ReachCustomersOnline.com

Must Read Research on Search and Shopping

Posted by TimSlavin at March 26, 2004

MarketingSherpa has an excellent summary of free research from Enquiro, a search marketing firm. You have to register for the report; the MarketingSherpa article is free to read only a short while.

Here are some highlights from the research report, as reported by MarketingSherpa:

"- Landing pages and sites loaded with informational non-salesy materials such as specs, product photos, research, guides, reviews, etc., were much more likely to convert than overt sales messages.

- Aside from one demographic (mostly young men) who want to get shopping over with as quickly as possible, most searchers are extremely circuitous. They search multiple terms, click on multiple links, veer from retailer to review site to manufacturer and back again.

So, if you rely on simple measurement of view/click/convert to judge performance you are significantly underestimating your search campaign performance.

- If a brand comes up in a high organic position early in the process, it may result in a sale much later in the process, even if the searcher never clicks on that initial link. Search success is much more about building brand awareness than most of us guessed.

- Almost 80% of searchers skip over sponsored listings initially or entirely (especially Google users); only 21% will click to a second page of listings if they can't find what they want on the first; and if a review site such as ConsumerReports.org shows up in the top organic listings it's almost "guaranteed a 50% plus clickthrough." Which means if your listing is nearby, you're close to invisible in the glare of the review site's glory."

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