Google have recently released their findings from a study into the length of time that customers are now spending researching an online purhase and have com up with some suprising results.

Not only are consumers starting their research earlier than ever before, there appears to be a growing number of people leaving their purchases to the very last moment.

In the run up to Christmas, their research showed that 44% had already started their decision making process 4 months before the big day. But also that 14% had not even started their shopping with only 5 days to go!

When I read it a couple of things crossed my mind:

1) how are we going to have to change our planning to start taking this into account and,

2) they left a whole 5 days to do their shopping! Now that's planning ahead.

As you can probably tell I am a terrible Christmas shopper. A right last minute charlie.

Seriously though, as a marketeer we are going to have to learn to use the tools available to plan more effectively, not just in the run up to the holiday season, but also for any other key event in our marketing calendar such as mothers day, valentines, or even the 2012 Olympics?

In the world of search google themselves provide a great insight tool (http://google.com/insights/search ) that can now even, for certain criteria, provide you with a forecast of search volume for key terms. Hitwise (www.hitwise.co.uk) can also offer you a great way to not only cluster some of your potential keywords into their own portfolio for monitoring their change over time but also to look at the top rising searches in your chosen industry or category.

For all media though let's not forget the fundamental principle that we really need to understand what's on our customers mind and then looking to trigger that awareness of your brands offering placing it in that consideration set they will then return to nearer the time of purchase. It's a bit like a subliminal shortlist.

So I've now realised I've opened a bit of a can of worms, because we will want to track this longer term engagement cycle but that means setting a cookie length of anything up to 90 days! That's one hell of a cookie, considering some retailers operate on a 7 day cookie. It's time to contact our Analytics provider to have a little chat on attribution modelling for our campaigns I think.

This question was recently posed on Linkedin as a Q&A and it's one that the answer can vary massively from each industry but in my experience in the retail space, the customer bases their decision on making a purchase on 4 key things when on a site - in this order:

Price --> Value --> Price --> Delivery Costs and timescales

By placing a price at every point of a customer interaction with a product you allow them to make that consideration of 'is the price right for me', then they click through to the product details page where they will evaluate whether that is 'good value' based upon the products features and benefits. This then leads them to add an item to their basket,where they will re-evaluate the price as part of their overall shopping journey (i.e. the contents of their basket). the lat bit is fairly self explanatory. If you cant ship by the time they want it or charge too much for delivery then you've lost them. Simples.

To put the concept into some form of context.

If you take an offline comparison, why would you send a customer a piece of Direct Mail with some really enticing product and tell them to walk into your store to find out how much it is. You wouldnt - or if you did you would only do it the once as the volume of people walking into the store just wouldn't make it viable to send out another mailing.

Financial Services, where the actual price is highly dependent on the customer providing some information first before a price is returned, is only slightly different but the same first 3 elements of the journey still very much apply.

Test, test and when you think your all done, Test again.

The easy way to find out if being more up-front with your pricing is going to be beneficial is to run some simple A/B tests on your creative using something like Google Website optimiser.

It is key not to initially look at actual order conversion as a measure of success but look more to either the volume of people clicking through from the landing page to the next step of their journey, or if on a product details page, the percentage of those people adding an item to their basket.

If you get higher volumes into your basket, you can then work out how to improve your conversion from their on in.

 

 

There is a lot of noise at the moment in the blogosphere, Twitter and even into that printed matter, the newspaper, talking about how google's new operating system could shake up the market and become the operating system of choice for people on the move and for those where the Internet is their primary use of their computer.

Some of the major benefits appear to be its ability to use the 'cloud' to ensure portability, flexibility and deliver an endless number of applications that run over the internet. For example, if you manage to lose your netbook down the side of a sofa, you could pop into you local high street google shop (admit it it's going to happen), and login to the machine and as if by magic all your files, photos and music will be available as if you never lost the orignal. Truly a leap forward. This does however mean that you will be pushing and pulling a high Level of data over the ether to a remote data centre(s).

This means that unless you are hooked up to your favourite wireless network (large latte in hand) you are at the mercy of mobile broadband and 3G services and will be experiencing the joy of dropped connections and slow speeds. Which may just be a little on the frustrating side.

