Clever Blog

Froogle and A New Generation of Search and Disovery

Late last week, Google pulled the plug on its Froogle brand. Froogle’s days have been numbered since Google demoted it from its home page last August. In Froogle’s place, Google has introduced Google Product Search – “Search for Stuff to Buy”. Google Product Search features a cleaner interface and a continually refreshed list of 25 things recently and randomly found with the service: minibars, pumpkin seeds, a mullet wig, diamond earrings, pond pumps and Star Wars lego sets on a recent visit.

Google’s re-focused efforts on product search is great news for online shoppers.  However, despite the power of search algorithms and relevant results, search alone isn’t the best way to find enticing products on the web. Search, as perfected by Google, is a great tool for finding exactly what you are looking for. It is a less effective way of finding “something interesting, new or unique”. As the recent momentum for StumbleUpon.com shows, there is a huge consumer demand for online tools that let you discover, not search for, intriguing products and information.

Retailers, hamstrung by inadequate site search tools, are also turning towards product discovery as the new paradigm for eCommerce browsing. In fact, Forrester’s Sucharita Mulpuru cited product discovery as one of the top new e-commerce buzzwords for 2007.

Our experience at CleverSet has shown that retailers who help online shoppers discover relevant and appealing products, both through search and onsite discovery, are able to sell more by surfacing the long-tail of products that remain invisible to most browsers and searchers. The next big eCommerce opportunity isn’t perfecting product search – we’ll leave that to Google – but helping consumers effortlessly find the things they love but didn’t know to search for. 

More Clicks for Google: What the DoubleClick Aquisition Means for Online Marketers

Another day, another multi-billion acquisition by Google. But this time, the search giant’s plans to acquire Doubleclick for $3.1 billion are making a lot of people in the advertising market nervous, with claims of a monopoly on the “pre-click” side of the advertising equation circulating. No one knows for sure how this mega-merger will impact the online advertising industry, but it’s certainly a wake-up call to those on the “post-click” side of the fence. According to Google “This new partnership represents a tremendous opportunity for us at Google to broaden and deepen our inventory of available ads and to better serve both our publishers and users.” That may be true, in part. Certainly, for online marketers, a combined Google-DoubleClick is an opportunity to bring a whole new level of interactivity to their “post-click” marketing, branding and online advertising programs. Fred Wilson wrote a great piece

about the resurgence of the banner ad and how banners carry branding value that search ads don’t.

But it also means that Google will own even more of the “pre-click” ad marketplace, and online advertisers will sign over even more of their online ad budgets to Google. The more Google owns the "pre-click", the more marketers will be forced to pay attention to the "post-click." In my opinion, to survive and thrive, marketers will have to increasingly control what happens on their sites after the click. With Google once again in the news, the whole world is focusing on driving traffic – but the experience that users have on the site is what turns those clicks into dollars.

Why You Should Care About Personalization

“Personalization” is in the news again lately. Last week, Acxiom Digital acquired dynamic targeting company, Kefta.  According to Acxiom’s news release, "Kefta and Acxiom together will finally enable clients to capture the full potential of their digital marketing campaigns through comprehensive personalization and integration across marketing channels”.  Also, Aggregate Knowledge and ChoiceStream each raised money this week. 

I think of these deals as continued validation of the emergence of post-click marketing, a subject I’ve blogged about already.  But, more specifically, it’s validation of the promise of true personalization. Of course, we’ve been hearing about the personalized Web experience for at least the last six years, if not the last decade. But, so far, no one has really delivered it. Because when I say personalization, I don’t mean getting an email with your name on it, or seeing an ad that might interest you because of a keyword you clicked on. And I’m not referring to getting product recommendations based on the past, collective buying behavior of segments, either. Personalization, to me, means seeing products and content that are completely and totally tailored to your immediate tastes, desires and needs.

Let’s step back a bit. The value of demand generation is well understood by most online retailers. This has driven the willingness to pay for effective outbound marketing services to the edge of breakeven in many cases. (Just look at what’s happened with average AdWords CPCs over the last 24 months.) Now, online retailers are looking for the source of incremental revenues, and they’re focusing their attention on the effectiveness of their sites to acquire and retain customers. They also want to drive up average order size.  In other words, they want people to come to their sites, stay there, and buy more stuff.

As we talk to executives at online retail companies, the desire to use personalization to achieve these goals is a common theme, if not a necessity.  In fact, personalization is viewed by many of these folks as the solution to every marketer’s dream of a real-time, one-to-one marketing program that can operate effectively at scale. Based on these conversations and the “personalization buzz” in our market, expect to see more press releases from more companies promising personalization. But be careful how you read these announcements: true personalization isn’t about breaking people into segments of millions of “like-minded” consumers, it’s about delivering a real-time, one-on-one, totally unique experience to each and every visitor, each and every time they visit your site.

Todd Humphrey, CEO

The Dawn of Post-Click Marketing

John Miller wrote a great piece for SearchEngineLand recently about what he calls “Post-Click” marketing.  The basic idea is that what happens after the AdWords click is just as important, if not more so, than the click on the keyword itself.  In other words, getting a visitor to your site is only half the battle.

This insight holds equally true for B2C companies.  Perhaps even more so given the fierce competition for keyword inventory among online retail sites.  With increasing click costs and already thin contribution margins, the online retailers we talk to tell us there is no more important metric within their control than conversion rate (generally defined as orders/visits per unit time). Up to this point, online retailers have leaned heavily on costly promotions such as free shipping, price discounts, and “buy x get y”.  Let’s not forget that margins are tight and getting tighter in the online retail business.

So there’s a problem.  Where do retailers turn to to convert more visitors into buyers, drive down acquisition costs, and increase margins?  There is a significant need in the market to optimize the post-click experience for every visitor.  At CleverSet, we study this problem every day and see many opportunities for sites to do just that.

Here are a few tactics we’ve picked up on from some of our customers.

1.                  Define the primary use cases for which your site is designed.  Compare these use cases against the actual behavior of users on your site.  Are they aligned?  Do people get lost or bounce right back out when they come through natural search?  Answers to these fundamental questions can be found in your analytics and with a basic use case framework you can go a long way to understanding how well your site is optimized for post-click.

2.                  Optimize the order path.  Make it as easy as possible for people to complete the ordering process.  Sounds obvious but you’d be surprised at how many sites out there make it difficult and/or confusing for consumers.  Closely examine the order path, remove unnecessary hurdles, and assist the customer in completing the transaction.

3.                  Deliver a user experience that is personalized and relevant to the interests of every individual user.  Give visitors something fresh and new, with useful information, that will give them a reason to stick around, explore products and browse.

Check out how awinestore.com has seen significant revenue lift by personalizing the site experience for their customers. 

Todd Humphrey, CEO

Re-introducing the “CleverBlog”

After too much time away we are re-launching our blog.  There is a ton of activity in the online retail, technology, marketing and personalization categories and we’ve got some thoughts to share. As well, we’ll share some of our adventures in building the personalization category. You’ll be hearing from me as well as some of our team members including our VP Sales, Todd Sherman, our VP Marketing, Donna Custance and our founders Bruce D’Ambrosio and Jane Jorgensen. We hope you check back often and subscribe to our feed.

Todd Humphrey, CEO