Do you have Facebook business page? You do, but can’t get the hang of using statistics it gives?  Believe us, you are not alone.

Facebook has a lot of metrics indeed, but terms which are used to describe are not quite clear to the users.

To start analyzing the data, focus on each post statistics. This will be the relevant indicator of your content effectiveness.

Now let’s try to find out, which Facebook metrics are important for business pages and where we can check them out.

1. Fan reach

This metric shows how many of your subscribers have seen the page. It is an organic indicator as it takes into account only the number of times when subscribers saw the post on the page or in the news feed of people who “liked” it. 

How to view it

Go to the statistics and choose Export Data, then select Post level data.

In the Key metrics tab find the column “Lifetime Post reach by people who like your Page”

Why it is important to know it

It’s, probably, one of the most essential metrics. It indicates the popularity of your content and quality of your audience.

People, who have subscribed to your page to win iPhone, for example, will be hiding your posts in their news feed and Edge Rank will soon stop showing your content at all.

Fan reach is one of the key indicators of your Facebook page health. The better the quality of your audience and content quality is, the more subscribers (or potential ones) you will have.  

2. Organic reach

Organic reach shows the number of users, who have seen your post on their news feed or on your page; it includes page subscribers as well as those who “liked” your page.

Similarly to fan reach, this metric doesn’t span the views by users, who have seen the post because their friends have interacted with it (likes, shares, comments).

The difference between fan reach and organic reach is that the later shows the number of views the post gets from the users, that are not subscribed to this page, but have seen the post in the news feed on their page, or in the widget of your site or blog.

How to view it

To view organic reach is much easier than fan reach. Just go to the page statistics.

In front of the each post you will see the total organic reach, and by clicking the figure you will get the organic reach of a particular post.

Why it is important to know it

On one side, organic reach may be replaced by fan reach, if the difference between them is little. On the other side, identical value of these two metrics points out at the fact that users who have not liked the page so far, do not see your content.

It can mean that your fan page interaction with other marketing channels is weak. If you have a blog or site, and organic reach and fan reach do not differ much, it hints that you do not attract new users to your page.

Try intensifying the promotion of your Facebook page through other channels, and you will see how organic reach will start to grow.

3. Engagement

Engagement shows how many people click your post.

It includes all the users who viewed the video, clicked the photo or link, gave “like”, shared the post, “liked” the comment, or even left negative one.

It doesn’t matter whether such users saw your post in the news feed, on their friend’s page, your page, or with the help of widget – everything is included.

This is the second most important metric (after fan reach). It shows how many people are interacting with your content.

Where to view it

Go to the statistics and look at the column Engaged Users:

As we mentioned earlier, engagement is the second metric by the level of importance, in case you are determined to measure the effectiveness of your Facebook page.

You should know whether the content is relevant, whether it is interesting for the audience.

Engagement is the only way to measure the interest of your subscribers.

When you check this metric, take into account not only the number of engaged users, which is shown in the statistics. To get a real insight on whether the post has been interesting for your users, compare this metric with the fan reach metric.

If you want to compare the post effectiveness with other publications, you will need to calculate the percentage  – use such formula then.

This percentage will help you be clearer on your work results. If to measure only engagement, you will not know whether it was caused by content quality or a large number of people who viewed the post.

Such calculations will also allow you to compare different posts by the level of their efficiency.

4. Users talking about this

Talking about this is one of those metrics which do not many people understand.

In fact, this indicator is a part of engagement metric. But talking about this includes only 3 types of actions: likes, shares, and comments.

An important thing here is that the metric tells us how many subscribers have caused viral effect – meaning they have taken some steps to show they are involved with our page.  

Where to view it

It is just that simple. This metric you can check in the Talking About This column.

Why it is important to know it

This is a viral metric. Probably, when you were creating the Facebook page, it was tempting to you that you could connect to your fans friends for free. Talking about this is the best metric showing how many users share the information about you with friends.

Remember, that when the user gives “like”, shares or comments on the post, Facebook may show this information to the user’s friends. Let us stress the word “may”, because Facebook covers such news restrictedly.

This is why you should not expect too much from this metric. Regardless the fact that Facebook is still one of the best places for the viral effect, information about “shares”, “likes” or comments is shown to the friends more rarely.

5. Click-through rate (CTR)

A standard metric we all have been using for long to measure the efficiency of email newsletters, banners, landing pages, and advertisement.

Facebook also has such metric; it shows the number of click-throughs, video views, photo enlargements.   

Where to view it

Go to statistics, click Engaged Users and see how many users have clicked on our content.

If it is a link the metric will show the number of clicks on the link, if it is the video – video views, for the image – number of image views.

Why it is important to know it

This is essential to have an idea of how many people will see you content (reach), even more important is to know how many people will get interested enough to interact with it (engagement).

The main point is to find out how much your content should be interesting to users so they could pay attention to it – click the link, watch video or photo.

CTR is the bottom line of your content quality. Always monitor this metric.

6. Negative feedback

Negative feedback is negative interaction with your content made by subscriber. It could be: certain post hiding, “unlike”, or even worse – reporting a spam.

In essence, this metric gives you insight on how many users do not like your content.

Where to view it

Go to the statistics and click the Engages users number, there you will see how many people left gave negative feedback on your post.

If you want to know what exactly the user did, you will have to export the data to Excel – similarly to what we did with fan reach. In the table you should choose Lifetime Negative feedback and see what actions have been made by those users who left negative feedback.

Why it is important to know it

From Sept, 2012 Facebook has been paying special attention to negative feedback. For a post which receives negative reaction will be much more difficult to get an Edge Rank and feature in the news feed.

Obviously, if you want your marketing in Facebook to be effective, you need to keep the number of negative feedbacks to the minimum.

Similarly to other engagement metrics, you shouldn’t focus only on figures when measuring negative feedback.

To have a better idea of this metric and compare different posts, take into account how many users this post has reached.

Calculate the percentage of negative feedback on each your post and the average rate of negative feedback on your page.

Make the use of these 6 metrics to make your marketing in Facebook more effective

Your Facebook page effectiveness measurement may seem to be a daunting task. You will have to calculate percentage, export data to Excel. But in order to understand where to get the relevant data and its meaning it is better to do it manually at first.

