Analyzing Internet Sales
Before creating an internet sales/marketing campaign or focusing
your products to their niche market, you need to know how buyers
think, what their habits are and how to persuade them to
purchase from you.
Marketing analyses are constantly performed by companies around
the world to measure their effectiveness and how to deal with
the new customer's behaviors, and the competitor's strategies;
and there are some highlights to remember.
We should take into consideration that half of internet
purchases have been made after searching the net, giving a
tremendous importance to the organic search results. Of course
some categories have a higher tendency (as the online travel
market for instance) than others as clothes where customers know
more specifically what they are looking for.
Other important fact is that generic keywords are much more used
than specific ones, meaning that people prefer to look for broad
terms rather than brands of product names. However talking about
conversions, even though brands are not so searched, their
conversion rate into sales is higher than generic terms.
So here comes a usual question while creating an SEO strategy
for your products/services: is it better to drive more generic
traffic and then filter the few buyers, or to focus on lower
amount of branded targeted searches with higher number of
transactions per visitor? Of course there is no absolute answer
and the decision should be taken individually obeying the
company's policies and the nature of the business.
As most of the searches before purchase come from generic terms,
you can find a great opportunity focusing your attention into
those keywords by using them as your new brand names and gain an
attractive number of broad searches plus the benefit of the
awareness for that keyword - as a brand.
Online purchases are made in average after 2-4 weeks from the
first research as customers may go from general to particular
results until they find what fulfills their expectations.
I expect that period will be shorter each time as customers
learn to get what they are looking for faster; and because we -
marketers - will continue improving our strategies to offer the
right product to our client in fewer steps.