YHA - Paid Search Case Study

The Challenge

YHA is a charity with over 150 youth hostels in England & Wales that transforms young lives forever through travel and real adventure, opening their doors to almost 1m people each year.

During 2018 paid search performance declined across all campaigns. Impression share dropped off a cliff and revenue suffered. This was in part due to the rapid expansion of paid search bidding by online travel agents (OTAs) such as Booking.com.

YHA engaged us in March 2019 to reverse the slump in performance and to combat the growing market share of the OTAs.

The Solution

Our approach to improving the YHA accounts focused on building a solid foundation of keywords and ads, incremental changes based on data, and a series of test campaigns in different niche areas. 

The account we took over had many hundreds of ad groups across two accounts (including a Google Grant account). The quality of these ad groups varied enormously. Many had irrelevant keywords, generic or incorrect ad copy or had the wrong bid strategy to compete in search.

We isolated the best performing keywords and conducted our own keyword research. We also overhauled all the ad copy to make it relevant to the keywords and updating the proposition copy. We also added Responsive Search ads to the campaigns. After cutting large numbers of poorly performing campaigns, adding new campaigns and changing bid strategies and bid prices we started seeing some improvements in performance. 

The Results

After three months managing the account revenue was up year on year by 206%, from an increase in spend of only 10%.  The YHA's impression share also grew against competitor OTAs, resulting in a reduced cost per acquisition. 

“I’m delighted with the results achieved so far. We’ve not only seen a dramatic increase in traffic to the website and more accommodation sales, but we’re now making better use of the Google Grants account. This means we’re reaching more potential volunteers, funders and beneficiaries as well as families, friends and schools who could benefit from the charity in future.”

Jon Smith, Head of Digital, YHA (England & Wales)

Top Christmas Ecommerce Tips

Once everyone is back from their summer holiday, Christmas will come around before you know it. Here are our top ecommerce tips for getting ready for Christmas. Mine Your Data - Your most valuable resource for deciding what you should do next Christmas is data you have from last year. Look at who bought from you and when in previous years.  Use this data to build segments for your email campaigns. Review what products you sold most of last year. Can these categories be expanded? Are there any categories that didn't sell well? Additionally, review which promotions worked the best; what times of year and what types of promotion were they?   Embrace PPC - You might not normally use PPC but at Christmas it can be a great way to cut through the competition and boost traffic and sales. Customers are more likely to convert at Christmas which means better margins than the rest of the year. Google Shopping feeds, Remarketing Lists and image ads can take time to get right, especially if you have to go through external developers and designers so give yourself plenty of time to set these up.  Optimise Mobile & Tablet - Sales made with mobile phones last Christmas grew 14% compared to 2015 and are set to keep growing. We would hope that everybody has a responsive mobile template by now, but are you doing everything you can to make it easy to buy from you on mobile? Adding simple payment solutions like Paypal can give your conversion rates a real boost.  Improve Conversion with Plugins - Basket Abandonment functionality and review software, like Feefo or Trustpilot, are proven to improve conversion rates. We've seen great results with both types of software. If you want to get the most out of these improvements before Christmas, you're going to have to get coding and testing soon.  Site Speed, Code Freezes & Hosting - Slow speed or site crashes can cause huge revenue losses in the lead up to Christmas. We recommend a 'code freeze' in Q4 to prevent any unexpected bugs and changes taking down the site during peak business. It’s also worth checking with your hosting providers to see how easy it is to scale up your hosting capability during peak times.  Find out more about us here.

Teamseer - Adwords & Digital Marketing Case Study

TeamSeer is a market leading absence management software provider. Their Adwords Campaigns - which were managed in-house - were losing traction and YoY performance was down.

Method

Using Analytics we reviewed year-on-year performance and identified the factors that had changed that might explain the decline in performance. We also undertook Keyword Research to assess how relevant their 1+ year old keyword mix still was to the market.