Later, you can save you time by using free third-party tools for analytics: Page Analyzer and Simply Measured or some paid ones: Quintly, Pagelever, PostAcumen and Wisemetrics.

The post 6 metrics you should measure in Facebook appeared first on - Promodo Blog.

Online store owners frequently encounter such problems as high bounce rate, short time on site, low conversion, etc. Some of the causes could be usability mistakes and bad user experience. In this post we will list you 7 such usability fails as well as will give you ux tips on how to fix them properly. 

1. No prominent headlines

Many designers think they shouldn’t make headlines too big and prominent, which stand out from the rest. They claim such headlines are too pushy, and can turn off the customer rather than attract. However, researches show, that headlines is the page element which receives most of attention. It is viewed more than flash banners. Some interesting facts about headlines:

• headlines grab user’s attention almost instantly, even images can’t beat them;
• before making decision about what to do the next -  stay on the site or leave it – user scans one-two words from headline first;
• time which user devotes to viewing headline is about one second.

Thus, if you don’t have elaborated, prominent headlines, you are likely to lose a certain share of your sales.

2. Slow page loads

It won’t be a secret if we tell you that the lower site page loads, the more people leave the site without viewing its content. According to the research results conducted by Microsoft Bing, a 2-second delay in page responsiveness worsens the user impression by 3.8 %, profit per user drops by 4.3%, and number of clicks reduces by 4.4%. Internet users usually do not want to wait, if the page loads badly, they just close it. Besides, page load speed affects the site rankings. If you care about them, optimize your site pages.

3. Typeface and intervals 

Right typefaces, spacing between lines and chapters and colours have a huge impact on how quickly users navigate through the site and how they are engaged with the content. The research results prove this statement. An interesting fact: smaller gaps between lines helps read faster, but reduces the comprehension of the content and vice versa. Low contrast between typography color and background hinders text reading and demands extra effort to recognize it.

Some usability tips: it isn’t the best practice to reduce the page height by sacrificing the characters size. Also, you should rememberthat text illegibility is more important than its beauty.

4. Reading patterns

Users’ reading behavior largely defines their path through the site. As the survey shows, most of the Internet users read the pages in F-shaped pattern. So the left side of a page generally receives more attention than the right one (about 69% of the time a user spends on scanning the left side). So the most important message you want to communicate to your potential customer should be located to the left from the center.

5. Complicated navigation

Most probably, that after viewing your headlines, a user will go on to study your site menu. According to the study results, 70% of users prefer to click the links rather than use site search. That is why site navigation is a very essential part of user experience. Search is the option only when people can’t find what they need.

On top of that, navigation links placement matters as well – they should be located right where the users expect them to find. Creative design is a good thing only when it doesn’t make site navigation more complicated.

6. Three-click rule

Among web usability tips there is one belief: if the user comes to your site and doesn’t find what they need in three clicks, he gets really disappointed. It could be true, especially considering how impatient Internet users are these days. Although one study shows that three-click rule is  rather a myth. There is not big difference between 3 and 12 clicks, because everything depends on the type of actions. In many cases users are ready to make some efforts.

So instead of blindly following three-click rule, focus more on the overall process. Concentrate on making the site navigation easier – each step should be intuitive and clear to the user.

7. Long pages

The search, giving some usability testing tips, shows that long pages have at least two advantages:

• more content which gives more chances to persuade a user to buy something;
• long pages filter the visitors quality – if the user has read the page till the end, there are more interested in your offer.

That being said, such filter can turn off a substantial number of potential customers as well. Another research leads to conclusion that the longer the page is, the less people will stay on it. To take advantage of this principle and make the users stay on the page, divide the text into short chapters, use subheadings, and feel free to leave a lot of space between text chunks.  This way you will make the page more legible as well as ensure users have no difficulties reading it and understand the main idea you want to communicate to them.

The post Usability: 7 Mistakes that Doom Your Sales appeared first on - Promodo Blog.

News and Events

Google+ Unveils New Features in Bid to Consolidate Position

Google+ is considered a leading social network but it somehow lacks the allure of Facebook and Twitter. This is why there is not much buzz about it even when the number of users is increasing. Recently, Google+ unveiled five new features that point towards attracting more people and getting them to sign up. Overall, the aim is to improve user experience people get through Google+ so that retention becomes easier. Read more at eConsultancy.

Schema.Org: Tell Google Where Your Logo Is

Google has introduced a new schema.org markup organizations can use to tell the search engine where their favorite logo is to be found. It is a concrete step taken by Google towards making branding easier for companies in particular. They can now easily associate their organization with a memorable and visually appealing image. Read more at Google Webmaster Central.

Ad Videos on Newsfeed plus Other Exciting Developments

Facebook has made ad videos available on the newsfeed. Brands will be able to display 15-second videos, probably in the sidebar that are on autoplay. The videos are expected to run on mute with users getting the option of turning the sound on. YouTube has rolled out premium subscription channels that will offer content to people willing to pay for it. This comes in the wake of Google updating YouTube video trends in real time giving advertisers more control over what works. Read more at Hubspot.

New Layout and Automatic Hashtags on Google+

The changes to Google+ seem to be coming thick and fast with the team also changing the layout of the social network significantly. Now, the display will show content across different columns to the user. Depending on the size of the screen being used, users will be able to see one, two or three columns. The increased span is expected to cover the entire width of the screen. Google+ also announced that automatic hashtags will be added to any content posted by users on the website, making it easier to find. Read more at Marketing Land.

Useful Posts worth Reading and Bookmarking

Will Google Catch Up to Guest Blogging?

The Penguin update last year caught a lot of websites off guard and hurt their SEO considerably. As a result, webmasters had to find alternative methods of link building. Among the most popular ones is guest blogging. Yet, there is a genuine concern that Google may be up to the task once again. It remains to be seen whether Google actually pursues guest blogging like it did unnatural links. Read more at eConsultancy.

