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.

Seven Quick Tips For Optimising Google Shopping Performance

Since Google updated Google Adwords Shopping Campaigns in August we have seen changes in the way Google Shopping has performed for our clients. In some cases traffic has increased dramatically but conversions have not kept pace. We've also found that estimated bid prices are much lower in some cases than they were with the old PLA accounts.

These trends, along with the increasingly competitive marketplace of Google Shopping, mean that you won't get away with turning your PLAs on and leaving them running. The good news is that the new functionality that Google has added makes it much easier to optimise the Shopping ad performance.

Here's our pick of the easiest, and most effective, optimisation techniques:

Pick the right Google Product Category - The feed will run without Google Product Categories but by adding the right Google Product Category you will make it much easier for Google to show your products to a relevant audience. You can download the Product Category taxonomy here: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/160081?hl=en-GB

Look at device performance - Google Shopping won't necessarily work across all devices. We have seen some clients where adverts have been shown on mobile as much as on desktop, but without any conversions. In this instance we've paused mobile bidding and saved valuable pounds.

Use Impression share and bid price estimates to work out bids - The new Shopping campaigns give competitor data like Benchmark CTR and CPC, as well as impression share. Use these to work out how much to spend on your clicks. 

Add negative keywords - Use the Search Term report to see which keywords are sending traffic to your site via Shopping. Exclude any keywords that are don't cost in. 

Optimise headings for keywords - Unlike normal Adwords, Google decides which searches your adverts should appear for. You can increase the relevance of these searches by optimising your headings and descriptions for well qualified keywords. 

Split Out Campaigns Using Custom Labels - Custom labels, which you can add to your feed, make it much easier to split out your campaigns by product type or category. This increased granularity is absolutely crucial to good campaign performance.

Use the Dimensions Report - Use the Dimensions tab to identify poorly performing products and exclude them from your feed. 

Google Analytics Summit 2014 – Key Announcements

Last week Moneyspyder were at the Google Analytics Partner Summit in San Francisco. At the Summit Google announced some great new functionality that improves the quality of data collected by Analytics, as well as making the insights it provides more accessible and actionable.

• Enhanced Ecommerce
• Data Import
• Remarketing 

What This Means for You

1. Upgrade to Universal Analytics - Enhanced Ecommerce and Data Import are only available to Universal Analytics users. If you haven’t upgraded yet, you should consider doing it sooner rather than later. Google are going to start phasing out the old version of Analytics soon

2. Use Google Tag Manager – Google Tag Manager allows you to add and change tracking tags without having to deploy new code, and without involving your developer. This makes upgrading Analytics easier and cheaper.

3. Get a retargeting strategy – retargeting is becoming an ‘always on’ marketing solution. Review your analytics to define your most valuable segments and market to them with the remarketing tool. A good place to start is with Google’s ‘Smart List’, which creates a remarketing list of your most valuable visitors, based on their behaviour on your site.

Google’s main announcement was Enhanced Ecommerce, which is a dramatic redesign of the ecommerce functionality in Analytics. Enhanced Ecommerce automatically tracks and displays your checkout funnel. It also allows you to view more information about products. Whereas previously it has only been possible to see how many products you have sold. Enhanced Ecommerce shows how many times a product has been viewed and how many times it has been added to the basket and then purchased.

This makes Enhanced Ecommerce a powerful merchandising tool; allowing you to identify and promote your top performing products.

You can see a much more detailed summary here.

Google’s other announcements make Analytics a much more accurate reporting tool. With the existing Data Import functionality, businesses could automatically upload cost data such as the cost of your email, affiliate and display ads. This makes Google’s ROI calculations more accurate.

It is now possible to upload many more types of data into Analytics. You can import your refund figures so that your revenue number in Analytics starts to reflect your actual bottom line. You can also upload additional product data, such as what category or brand they belong to.

There’s more information here.

One final thing to emphasise is the improved remarketing capabilities. Businesses can now use advanced segments as remarketing lists meaning targeting has never been more accurate.

To take full advantage of these improvements, and to stay up to date with these Analytics changes, we recommend you do the following:

1. Upgrade to Enhanced Ecommerce and Universal Analytics.
2. Make your life simpler by using Google Tag Manager to manage your Analytics tags. 
3. Grow your Remarketing Campaigns - Make sure you don't miss out on easy revenue.

If you want any more information on what these changes mean, or for help configuring your Analytics call us on 0207 492 1929 or email us on info@moneyspyder.co.uk.

Best Ecommerce articles from December 2013

Here's our round up of the best Ecommerce articles from December 2013 Link Building Strategies: The Complete List - This classic list of linkbuilding strategies has been updated. Read here for inspiration. How to Improve Your Organic SEO and Beat The Paid Search Results - Top tips for increasing your CTR from organic listings. Read here. Digital Marketing & Analytics: Two Ladders For Magnificent Success - A solid set of checklists for changing the way your business markets and measures. Read here. How to Grow Your Blog to 100,000 Visits Per Month Within 1.5 Years - Great tips on growing your online readership whether B2B or ecommerce. Read here. Ecommerce in 2013 - Have Retailers Finally Figured Out Mobile - Mobile has been high on the agenda in 2013. Here's a round up of the state of the industry. Read here. If you need help with any of the above areas - SEO, Linkbuilding, integrated marketing, content creation, or Analytics - take a look at our site to see what we do, or drop us an email.