61% of shoppers use a search engine when they shop online, study says

94% of shoppers conduct research online before making an eCommerce transaction, according to the “Compete Shopper Intelligence Study.”

And, overwhelmingly, they turn to search engines. 61% of shoppers say they always or often use a search engine when shopping online. That outpaces coupon sites (35%), retailers’ marketing e-mails (29%), online reviews (24%) or shopping comparison sites (22%).

However, the survey also found tremendous variability in the sources shoppers turn to before making a purchase.

For instance, among the sources shoppers turn to before making an apparel purchase are:

• Retailers’ marketing e-mails, 38%
• Retailers’ web sites, 26%
• Online advertisement, 18%
• Search engines, 12%

Among the sources shoppers turn to before making a consumer electronics purchase are:

• Retailers’ web sites, 59%
• Search engines, 45%
• Online professional reviews, 29%
• Online consumer-generated reviews, 21%

“It is essential for retailers to understand how consumers in their space shop online in order to effectively retain and acquire customers,” says the report. “Instead of trying to utilize all available outlets, retailers should understand their particular customer niche and develop strategies unique to them. In an environment with tight consumer wallets and even tighter marketing budgets, retailers can’t afford to invest their money in resources their customers don’t use.”

If you as a retailer need assistance to develop those online marketing strategies, Gproxy's Consulting Team can assist you in many ways. Click HERE to contact us and learn more about our eCommerce Business Strategies or call us to 1-800-814-4761.

Source: Internet Retailer

INTERNET MARKETING: Conversion Optimization Strategies

Conversion optimization was born out of the need of lead generation and e-commerce online marketers to improve their website's profit. As competition grew on the web during the early 2000s, online marketers had to become more measurable with their marketing strategies. They began testing with website design and content variations to determine the layouts, text, offers and images to improve their conversion rate.

Frequently, when marketers target a pocket of customers that has shown spectacular lift in an ad campaign, they belatedly discover the behavior is not consistent, with online marketing response rates fluctuate widely from hour to hour, segment to segment and offer to offer.
Conversion optimization methods, are then taken a step further to run in a real-time environment. The real-time data collection and subsequent messaging as a result, increases the scale and effectiveness of the online campaign.

As part of our Consulting Services, we offer a Conversion Optimization Program to our clients who want to learn more about their visitors to improve their conversion rates and overall ROI:

• Analyze your existing traffic in your Google Analytics account. This includes looking at the keywords, entry pages, exit pages, bounce rates and the conversion goal funnel. This will help the expert working on your site, to better understand your overall traffic and also help determine what areas we focus on when we setup visitor tracking on your site.
• Setup Visitor Tracking Analysis. You can monitor and record visitors browsing sessions. This is an incredibly powerful service that you can continue to use together with A/B, Multivariate testing as your toolset to further optimize your landing pages, maximize conversions and minimize shopping cart abandonment. This will give you the capability of watching “movies” of your visitors’ browsing sessions and analyze their behavior, and seeing heat maps showing where visitors click, where they look and how far down they scroll.
  

Find more about this and other Services from our Consulting Department here or visit our website at www.gproxy.com. Alternatively, why not call us directly on 1-800-814-4761 or click here give us your contact details and we will call you back.

Source: Gproxy Consulting Services and Wikipedia