Retail Ecommerce Guide for the 2012 Holidays

Transcription

1

2 Holiday Guide Overview Preparing for Q Trends 2012 s Big Shopping Days Top Holiday Strategies for 2012 Expand your Reach Reach More Shoppers Preparing for Q For most online retailers, holiday sales are critical. Preparing for retail s busiest season now is essential to having a more prosperous and less stressful fourth quarter. According to Forrester Research Group s projections, American online shoppers will spend $327 billion by 2016, up a whopping 45% from $202 billion in GoDataFeed s mission is to empower online retailers to optimize their product data and to provide a wide selection of the internet s most profitable marketing channels and marketplaces to reach more online shoppers. To help you get the most out of this year s last quarter, GoDataFeed has assembled its top shopping channel management strategies. 2

3 2011 Trends 2011 s better-than-expected holiday retail sales proved to be a powerful growth engine for the country s slowly-recovering economy. In fact, last year the National Retail Federation (NRF) predicted that holiday sales would only rise about 2.5%, but then the unexpected happened: consumers spent more, especially online. Industry analysts had underestimated just how much American shoppers would spend. All in all, the year-over-year sales increased 4.1 percent to $471.5 billion (holiday sales defined by the NRF ran from November 1 st until December 31 st ) and online U.S. holiday sales reached $35.3 Billion, a 15 percent increase from previous year. Forbes reported that consumers spent on disposable income goods including home décor, sporting goods, books, personal care and apparel. Below are the top holiday spending days, with Cyber Monday coming in at number one (again): 3

4 2012 s Big Shopping Days- Mark Your Calendar Halloween Oct. 31 st Thanksgiving Nov 22 nd Black Friday Nov 23 rd Cyber Monday Nov 26 th Christmas Dec 25 th New Year s Day Jan 1 st Top Holiday Strategies for 2012 September Review Last Year s Holiday Sales Start by looking at your 2011 holiday sales figures to determine which products sold and which didn t. Look at your overall revenue, cost and conversion rates and evaluate which shopping channels and marketplaces brought you the most quality traffic. Prepare 2011 Holiday Promotions Now The earlier you start planning your holiday promotions, the better, keeping in mind that you want the sales/discounts in your datafeed to mirror your website s holiday sales promotions. Include holiday items in your feed and consider excluding non-holiday items, to avoid getting charged the higher holiday click rates. Also, review your feeds to make sure you are maximizing all your product attributes and that your products are in best category for each channel. Consider New Shopping Channels and Marketplaces September is a good time to start increasing your visibility on additional shopping channels to gain traction for the holidays; marketplaces like Amazon, Sears and ebay and pay-per-click shopping engines like Amazon Product Ads, Nextag and PriceGrabber are top shopping destinations. For GoDataFeed s top channel picks, see the Expand your Reach section. Get on Google Shopping Now- If you haven t already, sign up with the new Google Shopping. This will require you have both a Google Adwords and Merchant Center accounts in order to create their Product Listings Ads (PLAs). By October 1 st, Google Shopping will be entirely based on its PLA model. To succeed on Google Shopping, we recommend you visit Google s latest PLA Article and make sure to: o Monitor your feed on Merchant Center and check for errors or warnings o Bid more competitively on your top categories and products during the holidays o Become a Google Trusted Store Need help starting your PLA Campaigns? Call Google at

5 Upgrade your Analytics To help you make smarter campaign decisions during the holidays and maximize your shopping channel profitability, add GoDataFeed s enhanced analytics Cost Reporting or Performance Alerts. These modules reflect real ad spend on many PPC channels and will alert you when significant changes are happening in your campaigns, such as products that are eating up your click budget or a sudden drop in traffic that may indicate you need to replenish account funds. Mobile is Mainstream, is your Store Ready? It s a fact: more and more shoppers are searching and buying products through their trusted Smartphone and mobile will become an increasingly important selling tool. And if you re selling your products on the comparison shopping engines and your store is not mobile-optimized, you risk losing valuable online traffic. Learn More Get a Free Mobile Store If you sell consumer goods (gifts, toys, apparel, etc ) and want to go mobile, you may qualify to get a free mobile store (for a limited-time) with GoDataFeed s mobile partner, TXTclusive, a platform that doesn t just give you a mobile presence, it lets you retarget and engage shoppers who love getting personalized flash deals delivered right to their Smartphone. October Optimize your Feeds on All Channels- make sure your feeds are valid, error-free and live on all shopping channels and that all your accounts are fully funded throughout the holidays. Bid & Analyze your Top Categories- consider bidding higher for your best-selling product categories on the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) channels and routinely review your analytics to exclude unprofitable products Promote Free Shipping, Promotions & Coupons- start including any free shipping, holiday discounts or coupons through each channel s shipping, promo-text or coupon fields, where applicable. According to ComScore, the average consumer spends significantly more when they get free shipping ($118 vs $100). If you can t offer free shipping, think about flat-rate shipping as many shoppers are looking for these deals while they browse, especially during the holidays. Include the Unique Identifiers (UPC, MPN or ISBN) since many shopping channels are now highly suggesting or requiring it; including these universal identifiers will enhance your search 5