Matt Cutts Teaches You How To Use Google Chrome

Google Chrome is the most widely used browser in the world. On his website, Google’s Matt Cutts recently shared a long list of tips you can follow to improve your experience of using the browser. The list has been in circulation since 2008 with Cutts adding to it on a regular basis. Given his reputation, there is little doubt that the tips are indeed useful and helpful. Read more at Matt Cutts’ official website.

Optimizing 6 Key Marketing Metrics

As a marketer, your focus will be on using the best tactics for promoting a business. Yet, there are some key marketing metrics you might ignore which your CEO pays a lot of attention to. You have to work towards improving them if you are to keep your CEO happy. They are most based around the amount of money you have to spend on acquiring a customer. Read more at Hubspot.

Getting on Top of Disavow

Google hates spam and anyone who engages in spam. There was a time when most marketers and SEO experts were using backhand techniques to get the job done and Google is still trying to counter them. One of the ways in which Google ensures this is through the disavow tool. Yet, there are some question marks about how it works and whether it is of any use at all. This is why you need to understand the concept behind it so you can get on top of it. Read more at SEOmoz.

Shun the Standard Carousel

The carousel no doubt remains a favorite of eCommerce websites and most of them are using it. However, the conversion rate you can achieve through the standard carousel isn’t mindboggling or of a level which would make you feel confident about it. Therefore, you are better off trying to find alternative ways to get the conversions you are looking for. You will see the difference for yourself. Read more at eConsultancy.

Marketing on YouTube in 2013

The fact that a company making blenders is able to get over 200 million views on its video is astounding to say the least. It is a foregone conclusion that the company is doing something right to be able to get such a huge following on the video sharing website. Fortunately for you, there are some simple steps you can follow for marketing your business on YouTube in 2013. Stick to the plan and you will be able to market your business in the best way possible. Read more at Kissmetrics.

Google & Authorship Credit

Authorship is one of the major concerns for Google at present. The search engine has been trying to filter out spun and low value content and for this purpose it has been rewarding people who come up with fresh and originally content that is geared towards SEO. The Authorship credit is one of the ways in which you can enhance your credibility in the eyes of Google, yet Google itself keeps tweaking the guidelines available for Authorship. What is known though is that Google is looking to improve it. Read more at Search Engine Land.

How to Create Killer Vines

Believe it or not, it has been 100 days since Vine was first launched. Still, there are people who are yet to master the art of using vines to their advantage. It is for this people that a guide must be provided for creating killer vines. From defining the purpose to being creative, there are different steps you have to complete along the way to creating killer videos. Read more at eConsultancy.

Things to Learn About Marketing Automation

Online marketing is a tough and tedious job. You need to put in a lot of effort to get the results you are looking for. This is the reason why some marketers automate the marketing process. Even though they find it more convenient, there are some missteps they face along the way. So, it is better for them to be familiar with the potential pitfalls so that they can avoid them from the outset. Read more at Hubspot.

Plane Crash Safer Than Banner Ad

You would not believe it but stats clearly show that people have a better chance of making it out alive after a plane crash than they have of surviving an atrocious banner ad. One can’t help but feel sorry for the people who are creating banner ads that are used widely across the internet. Native ads are a much better option and offer some great advantages as well. Read more at Unbounce.

Making the Most of Google Suggest

Google Suggest is one of the most polarizing features of the search engine. It shows irrelevant things about your search query even as you start typing. What you might not know is that you can use Google Suggest to improve your content marketing skills. The key is to understand the basic tips and tricks you should follow. Read more at Internet Marketing Ninjas.

Writing Awesome Headlines

The headline may not get the most attention but it is the catalyst for your success. Most of the time, people decide whether or not to read the rest of the content based on the headline. This is why there is no option for you but to learn how to create awesome headlines. There are some great tips and tricks you can use for this purpose. Read more at Unbounce.

Making Email Mobile-Friendly

The day is not far when at least half of the internet users will be accessing their emails through mobile devices. The conventional emails cannot be viewed properly on the condensed screen therefore marketers have to make their emails mobile-friendly. Else, they could end up losing potential customers. Read more at Marketing Land.

How eCommerce Site Can Build Links

Google has become stricter than ever when it comes to link building. The tactics you would have been using a year ago are no longer effective. You need to think out of the box and come up with innovative ways to build links for your eCommerce website. The first thing you need to do is to make your mind regarding the potential of link building for eCommerce websites so that you don’t have second thoughts later on. Read more at Search Engine Journal.

Videos and Infographics of the Week

Online Shopping in China

China may very well be on its way to becoming the largest nation in terms of online shopping. The Chinese are expected to spend £177 billion on online shopping this year alone. An infographic details the trends and statistics about China’s growing demand for online retail and how it compares to other nations. View the infographic at eConsultancy.

Google Search Throws Out Black Hat and Link Spammers

Matt Cutts recently revealed in a video that Google Search has had enough of black hat SEO techniques and link spam. After the summer, you would be hard pressed to find search results featuring any website that uses black hat SEO or has spam links. He revealed not one but ten different points regarding SEO. Watch the video at Search Engine Land.

Being Proactive in Terms of SEO

SEO is a constantly evolving art. The trends and techniques keep changing from time to time. Keeping pace with them is difficult but necessary. Therefore, you need to start preparing for the expected future changes in SEO to avoid getting caught like a deer in the headlights. You can learn more about it through this week’s Whiteboard Friday video. Watch the video or read the transcription at SEOmoz.

The post Friday Catch-up: Most Important News and Posts about SEO and Online Marketing this Week appeared first on - Promodo Blog.

Personalization search results have left many enthralled on how search engines like Google and Bing know exactly what they are looking for. Search engines have become quiet smart nowadays; if you don’t believe it, try it for yourself! Put your name in the Google search engine and you will be surprised to see the results. The personalized search feature enables you to dominate all search engine result pages by showing all your social media profiles on the first page.

The question comes down to why didn’t other people having the same name as you appear in your search engine results?

Well, with the advent of the personalized search result feature, Google and all other popular search engines now bias their search results according to a particular user. This means that if two searchers are looking for same terms, they will get to view different search results.

What is Personalization in Search?

Personalization search is a new, smart and default feature that enables search engines to provide users  with best possible and most relevant search results. This feature tries to get closer to the user’s intended search.

