Last week, Avinash Kaushik opened SES London with a superb keynote presentation about web analytics – see this video interview if you missed it.
There’s some good writeups following this, but one of the parts I found particularly interesting was the examples of how brands perform using search.
Marks & Spencer
One of Avinahs’s examples included an M&S paid search ad, where the landing page for a query on “Marks and Spencer underwear” produced a general Valentines Day landing page – no sign of a relevant product in sight! Here’s the landing page I now see for a query on the same term, the Valentines Day page has been replaced:
“They Came, They Puked, They Left” is how Avinash Kaushik described website’s with a high bounce rate, because users aren’t finding what they are looking for, so they very quickly leave. This is very true in the M&S example, where users are dumped onto the homepage, relying on users navigating to find what they want – instead of directing them straight to it.
HMV
Avinash’s first example showed how despite having a very well-known and established brand, HMV appeared to be relying on this too heavily in the organic search listings. Obviously brand visibility is very important in the search engines, especially when your brand is as strong as HMV, but long-tail is where the real value of traffic comes from. Rather than attracting traffic at the head of the tail, it’s generally the longer-tail and specific queries which generate the bulk of a site’s traffic. Avinash calls these visitors “impression virgins”, these are users who are unlikely to have visited the site before and are attracted by a specific or unique keyword query.
The examples given were queries for branded terms, where HMV were almost always listed as both organic and paid search results. And when performing a product query with the brand name added to this, HMV still dominated these listings – see the example below for “Up DVD HMV“:
Yet when searching for more competitive queries, where the user still has the intent to buy – but they don’t have a preference of where from – HMV aren’t doing enough to attract these first time visitors/buyers into the site. Queries for a range of competitive product queries all failed to display HMV within Google’s top 10 organic listings – here’s an example of a query for the very popular query “Up DVD“:
You may notice that a paid search ad is appearing on the right-hand-side, but in the same way as M&S, this points users straight towards the homepage instead of taking them to the actual product. This has possibly been triggered from a “DVD” phrase matched AdWords keyword, as opposed to the individual product term producing the ad, explaining why a general ad description and landing page has been displayed. Same for the M&S ad being triggered from a “Marks and Spencer” phrase, instead of an underwear term.
Wireless Printers
Another example, although this time for a US site, was a query for “wireless printer” which produced PPC ads for general printers. The ones who actually did sell wireless printers only went as far as sending users to a general printer category page – instead of directing them towards the actual product they searched for. Avinash highlighted that this was a $500+ product – so they really need to be doing everything they can to clinch a sale, rather than hoping they find what they want by navigating and then complete a purchase.
So this goes to prove how important it is to maximise the value from the traffic you are currently generating. An increase in traffic isn’t always the answer, a few small changes in all of these cases is likely to see a big improvement in conversion rates and overall sales figures.
The most “frustrating” thing about the HMV site is that they don’t rank for any of the products that they advertise on their home page – with the strength of their domain they could (perhaps) easily (maybe) start getting on page one for the longtail queries.
The only product that I could find on page one which they have a link to on their home page is for Lady Gaga headphones!
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=lady+gaga+headphones&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a
they must be flying off the shelves…
While I every respect for Avinash the only trouble with his approach in directing certain PPC visitors straight to a product page is that the target is effectively smaller. In other words if the potential customer arrives on a product page and decides that s/he doesn’t want that product after having learnt more about it then there are no alternatives immediately visible as there would be on a list page. Bounce rate on product pages is often amongst the highest of all pages – higher even than list pages which offer both the specific product and alternatives. Unfortunately it isn’t that easy yet to devine what specific visitors have actually come to a site for – research or purchase. Just because a specific product was used in the search phrase it doesn’t automatically indicate imminent purchase intention. Ideally this question would be answered by an onsite survey triggered by, or at least matched to, search phrase.
Hugh, you are correct that the bounce rate is going to be pretty high (there is no need to have much depth from a product page unless the margins have other products), however, the conversion rate will probably be much higher. I would sacrifice a low bounce rate off of PPC adds and organic searches in the longtail for a higher conversion rate.
@Hugh Gage
You are right that product pages are often too specific. In my opinion this problem comes in 2 parts:
1. Sending inappropriate traffic to a product page. Only users who search for that specific product should be sent to the landing page. Do not send people who queried “laser printer” to the LexmarkC734n product page
2. Why not display similar products on the product page? I see that Amazon do this as do HMV (in spite of our other criticisms)
It’s so easy to criticise other advertisers AdWords campaigns however I wonder how many people have experience in running such large and complex campaigns as an M&S or HMV must run. I don’t work for either of these brands, in fact I work for a competitor so I should be happy to see mistakes such as these, however this gives me first hand experience of the complexities involved.
Yes it does surprise me that M&S are using the homepage for a brand+generic search term (I’m even more puzzled that 2 weeks on they still haven’t changed this – someone tell them pls!), however let’s be realistic, the volume of people who would be searching this must be relatively low compared to other generic terms they are doing PPC for, so it’s not major surprise that this may have been overlooked. Users who are searching for a brand may also be more likely to look for the product on site anyway considering they have already shown intent to purchase from that brand.
Although I’ve just searches for the term ‘underwear’ clicked on their ad and this also goes to the homepage so I must say that’s a big fail.
And I agree with Randy re: conversion rates for product searches – at the end of the day for the advertiser it’s all about ROI – not bounce rates.
@jamil-yeah dats true but dont you think anyone searching marks and spencer underwear reflects that i can buy any other m&a product or i will buy any other brand underwear?I will go wit d second option..