Results

Once we put the numbers on context we found that traffic levels had remained constant but the conversion rate had been slipping. We sat down with them and took them through our list of page improvement recommendations. There was a set of immediate campaign changes that would improve conversion and traffic relevance, as well as a list of longer term areas to improve and test. Particular areas for optimisation were bid price, ad copy and keyword relevance.

Outcome

Improvements were instantaneous. The new bidding strategy and keyword work increased click through rates and conversions increased 80%.

Indigoblue - Digital Marketing Case Study

Indigoblue are leaders in Agile business transformation and training. They were looking for help with their SEO and PPC, and improving their overall web presence.

What We Did

We worked with Indigoblue to identify the core terms that defined their business. Having defined these terms we then used them to streamline their on-site keywords, as well as their PPC campaigns.

We also helped them transition to a new website. This included updating SEO elements, fixing crawl errors and redirecting old links to relevant new pages. Monthly 'mentoring' meetings keep the in-house web and marketing improvements moving forward.

Results

We were able to transition to the new site with no loss of SEO ranking. In fact we have seen a 25% increase in SEO traffic YoY and a 20% increase in new users across the site. PPC traffic is up 47%, with costs down 17% compared to last year.

The increase in traffic has not been huge but there has been a change in quality and relevance of the traffic. This is the key difference. Our keyword research and on-site positioning for SEO means that the traffic is now more qualified and more likely to convert, meaning much greater value for marketing spend.

Our approach to digital mentoring would suit any B2B or B2C business that is looking for a sustained improvement in marketing performance, or that is looking to navigate their way through large scale changes such as a new website.

New Case Study - Wilton Green

We've written a case study of some work we've been doing with Wilton Green Laundry and Dry Cleaning. You can see it here.

The Best Ecommerce Articles from July

In case you need something to read on holiday, here are some great articles about what's happening in the world of ecommerce:

• It can be hard to communicate with designers so that you get exactly what you want. This great article outlines how to write an effective design brief. From Quba, here.
• From Ecommerce Masterplan, this great podcast interview gives great insight into growing a multimillion pound business. See here.
• How are you innovating with your delivery options to compete with the biggest stores? Tesco is introducing one hour delivery. From Business Insider, here.
• From Bloomberg Technology, Amazon is joining companies like Stitch Fix and Trunk Club and entering the subscription box market. An interesting view here of how the biggest retailer of them all is getting serious about clothing - here. 
• The real trick to boosting conversion rates is to get your proposition right. This interesting article offers some thoughts on how to position your brand to drive more sales. From Econsultancy, here.

Top Ecommerce Articles from May

With a Bank Holiday Weekend approaching we thought you might like a bit of light reading for when you get bored of ice creams, sunshine and BBQs.

Here's a selection of some of the best ecommerce articles and blogs from around the web.

1. Google is changing their enhanced bid functionality, which may mean your cost per clicks could go up dramatically. Get the low down here: Enhanced CPC - The Latest Changes
2. Great insights into the need for - and the how-to of - international SEO - International SEO 5 Ways to Scale Performance
3. Can placing online orders ever be too easy? This article argues in favour of 'positive friction' - Why Increasingly Efficient UX Might Not Always Be A Good Thing
4. Google Optimize - Google's simple new split test tool - is now available for everyone. Here's a fairly dense but useful article explaining how to decide what to test and how to test: Conversion Optimisation - Research First Then Test
5. Does your current hosting solution mean you're leaving money on the table at Christmas? - 40% of Ecommerce Sites Crash During Seasonal Peaks

Need to know more? Visit our website here or send us an email to discuss your ecommerce needs. 

Top Ecommerce Articles from March

We've been busy at Moneyspyder on some exciting new projects so we've slackened off on the email front in the last couple of months.

So, after a bit of a break since our last email we're back with a round up of the most interesting news and blogs from the world of ecommerce.