6 rankings, improve your overall performance and allow shoppers to find your products more easily Submit only Fresh Feeds- During the holiday rush, make sure you are submitting all your feeds on a daily basis and filtering out any out-of-stock items. Add Holiday Promotional Content- In late October, start getting your feeds holiday-ready by adding holiday-related search terms to your feeds. You can gain insight by reviewing last year s top-performing gift related keywords and including them in your descriptions; this is most relevant for your holiday-related products and best-sellers. Get Ready for Black Friday & Cyber Monday- by the end of October, start preparing your Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions. Bear in mind that the Cyber Monday last year was retail s top selling day, coming in at a record-breaking $1,251 billion in the U.S.; that s a 22% increase from 2010! November Anticipate Rate Card Increases- many pay per click channels, like Shopping.com, Nextag and PriceGrabber, increase their rate-cards up to 20% during early to mid November, so leave enough room in your fourth quarter budget to maintain your most popular categories. Exclude non-performing items- avoid wasting your holiday marketing budget by routinely reviewing your analytics to remove products that are gaining many clicks, but little or no conversions. You can also maximize your holiday budget by removing any non-holiday related items from your feed and avoiding the elevated holiday click-rates. Launch Black Friday & Cyber Monday promotions Finalize these promotions by mid November and have them up running the week of Black Friday. Make sure all your feeds are upto-date and test any promotional links to ensure they re pointing to the correct Black Friday & Cyber Monday landing pages. Remember, it can take comparison shopping channels anywhere from a few minutes to 72 hours to process your feed, so plan your feed launches accordingly. Manage Merchant Ratings many shoppers rely on shopping channel merchant reviews when deciding which store to buy from so keep your merchant ratings as high as possible by providing excellent customer service and responding swiftly to any negative customer reviews. 6

7 Expand your Reach There s no time like the present to broaden your marketing efforts to include popular channels including Nextag, Amazon Product Ads, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com, Become as well as marketplaces like Amazon, ebay and Sears. Marketplaces Amazon When selling on the Web s largest Marketplace during the holidays, make sure you re submitting only the most complete, fresh feed and updating your stock status often enough (daily) to keep your Seller Performance and Order Defect Rate in good standing. Your images should meet Amazon s requirements, which include a 1000 x 1000 (recommended) pixels.jpg or.gif photo of the product on a white or clear background only. You can also enhance your visibility with up to five -strategic Search Terms - these are phrases that buyers use to search for your products. For search terms, don t repeat title, brand, manufacturer terms, since Amazon will already pick up that data from your feed. Instead, look at the relevant data within your descriptions. You should also take advantage of Amazon s Product Features/Bullet Points which highlight product details. ebay GoDataFeed is excited about its recent addition of ebay s marketplace module, just in time for the holiday season! The ebay community continues to be one of the most powerful marketplaces with more than 100 million active users and 25 million global sellers of all sizes. Today s ebay is far more than an auction site, with nearly 70% of listings sold on ebay are new, and listed at a fixed Buy It Now! price. Today s ebay is a global online marketplace that offers a cleaner, more contemporary and consistent experience. Sears One of America s most trusted brands and number 7 in the Internet Retailers Top 500 Guide (2011), offers merchants a cost-per-action online marketplace to reach millions of Sears shoppers. 7