Like Google and Bing, other search engines are also now incorporating a personalization feature. A Russian Search engine, Yandex, also recently rolled out the personalized search function; however, it does not have a full personalization feature. The reason is, though a majority of people find this feature quite useful and time saving, they don’t like all the results to be bias. Therefore, Yandex offers a certain degree of personalized search.

Key Factors for Personalization of Search

Search engines like Bing and Google keep track and collect specific information about users. Search engines have now started keeping track of user’s previous queries, web history, geographic positions, social media connections and browsers language.

Prior Queries

If you have searched for “scuba diving” and right after that you search for “Malibu”, the personal search feature also includes search results for “scuba diving Malibu”

Web History

This helps search engines for showing you personalized results. Web history includes queries made and pages in the search engine results clicked and visited.

Social Media Connections

The Google Social Share Search integrates search results from one’s friend and contacts on Google accounts. With this you can see background images of people you already know in the search engine results pages. Besides Google, other search engines are also actively using social media shares from different channels like Twitter, Facebook and other sharing tools for enhanced personalized search results relevant to the user.

Geographical Position

This feature enables search engines to identify your IP address and show relevant query results according to your location.

International Personalized Search

This feature works across languages too. If you live in Germany and you type Rock of Ages, you would probably get search results related to Rock-Open Air in Seebronn. The results will display rock concerts about to take place in Seebronn while you meant to find results related to Tom Cruise’s movie the Rock of Ages. But had you searched for Tom Cruise before you typed Rock of Ages, you will get the desired results. This means, search engines offer personalized searches according to different locations. Therefore, in order to get your desired search results internationally, you first have to help the search engines understand exactly what you want. Once the search engine understands your queries, it will start delivering you the specific results you want. Then you don’t have to insert different and numerous keywords to browse through relevant results.

Does Personalized Search Affect Your Search Engine Optimization Strategies?

Your business website search result page ranking is quite important. If you website is listed in the top search results, your business will attract more web traffic and get more customers. Also, being among the top search results helps increase brand visibility and impactful brand identity.

Denying the fact that personalized search has zero impact on your SEO strategies is like running away from reality. The truth is that though this feature does not completely bring your page ranking down, it only affects the results of a fraction of all users; still it has definitely given marketers a good run for their money. Now brands have to gear up and push their search engine optimization strategies up a notch.

Keyword Stuffing Does Not Work Any More

Keyword stuffing and creating pages of content will not secure you a spot in the top searches. Now businesses have to modify their SEO strategies to make things work in their brand’s favor.

High Quality Content with Relevant Keywords

First, businesses must identify the relevant keyword phrases to be on the top SERP. This can be done by closely studying your marketing automation analytics. Once you identify the keyword phrases, then it’s time to create high quality content to stay among the top search engine results.

Learn how your customers track you through organic searches, keywords they usually use to find your blogs and social media pages. This will help you create content that appeals to your buyers and also helps you direct your SEO strategies in the right direction.

Publish Content on Industry Specific Blogs

Like it’s said, content is king, try to create product related problem solving content. Post content on industry specific blogs. Make sure your quality content can be easily shared on popular websites.

Optimize for Personal Search

If you keep on creating quality and unique content based on relevant keywords and posting it actively, search engines will pick you and place you on top SERPS.

Your business goal of being visible on your likely buyers personalized search results is only possible if you focus on content marketing, lead generation and also lead nurturing. This will help you make your way to the top.

The post Personalization of Search appeared first on - Promodo Blog.

Merchandising has much in common with usability. To say more – usability is a part of merchandising.

During one walk in a supermarket I thought about merchandising having incredibly much in common with usability. To say more – usability is a part of merchandising. Inspired with such observation I decided to write an article on how actually use in practice the key ways of merchandising in the context of online stores.

Merchandising is a set of technologies aiming at improving communications between goods and a customer in the points of sales. The task of merchandising is making the goods to be seen and bought.

And now let us consider the ways of merchandising that allow to substantially increase online store conversion: 

1. Show the “face” of the goods

The golden rule of merchandising states that the goods on the shelves must be arranged showing the face of the packaging to the customer. It is this position that helps achieve the best view of the goods. Thanks to that the probability to increase the sales is multiplied.

2. “The golden shelf”

The goods that are placed on the customer’s eye-level are the most sold. Thus, it is crucial to occupy this very “golden shelve”. It is easy to identify such area in supermarkets, but in online stores the situation is quite different. How do you understand where the “golden shelve” area is? We should remember the “I-Tracking ” technology which helps fix the most viewed areas. If you cannot apply it for some reasons, you should look at the clicks heatmap in web-analytics systems, study the experience of successful online stores, experiment.

3. Price tags and other POS-materials

POS-materials are all sorts of material marketing details that accompany the goods in the points of sales and aim at increasing the demand for it. Here belong the price tags, wobblers, promo-stands, stands, stoppers, flags and other things attracting attention.

All these can and must be used at the pages of your online store, only here all the enumerated items become a part of the design: tinted boxes, banners, buttons etc.

Price tags require your special attention. The information on them should be easily read. Use the “price range” – was / is. Highlight action prices with red. Specify the discount rate. All these methods make possible to increase the sales manifold. 

4. More space to the sales leader

The goods which are in greater demand should occupy more space on the shelves.

If we apply the above mentioned rule in online stores, it means that the sales leaders should occupy significant space on the page. For instance, you can make a block on the page where the key leaders should be shown in various, the most marketable categories. In the search you should make sorting from the most sold to the least sold by default. The same should be done concerning the catalogue pages, where the sales leaders must be given credit for. Trust us, they will be grateful to you by increasing their sales.

5. Newbies must be closer to the leaders

It is the rule of life.  If you want to be famous, stick to those who are already popular. It works in trade too. Pay attention to the supermarket shelves: new products are situated near the mastodons there. People strive after the proven leaders and, by chance, they try something new. And, as something reliable and trustworthy is nearby, even conservatives feel psychologically free to try themselves as innovators.