1. If you're planning on moving your ecommerce site to a new agency, take a look at this good summary from Econsultancy of how to do it the right way - Nine Questions to Ask Your New Ecommerce Platform Supplier When Migrating
2. How good are you at producing regular, high quality content as part of your SEO strategy? Here are some tips from Search Engine Watch to get you going - 7 Quick Ways To Use Content Marketing to Boost Search Ranking
3. It's easy to forget that there's more to PPC than picking the right keywords. This article is a good reminder of the value of testing ad copy, and includes some good tips (From Search Engine Land) - Should You Bother Rewriting Your Ads
4. This is a great (but long) blog from Avinash Kaushik on the value of presenting data in an intelligent way to drive action. Perfect for anyone who has to create reports or motivate their boss - It's Not The Ink, It's The Think - 6 Effective Data Visualization Rules
5. From The Telegraph, MPs are debating the value of encouraging supermarkets to add 'Buy British' buttons. What do you think? Good idea or harebrained scheme? -Buy British Button Could Let Online Shoppers Filter Out Foreign Groceries 

Need to know more? Visit our website here or send us an email to discuss your ecommerce needs. 

How to Grow Your Ecommerce Business in 2017

It's that time of year when Ecommerce blogs and news sites take great pleasure in publishing their trend predictions for 2017. We've read them all, and re-read the ones from 2016 and have decided they're not very useful. 

Most trend list articles recommend new plugins and gimmicks that promise to make life easier and improve your bottom line (think drone delivery). The reality, however, is that ecommerce growth comes from a disciplined, multi-channel approach that isn't afraid to take risks and record the results.

Having said all that, here's our spin on the top trends for 2017, and for every year:

• The Increasing Importance of Mobile (this is mentioned in every article, every year) - If you still don't have a mobile site and a mobile strategy then, quite frankly, you're mad. With over 50% of internet traffic now mobile, if you don't have a mobile friendly site you are closing yourself off to at least half of your potential customer base. 
• Live Customer Engagement and Customer Services - Live Chat, phone lines where customers can talk to real people and humane refund and replace policies have been around forever, but as the ecommerce landscape gets more competitive, hugging your best customers will become more important.
• Delivery and Returns - Again, a good delivery and return strategy has always been essential but, with the onward march of Amazon Prime, businesses have to think long and hard about how they can offer next day delivery at attractive prices, or risk losing out to the big players. 
• Payments - Think back to how many times recently you have bought something from Amazon simply because it's easier when they have your card and address details already on file. What's more, as of 2016, phone and contactless payments are here to stay. When did you last talk to your payment solutions provider (PSP) with regards to one click payments?
• Content - The mantra 'Content is King' wasn't invented last year, or the year before. It's been around for ages. But as competition for ecommerce eyeballs grows it becomes even more important to create content and create a solid brand that will make a compelling case for your products over anybody else's (eg. Amazon).

So, as always, success in ecommerce is about a strong proposition, a decent site and a disciplined approach to marketing and communication. Hard work, not gimmicks, will win the day in 2017.

If you want help reviewing your recent performance and identifying areas where you could create a step-change in results this year, do get in touch. We have over ten years experience helping ecommerce businesses grow, and we'd love to help you.

How to Make More Money from Your Website

In October James Aston, Managing Director of Moneyspyder, spoke at the Abacus Epsilon Insights event about how to make more money from your website.

Check out the video for great insights and common sense advice on optimising your email marketing, mobile performance, customer reviews, checkout and basket abandonment email strategy.

7 Ways to Maximise December Sales

It’s finally December and depending on your last posting dates (more on that later) there are about three weeks of Christmas shopping madness left.

Some have criticised the growth of Black Friday and Cyber Monday for cannibalising sales that used to come in December, but that doesn’t mean that sales have to steadily decline for the rest of the year. Most people - including us! - haven't started thinking about our Christmas shopping yet, so what you do this week can dramatically affect your year-end bottom line. 

