Comments on: Avinash Kaushik shows HMV & M&S how “They Came, They Puked, They Left!”

By: mandeep

mandeep — Thu, 12 May 2011 16:29:53 +0000

@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..

By: GACP Summit: Day 1 Report | Happy Marketer

GACP Summit: Day 1 Report | Happy Marketer — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 07:17:50 +0000

[...] been extremely slow in this area. As Avinash Kaushik would say, they’ve been busy making sure GA pukes out more data. The best way to see social media data right now inside GA is a very cool Greasemonkey [...]

By: Jamil Kassam

Jamil Kassam — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 11:15:54 +0000

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.

By: Richard Fergie

Richard Fergie — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:05:11 +0000

@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)

By: Randy Stuck

Randy Stuck — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:03:00 +0000

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.

By: Hugh Gage

Hugh Gage — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:23:11 +0000

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.

By: Dave Ashworth

Dave Ashworth — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:25:07 +0000

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…