Companies have been throwing money down the drain using Google Adwords for years, partly because they use broad match for their ad campaigns.  Even if you’ve discovered exact match and phrase match options in Google Adwords, wouldn’t it be great to see the visitor’s actual search query in Google Analytics?  Here’s a tip — albeit an advanced one — to get real keyword detail from your Google Adwords campaign using Google Analytics.

First, though, I’ll start with why this is important.  These are in no particular order.

1. Keyword detail helps you discover negative match options. If you’re bidding on “dog food” and someone searches for “how to make your own dog food,” your ad is going to appear.  You may be selling dog food, and a visitor like this is not going to find information on your site on how to make dog food.  You don’t want that click.  After seeing this keyword detail in Google Analytics would perhaps want to add “make” as a negative match option for that ad group.  This helps you hone in on buying traffic that’s going to convert, making your campaign more profitable.
2. You’ll get revenue and conversion rate data on every search, which helps you make decisions about the keywords that you are bidding on.
3. It may help you generate ideas for new products, services, blog posts or other search phrases that pertain to your site but you haven’t thought of yet.

For a step-by-step explanation of how to set this up, browse over to the Get Elastic ecommerce blog and read the instructions.

Thanks to the Marketing Experiments blog for posting some recent research on optimizing client testimonials.  We all know that client testimonials (or customer testimonials, customer ratings) are relevant and have credibility with web site visitors, but is your site using customer testimonials effectively?

You can read their findings here or if you didn’t see their webinar on July 9, you can watch it here.

The big news of the week in internet marketing, in case you missed it, is that the Google Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool is now showing actual search volume data.  Specifically, the tool is showing the number of times keyphrases were searched the previous month and also the average search volume.

Many keyword research services, like Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker, collect search volume data from many search engines, but you must pay for these services.

So what does this mean for internet marketers and search engine advertisers?  The Google Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool was a great tool even before it provided actual search keyphrase data, but now why pay fees for a subscription service when you can get real numbers from Google?

Despite the economic slowdown, e-commerce and online business has remained strong.  This prompted an article in the E-commerce Times this morning asking if this is just a fluke and if the e-commerce industry is just lucky.

The conclusion from the article is that since e-commerce businesses focus more on relationship building activities and customer loyalty than brick-and-mortar retailers, the e-commerce model thrives.

I’d have to agree with this.  E-commerce businesses have so much more data at their disposal since business happens electronically.  They can learn which offers and online marketing channels drive the most business, and testing offers and creative on the web is, well, easy.  Not so offline.  Try asking a brick-and-mortar retailer how much business their TV or radio ad drove, and you’d get nothing more than an educated guess.

Read the article at the E-commerce Times

I was reading Seth Godin’s blog post a few days ago about “the magic of low-hanging fruit” and was reminded of the power of fixing low-hanging fruit when redesigning your web site.

You see, when we perform web site assessments, the first thing we look for is low-hanging fruit.  Often, fixing these small, easily identifiable issues requires little effort and produces a big return.

If you think your web site is fully-optimized, think again.  I’ve yet to work on a site that doesn’t have some small issues that can be easily fixed.  Understandably, some companies are reluctant to make changes.  I’m currently working with a client whose site won some major awards in the early 2000’s (”back in the day”).  They conducted rudimentary usability research and had a great site, but they haven’t changed anything but content since.

Now, years later, they’ve hired me to do a web site assessment.  They are understandably reluctant to totally overhaul their once award-winning web site.  In addition to needing some design updates, this site could beenfit from fixing some low-hanging fruit to significantly improve their bottom line.

The most dramatic example I have of fixing low-hanging fruit is an e-commerce client I had about 2 years ago.  The product images on his product pages were so large that they took up a normal customer’s entire screen.  By shrinking the image and moving all pricing information near his add-to-cart button — all of which took 2 hours to change — site revenue improved over 60%.

I encourage you to contact us — we can identify what changes should be made to your site.