1. We’ve listed our top seven tips to ensure your sales continue to grow throughout December:
2. Cart Abandon & Order Confirmation Emails - Add a juicy promo code to your order confirmation emails to see if you can get customers to buy again or return before Christmas. Change the messaging on your cart abandonment emails to remind users there is a time limit on your Christmas offers.
3. Discounts on Over-stocked Products - People want great discounts and if you get it right, you can rack up massive sales very quickly. Pick products where you have lots of stock and good margins. 
4. Boost Your Servers - If you get your marketing right you can expect a big jump in site traffic. Make sure your servers are ready for the onslaught.
5. Paid Search - Optimise your ad copy and increase your bid prices to ensure you get the biggest share pre-Christmas traffic (but don’t forget to turn down your bids after Christmas Day or you may end up paying too much for a large share of non-converting visitors.
6. Christmas Decorations & Messaging - Does your email, site and social media content offer a consistent message? Have you added some 'christmas decoration' to your normal site imagery?
7. Up-sell Your Postage Options - Can you offer guaranteed delivery after everybody else? Can you offer Saturday delivery? Use all your delivery options to your advantage. Running a last minute offer on express delivery may be the difference between an online sale, or your customer going elsewhere.
8. Is your last posting date prominent all over your website? Many of your customers - from emails, PPC, SEO, referral - will land on product pages and category pages. Having the last posting dates on your delivery details page, or your home page isn't enough. 

Have a great Christmas and let’s go for a coffee in the New Year.

The Moneyspyder Team

Moneyspyder Turns 10!

This week Moneyspyder celebrates it's tenth birthday. We're very proud of the work we've done helping online businesses grow, building industry leading ecommerce websites and helping people improve their digital marketing.

Thanks goes to our clients - virtually all of whom have been a pleasure to work with. It's been a great journey watching (and hopefully) helping you grow your business.

We're not done yet! Ecommerce is a fast moving world but some things never change; we believe there will always be a need for people to point out that the key to getting ecommerce right is to be responsive, keep it simple, and stay disciplined.

Is it too early to mention Christmas Ecommerce?

While the summer tries to make a stuttering start we thought it was about time to start thinking about how to maximise Christmas performance. As with all things, a successful ecommerce Christmas relies on careful planning and doing simple things well.

So, with apologies for bringing up Christmas in July, here are our top tips for getting prepared for the Christmas rush ahead of time:

1. Mine Your Data - Your most valuable resource for deciding what you should do next Christmas is data you have from last Christmas. Look at who bought from you and when in previous years. Use this build build segments for your email campaigns. Review what products you sold most of last year. Can these categories be expanded? Are there any categories that didn't sell well? Additionally, review which promotions worked the best; what times of year and what types of promotion were they? 
2. Last posting dates - Speak to your couriers now. You may not have checked, but Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, which means that the week before will be critical to your business. Yet with DPD stating in Feb 2016 that they where already at capacity that week, based on contracted volumes, don't just assume that all will be well for you. 
3. Embrace PPC - You might not normally use PPC but at Christmas it can be a great way to cut through the competition and boost traffic and sales. Customers are more likely to convert at Christmas which means better margins than the rest of the year. Google Shopping feeds, Remarketing Lists and image ads can take time to get right, especially if you have to go through external developers and designers so give yourself plenty of time to set these up. 
4. Optimise Mobile & Tablet - 40% of ecommerce transactions last December were on mobile of tablet. We would hope that everybody has a responsive mobile template by now but are you doing everything you can to make it easy to buy from you on mobile? Adding simple payment solutions like Paypal can give your conversion rates a real boost. 
5. Improve Conversion with Plugins - Basket Abandonment functionality and review software, like Feefo or Trustpilot, are proven to improve conversion rates. We've seen great results with both types of software. If you want to get the most out of these improvements before Christmas, you're going to have to get coding and testing soon. (The same goes for mobile and tablet changes!). We recommend a 'code freeze' in Q4 to prevent any unexpected bugs and changes taking down the site during peak business. 

Need to know more? Visit our website here or send us an email to discuss your ecommerce needs.

Adwords Changes - What They Mean For You

At the end of February Google removed the Adwords ads from the right hand side of Google search results. If you search now you’ll see three, maybe four, ads above the organic results, and PLAs and Knowledge Graph results on the right hand side. PPC results on Mobile will be largely unaffected.