6. Arrange the goods in the best-selling places

There are areas in supermarkets where the flow of customers is the fullest. These are the entrance areas, cash desks, corridors between the departments. In online stores this role is played by the main page and the pages of the most frequently sold goods. So, if you want to increase the sales of some particular goods, we recommend placing it on the most viewed pages.

7. Shelves should not be empty

The empty shelf in the store is a signal for a customer about going to the other store, as something is wrong with this one. Personally I feel uncomfortable when I see emptiness in sales points. I have an instant impression that this place is in a crisis, and who wants to be with losers? As I said before, everyone sticks to the leaders.

For online stores the sign “the goods is not available” takes the place of empty shelves. If the customer sees too many of such signs (that is, at least a quarter of the goods available), he will not purchase from you. He will go to the sales leader where the shelves are full to satiety. 

8. Urgent sells must be closer

The goods you need to sell pretty much must be on the most visible places. In supermarkets, for example, they put the goods with the very nearest expiry date closer to the customer  There are few people who look deep inside, only those who know about the expiry date. In case of online store few people dig into multiple pages of the catalogue searching for something that can be found on the first page.

9. Attention 70/30

Every merchandizer knows that 70 percent of a customer’s attention is paid to the shelves to the right of him and only 30 – to those that are on the left side. But being offline, a person can move in different ways and thus something to the left of him becomes something to the right. In case of online stores the right side will stay the right one. That’s why, distributing the information keep in mind the areas of maximum attention.

10. To touch, to smell, to listen

In order to inspire the customer for buying the goods you should give him a chance to get acquaint with it closer: to feel, to measure, to take in hands. The relevant music and fragrances help stimulate the sales. Even lighting is essential.

What should be done in case of an online store where the communication area is limited with virtual frames? In the first place, you are to introduce the possibility to “turn the goods” from different angles. Secondly, you should make a video review, a quality one! Thirdly, offer a guest try-on. You can also make a program where the customer’s photo is downloaded and he could try on the things he is interested in (a game “dress a doll” of sorts). The situation is more complicated with aromas, of course, as the technologies are still far from transferring the aromas in space. But there is still a design due to which you can arouse the necessary associations!

As you see, classic marketing can no way be charged off, as, judging by experience, its efficiency is quite high. You just have to adapt this knowledge to your benefit.

The post 10 ways of merchandising for online stores appeared first on - Promodo Blog.

The Importance of B2B Relationships

Whether you own or work for a huge, international corporation or a modest SME, business connections are vital for company success. Shockingly, some believe they don’t need business connections because they simply see this as a way of brand boasting, and they have a marketing team for that, but business connections with like-minded companies are in fact about so much more. 

Amy Harris, the Marketing Manager for Expert Market, a UK B2B website, helps give tips for creating business connections on Twitter. 

Not only can connections help enhance growth for those in B2B sectors such as recruitment agencies and business consultants, they also provide a good opportunity for benchmarking, for learning where you stand in the rankings and how you can improve to work your way up via the influence of others. Social networking has allowed for relevant business connections to be made quickly and easily, with Twitter being a world leader in helping to establish vital B2B relationships.

It’s All About Customer Service 

Twitter has become a global customer service platform for many companies around the world, with customers and service users often finding they get quicker and more relevant assistance through the social network than they do over the phone. Why? Because it’s public.

The way a company handles and responds to enquiries (and even criticism) on Twitter says a lot about the business. Want to make more business connections? Then act professional. 

Businesses are not going to want to be associated with companies that don’t look after their customers – it’s a sure fire way to a bad reputation. Show others that you’re interested in your business and your business’s growth through customer satisfaction.

Make Use of Hashtags

Got an event coming up, or recently launched a new product? 

Get the information out there using a relevant hashtag. Retweets – and having other Twitter users utilise the hashtag – gets attention and it may just end up trending in your local area (or even worldwide!). If you’re looking to impress other businesses and show how your company is relevant to them, choose a hashtag that immediately draws attention. 

Make it short, make it snappy, and most importantly, make it relevant. You want something that businesses will see and know straight away to be of interest to them. Promoting events in this way, such as user workshops or hack days for the IT industry, also encourages other businesses to come along, meet you and get involved.

Take an Interest

If you want other businesses to take an interest in you, set an example by taking an interest in them. If you want something, go for it. Don’t wait for it to come to you. 

Use the search function to browse local companies who offer similar products or services, retweet anything you find interesting or relevant and be sure to respond to anything you have thoughts on. Twitter isn’t a one way street; it’s there to encourage connections and two way communication. 

If you want others to find your company in the same way, be sure to fill out your business profile, SEO’d to the max. It’s all well and good writing poetry about why your company is amazing, but if you want to be visible on social media, you’ll need to make the right noises.

Get to the Point 

140 characters is all you have to work with on Twitter – not a great deal by any stretch of the imagination, so be creative. If there’s one thing that puts others off it’s using a tweet simply as an introduction to a longer text. It sparks boredom. 

You need to get your point across – and well – in just a few short sentences. This shows other like-minded companies that you don’t faff about. You know what you’re talking about, you know how to convey it – and you take action. 

A series of snappy tweets is more likely to encourage connections and communication than a link to a long, padded out article that people only read half of. Twitter is the ideal platform for busy business development officers who have little time on their hands and need fast and simple ways to track down relevant businesses and form long lasting relationships and partnerships.

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Google today is undoubtedly the hub for all internet needs, whether it is entertainment, marketing or shopping. Buyers and sellers alike use Google’s numerous features for solutions, and Google Shopping has been another welcomed feature. Google Shopping, previously known as Google Product Search, has seen substantial growth since its official inception as a shopping portal in October 2012.

When Google Product Search Was Free

Before October 2012, Google Shopping was a free portal and provided listings of products from different vendors. Any company could easily submit product information through Google Base and end up on the lists. Although Google did sell advertising via AdWords which displayed products, it did not charge merchandisers for submitting their products, and did not offer features like the price comparison services that Google Shopping offers now.

Google Shopping

Merchandisers were quite skeptical when Google announced that they will need to pay for something which was already offered to them for free, and many thought that these changes will hardly be welcomed. However, those skepticisms were soon put to rest when only within a few months Google shopping showed substantial profits and benefits for sellers and buyers alike.

