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Search Lost for Online Retail Conversions
Traffic trends indicate that display advertising is more effective than search marketing when it comes to online retail.
Digital monitor Nielsen found in an analysis of 200 online retail companies that less than 10 per cent of web traffic came from search engines such as Google and Bing, with more people going to branded sites directly rather than searching for a place where they could buy their products online.
Nielsen’s results could have implications for online advertising firms as internet trends are changing; consumers increasingly know exactly what they want and where they can buy it online, relying less on generic search term results. Retail sites such as Amazon and Play are benefiting from strong brand reputations, and are cutting out the need for search engines to direct customers to specific retail sites.
61 per cent of online consumers are now going directly to retail sites to find the products they want. Less than one per cent found the retail outlet they were looking for through price comparison sites. It is no surprise then, that out of the 50 top search terms, 47 were branded, the remaining three being porn related.
Vice President of industry insights for Nielsen, Ken Cassar told AdAge: “The fact that such a high percentage of people go directly to retail sites and even those that search generally have a pretty clear intent as to which website they’d like to go to – it makes a compelling argument that brand and past experiences matter an awful lot”.
Search Marketing news posted by Scott Tickner on 04 November 2009
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How significant is the long tail?
I heard about this report when if first came out, but am just seeing your post now. The sites referenced in the report all have huge brand awareness, which would skew the averages for direct traffic and branded search visits. It seems it would be helpful to know how many visits and sales came from non-branded search to better determine how big an investment retail sites should make in search.
Comment posted by Blake on 11/12/2009 23:01:21
