merchants
Online Merchants Seeing Greater Dividends From Paid Than Organic Search Traffic
The online merchants who comprise the MarketLive Performance Index are enjoying the rewards of their greater investments in paid search, according to [download page] a new MarketLive report. During the first half of this year (H1), paid search accounted for 32% of all their search visits, up from 26% during the first half of 2012. Paid search traffic continued to be more valuable than organic search traffic, with the former accounting for an outsized 44% of revenues from search.On Facebook, Retailers Tackle How Best to Drive Sales – eMarketer
source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/On-Facebook-Retailers-Tackle-How-Best-Drive-Sales/1009793
In 2011, major retailers in the US flocked to Facebook to build digital storefronts in hopes of capturing sales where so many socialized. But by the end of the following year, most high-profile players had closed their Fcommerce shops.
While some US retailers and brands forge ahead, the e-tailing group’s “15th Annual Mystery Shopping Study” found that what appeared to be a mass exodus did indeed happen. The number of retailers in the US with Facebook-enabled checkout dropped 63% between Q4 2011 to Q4 2012, to 6%.
Still, even as fewer “buy now” and “add to cart” buttons sprinkle Facebook’s newsfeeds and apps, US retailers know the importance of being on the site. According to a new eMarketer report, “Facebook Commerce: Evolving, Not Extinct,” the question is whether or not retailers can crack the commerce half of social engagement.
According to the e-tailing group, 98% of US ecommerce merchants surveyed had a Facebook page in Q4 2012, and nearly the same number of respondents (97%) linked to Facebook from their site. It is also notable that sharing in general is on the rise—a tactic growing in popularity as social discovery becomes a bigger part of the shopping process.
And even if Fcommerce did not work out for plenty of retailers, they are still positive about the role Facebook plays in social commerce. A survey by RichRelevance demonstrated that Facebook retailers in the US consider Facebook with high regard: The site took up a significant share of user social commerce sessions compared with other social! network sites in 2012.
Local Merchants Overwhelmed by the Array of Available Digital Marketing Channels
A survey of local merchants around the US conducted by Reply.com reveals that a plurality 40% are spending 5 or more hours a week on marketing their businesses, but that the vast majority either have a single person (51%) or no-one at all (37%) managing or supervising their digital marketing programs and initiatives. With few internal resources to draw upon, merchants indicate that the biggest challenge they face with online marketing is that there are too many channels to address, a problem cited by 24% of respondents.Wealthy Shoppers Cautious About Data-Sharing
68% of consumers with minimum household income of $150,000 (“wealthy shoppers”) are willing to share their personal information with merchants online, but this tends to be a requirement-driven activity, with three-quarters of those saying they do so only to complete a transaction. That’s according to survey results from the Luxury Institute, which also found that […]
Amazon Just Made Its Own Currency, Amazon Coins
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5981745/amazon-just-made-its-own-currency-amazon-coins
Amazon’s got a new way to buy stuff for anyone who has a Kindle Fire. Amazon Coins are a virtual currency that will come out in May, and work for all app and in-app purchases on the Kindle Fire.
The Coins will function exactly the same as real money, and developers will still get their standard cut. Amazon thinks it will help drive more business, and that makes some sense. Especially with apps and games for kids, it seems like a nice addition where you can maybe set up a Coins purse without allowing access to another payment method. And since Amazon will obviously never stop accepting real money—unlike virtual currency-only merchants like Xbox Live—you don’t have quite the locked-in headache here, either. [Amazon]
Early Shoppers Prefer Mass Merchants
Source: http://blog.compete.com/2012/11/01/early-shoppers-prefer-mass-merchants/
Image from: Holiday Shopping / Shutterstock
As we reach the end of October, more consumers are focusing their sights on December. As of October 21, about half the consumers surveyed in the Compete Holiday Intelligence™ survey had already begun shopping for the holidays, up 5 percent in 2 weeks. In fact, almost 1 out of 10 consumers had already finished half of their holiday shopping.
While more consumers got into the holiday spirit last week, they did not favor any one particular category. Shopping was up across almost all product categories. One of the most noticeable changes that occurred over the past few weeks was the decrease in gift card shopping and the increase in photo gift shopping. Perhaps consumers shop for generic stocking stuffers early and are now focusing on more personalized gifts.
Mass merchants continue to be the preferred destination for early holiday shoppers. Both in store and online shopping at these retailers increased last week compared to the first week of October. It is interesting to note that while Walmart in store purchases increased more than Target in store purchases, the opposite is true online. Target.com purchasing increased 150 percent whereas Walmart.com shopping only increased 58 percent.