How Marketers Benefit From Google Shopping

Google Shopping is well integrated and better equipped to cater to the increasing demands of consumers looking for online shopping solutions. It not only offers great deals and product search results for Google local shopping but also for consumers across the globe, hence marketers are catering to a vast clientele by simply making their products readily available online. Following are some of the many ways marketers in particular have benefited from Google Shopping:

• Search Engine Results Page is less cluttered with only related products showing up.
• Merchants are no longer able to redirect landing pages, switch prices or other unethical practices which in turn will gain more consumer trust and thus more business.
• Better features like comparing prices, and Google Promotions. 

Important Statistics

Although Google Shopping is relatively new, statistics show that merchants have yielded substantial profits in such a limited time. Following statistics have been taken from Google’s report and show the early returns for marketers soon after its makeover. 

As you can see, Google Shopping has only benefitted merchandisers by providing a filtered system which leaves very little room for spammers or unprofessional sellers to make it into the Google Shopping search results.

What You Need to Do

Google Shopping is taking suppliers places and more and more merchandisers are joining in, and with the changing Google settings, there are hardly any loopholes to get ahead of the competition. However, with the following tips and tricks you can to improve your position on Google Shopping and make it to the top of the search lists:

• Make sure that your inventory management is well integrated, providing fast and updated items only.
• Make sure that your tracking parameters are accurate and set up properly.
• Check what the competitors are doing and observe the strategies they are using to get ahead in the listings. Also compare your own ratings, prices, reviews etc to see what you can be doing wrong.
• Focus on SEO and SEM strategies and coordinate between the two, see what is working and what needs to be revised. If you are hiring professionals to help with Search Engine Marketing, then make sure that they are not using malicious practices which in turn can harm your business and rankings.

Google Shopping VS Amazon Product Ads

For many years, Amazon Product Ads have been the go to place for merchandisers and consumers alike. However, the cost effectiveness, simpler interface and more productivity have made Google Shopping the ultimate hub. According to a report by the CPC Strategy, Google Shopping sent 120 percent more traffic than Amazon Product Ads to merchants. Google Shopping’s CPC turned out to be 32.5 percent lower than that of Amazon Product Ads in the fourth quarter. Hence, it is safe to say that although Google Shopping now charges for its services, they are still profitable and result inducing for merchandisers.

Google Shopping for Suppliers

At the start of the year 2013, Google introduced the Google Shopping for Suppliers. The option primarily only showed in Google Shopping USA, and then moved on to the rest of the world. Google Shopping for Suppliers provides convenient and hassle free solutions for businesses or individuals wishing to purchase bulk products.

Google Shopping for Suppliers has a different date feed system and requirements as compared to Google Shopping. This initiative is meant to primarily target B2B businesses, which were quite limited on Google Shopping.

Google Verified Suppliers

Google Shopping for Suppliers offers a verification system which requires merchandisers to pay a security deposit in order to provide reliable services to the buyers. Suppliers in the United States and Taiwan pay $1,000 as a verification fee, suppliers in China have to pay ¥6,000 plus VAT and suppliers in Hong Kong will need to pay HK$7,500. This is a one-time fee which provides those suppliers with an exclusive badge and the products are shown ahead of the unverified suppliers on Google Shopping results. Verified Suppliers will also have a better ranking in sponsored results on Google.

Although the service is relatively new, with many features and technicalities unclear, experts are predicting great benefits for buyers and sellers alike. Products required by B2B businesses are at times only available across borders, and being able to purchase them conveniently via reliable sources has a lot of potential and scope. Google Shopping for Suppliers already has a wide range of listings with numerous options ranging from products like fans, batteries, bottled water, clothing and a lot more.

Google Shopping has something in store for everyone and its easy to use procedures and punctual services have gained the trust of consumers from all over the world. The changes are relatively new, but if current statistics are anything to go by, then experts predict, that just like Google’s other ventures, Google Shopping too will become the ultimate portal for its customers across the globe.

The post What Google Shopping Has In Store for You appeared first on - Promodo Blog.

Myth #1

On its own, social media networks will hardly ever play a significant part in retail. However, popularity of social media increases year after year and it delivers consumers into shops across all channels, so it is certainly to be noted in e-commerce optimization.

The analysis of survey data allows talking about media breakthrough as a sales channel anytime soon. Indeed, the growth of Facebook and other social media networks was explosive over the last years. Indeed, only few of those surveyed mentioned they used social sites to make online purchases. Here are some of the survey results related to social networking:

• 60% of the respondents use social networking sites to connect with brands and retails, while only 10% surveyed consumers told that interaction with brands through social medial led them to certain online shops. 

• Using social networking sites for online shopping is a Chinese trend: 56% of surveyed Chinese consumers responded they made purchases via social network platforms, while the average % of social networkers who make online purchases in the rest of the world equal to 24%.

• 49% of the respondents answered they accessed the social media every day.

Myth #2: the main role of stores will be limited to showrooms in the future.

The majority of consumers indicate they may use social media networks to make online research, but they still do their shopping at physical stores.

A real physical store always was and is going to remain the main place in a shopping process. The surveyed were asked to answer some questions within the context of 11 product categories, and for9 in11 categories offline shops were chosen as place for both researching and purchasing. In addition to this:

• 23% of the respondents research consumer electronics online and after that go to an offline shop to make a purchase, as opposed to only 2% of those who act quite the opposite.

• Over the next 12 months consumers plan to make far more purchases in offline shops than online (using a tablet or a smartphone).

• Even in case with consumer electronics that is most often searched and bought online, 26% of the respondents still come to physical stores to do shopping.

• 73% of the respondents pointed out the main reason for offline shopping was possibility to see, to touch, and to try the goods. There is no such possibility while online shopping.

Myth #3: tablets will soon be the preferred online shopping devices.

Preferred devices for online searching and shopping always were and still are personal computers. Tablets and smartphones are not going to overtake PCs in the nearest future. However, the importance of these devices in online shopping process increases.

On their own, tablets become of great importance in consumers’ life: three-quarters of those who have got such devices use them at least once per day, and almost one-half of those users who access the media via tablets spend more than 11 hours a week in front of their devices screens. According to the survey results:

• Only 9% of the respondents claimed they began using their tablets for online shopping.