8 Pay-per-Click Channels Retail Ecommerce Guide for the 2012 Holidays Amazon Product Ads One of the highest converting pay-per-click sites, Amazon Product Ads takes Amazon s shoppers directly to your site. Plus, they are offering GoDataFeed Merchants a limited-time $75 in Free Clicks. Nextag A sure bet for many online retailers, Nextag is a solid choice for PPC campaigns, and is offering GoDataFeed Merchants an introductory $50 Sign-Up Offer. PriceGrabber is a leading online shopping site with more than 23 million unique shoppers monthly, across 25 categories with more than 11,000 merchants. Become this up-and-coming channel is offering great promotions for the holidays, including incentives to install their ROI tracker as well as free logo and promo text values for new and existing merchants. Plus they re offering GoDataFeed Merchants $25 in free clicks to get started; contact GoDataFeed to get the introductory promo code. Shopping.com delivers ready-to-buy shoppers to your product pages. Sign up and get your product listings in front of millions of shoppers. You only pay for direct clicks to your site, at a price that is determined by you. Free Shopping Channels Bing Shopping Bing boasts 97 million unique visitors per month. Bing is now partnered with Shopping.com, promising merchants higher visibility through highly targeted featured placements across Bing Shopping. TheFind connects shoppers with more than 500,000 merchants and claims 25 million visits a month. To succeed, TheFind strongly recommends joining their UpFront Program and submitting only optimized, updated feeds. Plus, they re new social shopping and mobile apps offer retailers more exposure and a better shopping experience. Oodle reaches more than 5 million consumers a month through its network of classified sites and send over 25 million clicks to advertisers sites each month. 8

9 Ecommerce Platforms, Services & Affiliate Networks GoDataFeed is integrated with a more than a dozen of the major ecommerce platforms, various affiliate networks as well as services designed increase traffic and conversions on your site. BigCommerce GoDataFeed is seamlessly integrated with Big Commerce s shopping cart platform, making it fast and easy to send BigCommerce merchants product listings to multiple (70+) comparison shopping sites, marketplaces and affiliate networks. Magento GoDataFeed s turn-key datafeed management solution empowers Magento merchants with a simple and affordable way to streamline their product feeds to all major shopping channels. Magento merchants can import their store within minutes, setup their feeds and start attracting highly qualified shoppers to their site using GoDataFeed. 3dCart platform is offering GoDataFeed merchants a limited-time Switch-Offer: migrate to 3dCart s GoDataFeed-supported shopping cart platform and you can either migrate the store yourself for $49 Mini-Plan or 3dCart will migrate your entire store for you for $499; both options come with 3 months of free service. Upgrade to 3dCart Today! FetchBack Using FIDO technology, Fetchback s retargeting service is a search and rescue dog for your lost visitors. Fetchback offers free consultations and will even put together an in-depth retargeting package for your review, including category and creative suggestions. Criteo offers full-service retargeting campaign design and deployment, including: personalized banner design, media buying, ad serving, campaign optimization, and real-time reporting. Affiliate Networks Share-A-Sale An award-winning and affordable affiliate program, ShareASale enables your affiliates to better merchandise their sites to meet specific consumer demographics and help them drive shoppers deeper into your site; plus, they have an introductory sign-up offer for GoDataFeed Merchants, contact GoDataFeed to learn more. CommissionJunction a leader in affiliate marketing, Commission Junction helps you expand your reach by publishing your products among its network of publishers. LinkShare offers state-of-the-art technology combined with years of experience and a dedication to superior customer service in Search Marketing, Lead generation and Affiliate Marketing. 9

10 Have a Happier Holiday, Increase Sales & Visibility GoDataFeed is here to help you sell more GoDataFeed provides a single point of integration to optimize, automate and track product feeds to all major comparison shopping channels, marketplaces and affiliate networks as well as ecommerce tools that help you enhance sales and increase conversions on your site. With GoDataFeed s robust shopping feed management and optimization tools, you can customize your feeds for each channel, create holiday-focused campaigns and track which channels and products are generating more holiday sales. With more than 70 shopping channels, marketplaces, affiliate networks and ecommerce services to choose from, GoDataFeed is a simple and affordable way to drive more qualified, targeted traffic to your Website. Your 30-day, Risk Free Trial includes 2 FREE shopping feed setups, analytics and support. What Retailers Are Saying Since working with GoDataFeed, our conversion rates have tripled -- Brenda Smith, Director of Web Development, US-Mattress.com IR500 Retailer GoDataFeed has been a terrific solution to help market our wines Christine Fabi, Marketing Director, Wine.com IR500 Retailer We can maximize our results with less time investment Andy Larson, President, Waterskis.com & Wakeboards.com Reach More Shoppers Today See how it works, through our instant Online Demo, contact us or call us at Get Started on your Risk-Free, 30-Day Trial, and we ll setup your first 2 shopping channels FREE. 10