sideway gives a different and in most cases better working experience when using the Ipad and different functionality. Use the switch above the volume to lock this
- It does not and never will replace your laptop
- Most of the Ipad Apps used and tested so far are slow. Please optimise these, including the Australian newspaper app. Apparently it was done in a short timeframe. It shows and right now with advertising I don’t think is worth the money. Better checking out SMH or News.com in the Safari browser
- People on the bus read over your shoulder. Please everyone buy an Ipad so people will stop looking at you like you are a complete tosser when you pull it out
- Accessories are ludicrously expensive, Ali Baba would be embarrassed by the prices being charged
- Still no epiphany, waiting….
- Had some difficulties setting up pre paid wireless on some of the units, getting through to the Telco is a nightmare
- Otherwise, still a great device. Not too much buyers remorse. Easy, portable and accessible. For those who can work out what the hell to use it for there will be a massive updtake
- Multitasking will be good when released. This us limiting, especially on the Ipad
- No Facebook Ipad app yet
Short and sweet.
Does anyone know any good Ipad App review sites, most seem to be focused still on the Iphone.