• Only 11% suppose they are about to start using their device more often for online shopping.

• On the other hand, more than one in three respondents all over the world are going to spend more time in front of their PCs browsing online shops

• In China 87% of internet shoppers use their PCs for Internet shopping every month.

Myth #4: consumers all over the world are getting alike.

Regardless of the fact that nowadays consumers shop across borders with more global retailers than ever before, their behavior and habits differ from country to country.

The world-wide reasons for making purchases online are low prices, free shipping, and ease of goods comparison. Offline stores attract by possibility to try and fit goods on. But in all other respects consumers from different countries differ. For example:

• Nearly half of the Chinese offline shoppers make their purchases with pleasure and consider it is fun.

• Less than half of online shoppers in China are driven to online shops in search of a particular brand or product. The mature markets’ consumers (Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, UK and USA) know what exactly they are looking for in online shops.

Myth #5: online retail will develop in accordance with China model.

China is certainly the setter of some key trends, however, multichannel and online retail will hardly follow the same scenario as China follows.

Last year’s survey showed that Chinese consumers got used to Internet shopping faster than the rest of the world. However, only 30% of respondents from China mentioned they used social networks for online shopping for more than 5 years, while this figure for the rest of the world is 44%.

This year Chinese consumers continue surprising us. The Heavenly Empire habitants are more active tablets or smartphones users in Internet shopping than users from other countries. But some factors indicate that China is not going to be the future model of online retail. In particular:   

• From a demographic point of view, a Chinese online shopper is younger and works more. These peculiarities can influence the purchasing behavior.

• The rapid evolution of wire communications and other parts of the infrastructure may be the reason why the Chinese get to using new technologies faster than anyone else.

Myth #6: domestic retailers will always have the “home field” advantage.

Consumers are increasingly fond of foreign retailers. Retail is a prerogative of local companies since long ago. In 2011 the majority of consumers top-rated Internet and offline shops located in a country they live in. In 2012 global retailers found their way into the list of favorite shopping places of consumers who are beyond the borders of other countries. For example:

•3 in10 favorite Canadian multichannel retailers are American companies.

• In Switzerland the list of 10 most popular shopping networks includes companies from other European countries (Ikea, Weltbild etc.).

• Respondents from Germany give preference to the three foreign retailers: Espirit, H&M, and C&A.

Myth #7: global Internet shops such as Amazon will always have a volume advantage over the local sites with online shopping carts.

Many local online retailers that work within the bounds of their countries manage to successfully hold their customers. Despite of the apparent dominance of such giants as Amazon and eBay, – in Germany, for example, 89% of online shoppers made purchases at Amazon during last 12 months – local players may still feel well in their niches: Amazon is present in Germany for 15 years already but possesses just 13.8% of total internet sales in the country. According to PwC researches local retailers have more chances of earning local consumers’ loyalty.

Myth #8: sellers are in better stead than manufacturers (brands).

It is believed that retailers stand directly in front of buyers and manufacturers stand behind the retailers. However, the survey demonstrates that many customers do shopping directly from manufacturers and many of them do not distinguish between sellers and their favorite brands.

In the nearest 5 years, direct sales may turn to be one of the most significant phenomena both for producers and sellers. If the respondents participated in the survey are believed to be a reliable representative sample, one may say that consumers actively use the possibility of direct interacting with manufacturers in the Internet:

• 35% of the respondents made purchases directly from brand websites.

• China (56%) and USA (52%) are the leaders in “direct shopping”.

• 29% of all respondents mentioned the reason of going directly to brand sites was brand loyalty. This is a bad sign for retailers, because dealing with brand loyalty by means of low prices is unlikely to work out.

Myth #9: Online shops “lay hands on” on sales from other channels.

As a matter of fact, consumers not just go from one channel to another one, but spend more time with multichannel retailers in general. According to the survey results consumers have their favorite multichannel retailers they prefer. Almost every1 in5 respondent claimed that his/her favorite retail gets 25% more time in the structure of multi-channel shopping than the others. The task of retails is to get into the list of favorite stores, as 95% of respondents mentioned there are no more than 5 networks they visit online and offline. The rest sellers do not attract their attention.

Myth #10: low price is the main shopping driver.

While making purchases in their favorite stores – regardless of the channel – consumers more value quality and innovative brand propositions over prices.   

• The price is not of critical importance while shopping. Low prices may help a retailer to become one of the favorite shopping places, but low prices won’t make customers spend more money on a consistent basis. 

• The decor of the store and kindness of the stuff has no significant effect on the behavior of customers and the amount of money they spend.

• As soon as the shop becomes a favorite multi-channel source of goods, 4 factors matter: fast and safe delivery, favorable return policy, exclusive or early access to products, and innovativeness of products.

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Blog is one of powerful promotion tools. Blog helps gather a solid audience and, what is more important – it has a positive SEO impact, especially, in the light of search engines love towards mellow, fresh, unique (and saturated with keywords) content.       

However, there are frequent cases when online store blogs are poor and contain one or two posts, dated as early as 2010, or only exist in the form of news feed composed of new arrivals, promotions, deals, etc. Such variant can take place, but is it the maximum of what we can do?  In this post you will read 9 tips on post topics for online stores.

1.    Step-by-step guide

Step-by-step guides, advices and real-life examples. The content of this kind is quite popular online which can help you win the hearts of your competitors’ audience.  A piece of advice: make such guides in the form of the list. Lists lend themselves well to reading on the Internet.

2.    Reviews

It is a common practice to explore the product before buying it. That is why new arrival reviews are likely to drive users from the search engines. Review structure should be the following:

- short product description + photo;

- the description of the test/application, perhaps -  video;

- pros and cons;

- link to this product page of your online store!

3.    Clients

Work with your clients: interview the most loyal ones, ask for a detailed review of a product they bought from you, give new product to test for free in exchange of such reviews. Their content has a viral potential and is able to build up more trust to your store.

4.    Links

Manual filtering of the content – content curation – has become widespread these days. Its popularity has been caused by continuous growth of information available.  By picking links to interesting thematic materials you will be able to gain new subscribers, that later could be turned into buyers.