So far there is very little data on how the changes will affect PPC/SEO. We’ve put together a checklist for you to make sure you are ahead of any seismic shifts in the PPC landscape.

What does this mean for my PPC campaigns?

• Check your average position - You should already be targeting the top three positions in the paid results. Increase your bids if your average position has dropped in the last three weeks.
• Improve your targeting - The big winners will be advertisers who aren’t bidding on generic keywords. If you are in a small niche, bid on long-tail keywords. Your brand terms won't be affected.
• Improve your ads - More ads will now show ad extensions. This is a great opportunity to update your Sitelinks and Callout extensions.
• Invest in Google Shopping - These change don’t affect PLAs. Now is a good time to set up Google Shopping as these ads will now be more prominent.
• Don’t neglect your reporting - It's easy to set up Adwords and never check in to see how it's doing. Use this opportunity to make sure you are getting the most bang for your buck from your Adwords.

Need help updating your PPC or making it work? We can help. Drop us a line at info@moneyspyder.co.uk.

Top Ecommerce Trends 2016

Now that we've survived the first two weeks back after Christmas, it's starting to feel like 2016 has begun. As usual at this time of year there has been a flurry of emails, blogs and articles about what is going to change in Ecommerce this year.

We've picked out our favourite, most actionable insights -

1. Smart phone revenue may finally overtake desktop revenue. If you don't have a mobile site, you need to get one. (Econsultancy)
2. Listing products on marketplaces - like Amazon - will become even more important as a way of reaching customers (Webretailer).
3. It will become even more important to look after your top customers(Ometria). What are you doing to turn your best customers into your best brand ambassadors?
4. Customers are going to become more security and privacy conscious(Mercurytide). This means you need to upgrade to HTTPS if you haven't already, and make sure you are extra clear about how you use customer data. 
5. Shipping is changing (Ventureburn). Amazon has already rolled out same-day delivery in London. What can your site offer that gives you a competitive edge on that?

Need help transforming your 2015 website into a 2016-ready business? We can help. Drop us a line at info@moneyspyder.co.uk.

Key Lessons From Black Friday 2015

Love it or loathe it, Black Friday is fast becoming a fixture in the UK's retail calendar. We've rounded up the most interesting articles about the size, impact and changing perceptions of Black Friday. Here are our top takeaways from the news in the last week: Retail sales dropped 10% but online sales grew by 36% on the biggest ever day for Ecommerce in the UK. Mobile ecommerce continues to grow: 35% of purchases on Black Friday were from Mobile devices. Some ecommerce sites weren’t ready for the rush - Argos and John Lewis both had outages during the day. Although that didn’t stop John Lewis from reporting it’s biggest ever sales week with a turnover of £187.7m. Email marketing drove more sales than any other sales channel - 25% of all online Black Friday sales were the result of an Email offer. Black Friday has an image problem - it's still a divisive marketing strategy; there were even national campaigns against it's consumerist message (see http://www.buynothingday.co.uk).  Here’s our round up of our top five Black Friday articles from around the web: Tesco got their strategy wrong here (CityAM) John Lewis had their strongest sales week, despite site outages here (Telegraph)  Some retailers don't like Black Friday, but lots of consumers definitely do here (Retail-Week) Key stats from Econsultancy here (Econsultancy) A good overview of trends from IMRG here (IMRG)

When Is Your Last Posting Date?

As Christmas approaches don’t forget to let your customers know when your last posting date is. We recommend putting it clearly on your homepage and updating your delivery information page. You can also use it in emails to generate loss aversion sales. You might also consider changing the messaging in your abandoned basket emails.

Get Your Black Friday Ecommerce Plan Right

Once it was confined to holiday-makers in the USA, but Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become firm fixtures on UK marketing calendars. Black Friday is on 27 November 2015, so you still have plenty of time to create a masterful marketing plan.