The Compete Holiday Intelligence™ survey is your source for holiday insights. Be sure to check back in the coming months as we continue to track consumer shopping.
Source: http://lifehacker.com/5937580/the-best-times-to-shop-online-if-you-want-the-most-savings
Grabbing the best prices is all about where and when you shop. Retailer reporting service SumAll has identified the best (and worst) days and months to find online deals and packed it all in this handy calendar infographic.
The data is compiled from over 3,000 merchants and almost half a billion transactions over four years.
It probably won’t surprise you that November offers the biggest discounts (an average of 5.99%), followed by post-holiday January (4.95%), but the calendar also warns you that March is a dismal time to shop if you’re looking for sales (2.76%).
The best days to buy are Tuesday and Thursday. Forget big savings on Sunday.
And new companies (just opened or under two years old) offer the biggest deals versus established ones. So don’t wait to shop at a new site.
Here’s the whole graphic, which includes which states offer the best deals (click to expand, right click to save):
Keep in mind that there are specific days and months that are best for particular shopping categories (see our best time to buy anything guide or this handy infographic). If you’re just planning your shopping in general, though, consider waiting until the days and months with the highest discounts.
Discounts…Get the Inside Scoop | SumAll via DailyFinance
Here’s The Math Formula For Structuring A Groupon Deal That Doesn’t Lose Money (GRPN)
We’ve all heard the nightmare stories about Groupon merchants who lost tons of money because they were suddenly overwhelmed with thousands of customers whom they were forced to serve at a loss: The British bakery that made 102,000 cupcakes. The Irish hairdressers whose customer base now consists entirely of people who only want their hair cut a discount. The Portland cafe that lost $8,000 because the owner failed to cap the number of deals she offered.
It’s not just Groupon, of course. There are loads of other daily deal sites — Living Social, Thrillist, Google Offers, etc — but they all present merchants with the same problem: The conflict between offering below-cost deals to customers in hopes of attracting long-term “regulars” and structuring a deal so that you can still make a profit. The math can be tricky because merchants have to account for two different sets of discounts: The discount to the customer and share of the payment taken by the daily deal site for publicizing the offer.
Now TheDealMix, a site that aggregates daily deals into an impressively complicated map of your neighborhood, has produced an infographic that can help businesses calculate daily deal offers so th! at they won’t accidentally go bankrupt.
And, yes, The DealMix has presented its formulas in the form of cupcakes — particularly useful given the number of bakery-related Groupon disasters that have made the headlines.
The formulas include:
Offer Price – Cost of Goods > $0
Average Customer Spend – Value of Offer + Price > Cost of Goods
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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See Also:
- Groupon Allegedly Hacked Merchant’s Email To Alter Contract
- The Facebook Advertising Hall Of Fame: Here’s Who Is Nailing It On The Social Network
- Will Ferrell Has Made At least 19—Nineteen!—Insane Old Milwaukee Ads
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Groupon and Livingsocial Continue to Slide
Image from: Merkushev Vasiliy/Shutterstock
Group buying/daily deal sites seem to be losing their shine – witness the recent layoffs at Buywithme.com (which has recently merged with Gilt Groupe) and the repricing of the Groupon IPO due to concerns with their model (and other issues). From my perspective, I’ve long thought that the daily deal space was overcrowded and people were starting to ignore the offers – deal fatigue setting in. We can actually see some of this in Compete PRO’s data.
But where it gets interesting is to look at the daily deal aggregators websites – let’s look at Yipit.com (my personal favorite). On Yipit, we see continued, continuous growth (albeit off a small base):
The data on Yipit seems to indicate that people are still interested in daily deals, but that they may be turning to aggregators to deal with the large number of companies and deals.
Now, I don’t think daily deal sites are going away – but there are clearly too many of them right now, and deal quality has been sliding as merchant get more weary of the deals. That will likely lead to margin compression – businesses may not be as willing to jump at deals where Groupon gets 50% of the revenue. Bottom line, I would expect more of these companies to go under or get bought up in firesales.
This all may, in fact, be good news for Groupon and Livingsocial – the two biggest players in the space. As industry consolidation happens, it may give them the ability to hold onto more consumers and therefore have more pricing power with merchants to keep margins up. It’s been an exciting space to watch for the past year – I’m looking forward to updating this post in another 6 months to see what actually happened.
Are you still looking at daily deal websites? How often are you using their services? Let us know in the comments!
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Digital Consigliere
Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.
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