5.    Opinions

If your product niche experiences highs and lows from time to time, and you have your own opinion as to this market environment, product quality, manufacturers, and so on, publish it. Disputable, controversial posts could generate tangible traffic.

6.    Fresh news

Try tracking the latest trends and events related to your online store niche and publish them on blog. They will surely become handy for at least some of your site visitors.

7.    Expert opinion

Expert opinion is an opinion about a specific product or its aspect. Pots featuring expert opinions will make your online store and the product assortment presented there more reliable, as it has been composed by professionals.

8.    Questions and answers

One way or other, you have to deal with customer questions.  If you receive an essential volume of such traffic you can post a weekly digest of answered questions. This way you will also be able to add new materials to your FAQ block.

9.    Guest posts

Invite guest authors – experts, professionals, influential users – to feature on your blog. Useful publications of this kind are able to attract new users to your site – for example, guest blogger readers.

The post Online store blog: what to write about? appeared first on - Promodo Blog.

According to a popular opinion – ads on Facebook are not efficient. Social networking users use social sites to communicate with their friends and to entertain themselves, so why should they go to your site and make a purchase? Even if this is true – Zappos doesn’t believe it.

Thanks to the traffic delivered to the site by means of Facebook ads the company earns an annual $10 million ROI. Nate Luman, social marketing manager at Zappos.com, tells how do Facebook ads work for them and what one needs to know to manage Facebook ads and perform the same.

It is well known that Facebook ads guarantees a great number of impressions and allows gaining a lot of likes. But that was not enough for the Zappos.com’s team. They decided to use Facebook as a marketing channel to attract the traffic to their site.

Previously the traffic department was focused on the search engine advertising, but they decided to shift the focus on Facebook, after advertising in this social network showed great potential and consistently growing results.

Zappos has developed an effective strategy for their large advertising campaign on Facebook. Below are given the five main principles that Zappos.com marketing specialists followed. 

1. Driving top purchase funnel traffic

People use Facebook to communicate and to entertain; they do not intend to do shopping. That is why it is logical that traffic from Facebook to your official website is mostly the top-funnel traffic. Advertising strategy should be developed in accordance with the purchase funnel your target audience is from. In other words –proceed gradually. There is usually a single product featured on Zappos ads – a shoe or an accessory. By clicking the ad users are delivered to a targeted landing page and get access to an extended assortment of products.

2. Matching expectations with real data

It is not worth comparing the results of FB advertising with search engine advertising. This social networking site if perfect tool for attracting top funnel traffic, while search engine advertising is targeted at various levels of a buying cycle.

It is more reasonable to correlate FB advertising with those paid search campaigns that are supposed to attract people exactly from top-funnel traffic. These may be the queries such as:

• Shoes;

• Accessories;

• Clothes;

• Handbags.

3. Optimizing top-funnel landing pages

As stated before, Zappos has a single product being featured on ads. But this doesn’t mean that users are encouraged to buy particularly that product. A customer is able to check the range of products (shoes, clothing, or accessories) on a landing page. Here are three essential features of Zappos.com landing pages:

• Targeting by style or a type of product – on a landing page there are the goods from the same category (or the same brand) as on the ad customers clicked;

• The product from the ad that was clicked must be necessarily available on the landing page;

• User-friendly navigation – the design of a landing page should be comprehensive and easy to navigate.

In 2012 Facebook released several new advertising tools with remarketing feature. The point of remarketing is that after the user has left a page without completing a purchase he or she is shown the targeted ad appealing to return to that particular website page (point of a buying cycle) left previously. Despite the fact that majority of traffic driven from FB is top purchase funnel traffic, remarking tools in Facebook ads create possibilities for improving conversion rate, when users are already familiar with a brand and interested in particular offers.

4. Targeting in accordance with users’ profile pages

Planning and organizing are important part of any campaign. When Zappos.com started developing their marketing programs for Facebook first of all they chose goods for ad and its design. After that, they had to find a relevant audience to target.   

For some period of time this algorithm has been developing on its own. And, according to Nate Luman the determinative factor while making decisions were testing results. Nowadays the organization of campaigns entirely depends on the audience.

Marketing specialists build their campaigns on users’ data instead of focusing on products. Correlation of various users’ characteristics helps specialists to understand what kind of products and brands is the most relevant for every particular case. For example, here is a list of profile page activities of a user who is going to Zappos.com and data you need to analyze:

• Website analytics;

• Social networking sites analytics;

• Comments;

• Interests, regions, demographics and other data usually available from social networks.

Zappos team selected interesting characteristics to receive the most complete profiles that allow developing customized approach to every customer and provide custom solutions. The following data were taken into account: favorite radio stations, films, books, etc.

After they succeed to make a rough portrait of each audience segment (by the way, a statistically average Zappos’s customer is a middle-aged female with above average household income) the most difficult part started: the team had to target a certain product or a group of products at defined audience to show them targeted advertising.

Facebook helped Zappos to carry this out: FB interface allows uploading a lot of ads at a time. Moreover, only effective ones (those that sparked interest) are shown to customers. That is how a team decides what product to use as a “bait”.

5. Targeting the lower funnel

Facebook continues implementing new technologic solutions that allow to target by users from various levels of a funnel, but not only form a top-funnel. Here are the two main latest innovations: 

Custom Audiences – the service that allows finding off-line audience on Facebook by telephone numbers and e-mails to hold targeted campaigns for particular segments. Facebook comply with privacy requirements and ensures the security of its users’ personal data: tracking telephone numbers and e-mails is possible only in case this information was public.

Remarketing and retargeting – in 2012 Facebook launched its own platform for delivering retargeted advertisings on the social network (Facebook Exchange). This means even more possibilities to hold successful targeted advertising campaigns on Facebook. With the help of DSP marketing specialists can show ads depending on the history of customers’ activities.

Thus, taking into account how much do Facebook Ads cost you – advertising on Facebook may be efficient regardless of the level of purchase funnel your target customers are from. You are able to increase the efficiency and expand the client database by means of DSP service and by developing efficient strategy.

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