What can you do to jump on this American bandwagon and maximise your Christmas revenue? We’ve put together a list of our top tips for Black Friday and Cyber Monday:

1. Cart Abandon & Order Confirmation Emails - Add a juicy promo code to your order confirmation emails to see if you can get customers to buy again or return on Cyber Monday. Change the messaging on your cart abandonment emails to remind users there is a time limit on your Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. 
2. Stock - People want great discounts and if you get it right, you can shift huge amounts of stock. Pick products where you have lots of stock and good margins. 
3. Servers - If you get your marketing right you can expect a big jump in site traffic. Make sure your servers are ready for the onslaught. 
4. Paid search - Optimise your ad copy and increase your bid prices to ensure you get the biggest share of Black Friday traffic. 
5. Mobile - More than 50% of all email opens occurr on mobiles. Make sure that your email, landing page and checkout are all easy to use on Mobiles. 
6. Christmas Decorations & Messaging - Does your email, site and social media content offer a consistent message? Have you added some 'christmas decoration' to your normal site imagery? 
7. Timing - Don't wait until Friday before sending your first email. Many sites get a head start and start their sales on Thursday. Why not try offering exclusive offers to existing customers on Thursday to make them feel special? 

Got any questions or need a hand with your Christmas ecommerce plan? Drop us a line at info@moneyspyder.co.uk.

Summer Is Ending - Is Your Christmas Ecommerce Plan Ready?

Now that September is here, your minds will surely be turning towards your Christmas Ecommerce Plan (if they haven't already!). Many ecommerce companies make more than half their revenue in the last three months of the year so It's important to make sure you have a clear online marketing plan that will deliver sales.

Here are our top five tips to get ecommerce success this Christmas:

1. Email & Social Media Plan - In the final hectic weeks before Christmas it's easy to fall behind on email and social media. This can be a costly oversight, so make sure you have all your emails and key posts planned well in advance, so all you have to do is press send and watch the sales come in.
2. Christmas SEO - It's never to early to launch your Christmas Gifts category and product pages. Give yourself an edge by uploading your categories early, and updating copy on your site to reflect the upcoming season so that Google can index your new products.
3. Google Shopping - Make sure your products have maximum visibility in Google as people are much more likely to convert in one visit during the festive season. Google Shopping ROI will soar over the next few months.
4. Brand PPC - Although you might not run PPC throughout the year, running brand PPC at Christmas allows you to tailor your brand copy, landing pages and sitelinks to Christmas traffic, to improve conversion rates.
5. RLSA - Remarketing Lists For Search Ads allow you to show ads for broad keywords only to previous visitors to your site. Eg. You would never normally bid on 'Christmas Gifts For Men' keywords but with RLSA you can ensure that only users who have visited your site see these adverts in Google. Christmas is the ideal time to experiment with these campaigns.

Get in touch if you would like any help or advice about getting the most out of the festive season.

The Google Shopping Feed Spec Is Changing Today

Google is changing their Shopping Feed Specification today (15th September). If you run Google Shopping ads, you should check that you don't need to make any changes, and acquaint yourself with the new format.

What is changing?

• The main changes that may affect you are to the Google Product Taxonomy. Various products have been reclassified or the categories have been simplified. For example you no longer need to add a subcategory for many clothing types like trousers, shorts and shoes.
• Google Product Categories can now be submitted as numbers, rather than long text strings. e.g. "Animals & Pet Supplies>Pet Supplies>Bird Supplies>Bird Cages>Stands". This should make it easier to update your feed in future.
• Improved ID accuracy - GTIN numbers and ID Attributes (probably your item SKU) will be tightened up so you will need to make sure that you aren't using invalid character types.

You can read Google's summary of changes here: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6231410

What do I need to do?

Many feeds won't be affected by the changes to the GTIN and ID attributes. The changes to the Google Product Categories are a great opportunity to improve the accuracy of your feed, and so improve your Google Shopping performance.

You can download the Google Product Category Taxonomy here to check whether your products need updating.

Shopping Feeds can be complicated and frustrating to get right. If you need a hand, or have any questions, just send us an email and we'd be happy to check your feed for you.