In the UK at least, it is my experience that we don't yet have a level of service that offers us uninterupted access to that cloud that chrome is to use as it's backbone to sucess.

If the train journey I am currently on from rural Norfolk into London is anything to go by, I have enough trouble maintaining a signal to send an SMS message, let alone a data connection for long enough to write and post this little article. Yes it may well be my provider and yes it may well be that Norfolk is a beautifully crafted technological backwater (not actually in reality-but I'm going to get some comments to the contrary anyway) but in order for google to get any traction then it's the mobile networks that may be it's downfall or savior.

I for one very rarely able to seperate myself from my iPhone, MacBook or PC and so this OS may well be another great additon to my arsenal to being able to work on the move, but I may even be tempted to defect back to a network cable if the dream of a truly remote lifestyle doesn't quite live up to the reality.

Interesting times ahead. What are your experiences and do you agree? Leave a comment or drop me a note.

Well I have very kindly been provided with access to Google Wave, and I have been racking my brains as to how best to describe what it is and what it does, but it seems to me that we have something totally new to now play with.

It combines instant messaging, document collaboration, social networking and email all into one environment, and allows you to share, create and embed content with other members of a ‘wave’.

At the moment, despite me sending out all my 8 invites, I have no friends and so it is quite difficult to demonstrate how it works, but ill drop in a few new posts as soon as I have some examples.

Would love to hear back from you as to your thoughts on how this may change the way we communicate and collaborate.

We all might think that camping has been the next big thing this year as we all start to batten down the financial hatches and we start going on a staycation - yep a new word has entered my dictionary as a the 'stay at home vacation'. Even I have been persuaded by the rest of my flock that tents can now come with an electrical hook-up and so the laptop can be charged whilst under canvas.
 
Well me being me, i thought i would take a quick look (www.google.com/insights/search) and see whether many others have started looking for the soggy option of taking a holiday in the uk. To my surprise some of the top volume camping search terms came up with little variance on previous years with all closely trending on terms such as 'camping', 'tent' and 'sleeping bag'.
 
What however i did discover is that there do appear to be more people looking for somewhere to pitch their tent and for somewhere with a good review. This tells me that 1) its going to be difficult to find a decent pitch this August bank holiday 2) the prices their charging are going to be more than usual and 3) im only going to be left with a really grotty shower in a couple of weeks!

What makes a good email welcome programme?
 
Here are 5 nice little tips on putting together a high performing email welcome programme.
 
Whilst these could be considered as very basic and logical thoughts, there are very often overlooked and ignored in the development of email campaigns in general
 
1) Make if timely
Why wait a day to send you customers a introduction to your company when they have just taken the effort to register their interest and are possibly the most receptable to the brand. Look to both your ecommerce systems and your online Analytics platforms to identify the best way of getting an most immediate acknowledgement of the customers action.
 
2) Don't just be a one message wonder
As with all programmes of communication, only a small proportion will digest, interpret and action what your are presenting before them with a welcome programme, due to the customer having made a concoius action to register with your business, there is a higher propensity to engage first time, however it should not be ruled out that you may need to look at a sequential set of emails In order to really get the prgramme to reach it's true potential.
 
3) Make the content relevant
Why would you tell a customer In your email about the features and bEnefits of the use of a particular online tool if this is where you first collected their data and they are already a user?
 
Maybe your welcome email should include something else about tools and widgets available on the site that may be of interest.
 
4) Learn as much as you can
As with all relationships, the early days is all about learning as much as you can about each other which then translates into experiences that will often shape how the future unfolds. This may be through a customer telling you want they want or like to receive or through their actions on your site.
 
5) Make it the start of things to come
In this instance we are talking about not making one intial message fit every customer. For instance, if the customer has filled in a quick sign-up form on site, sell in the virtues of completing a full registration.
 
If a customer has registered as part of an order, blend the welcome message into their order confirmation.

I hope these are a reasonable starting point to getting your programme off the ground, but as always am always interested in new ideas and your experiences.

James