Improving Internet search to build sales

At GiftCollector.com, a retailer of porcelain figurines and other giftware, sales are on course to double this year to $10 million from $5 million last year, after doubling in 2003 over ’02. President and founder Sara Blakewood Norment attributes much of the growth to effective search marketing.

Norment, speaking on a panel on Internet search marketing at the Annual Catalog Conference Tuesday, said she has worked hard to learn how to use Internet search to her advantage since she started selling Beanie Babies online in 1996.

“We’ve learned to use our brand names wisely” in paid search programs, she said. To attract shoppers of glass stemware, GiftCollector will use keywords “Waterford stemware” instead of just “Waterford,” which alone left shoppers wondering if the Waterford listings were for pens, glassware or other items, she said.

Being aware of shoppers’ tendency to search by misspelled words has also helped search results and sales, Norment said. She noted that half of shoppers searching for Wedgwood china and dinnerware misspell the brand, often as Wedgewood, so GiftCollector will make sure it buys keywords with multiple spellings.

Panelist Steve Hawco, vice president of Lego Shop at Home, the retail online and catalog arm of The Lego Group toy company, said Lego.com attracts 1.5 million visitors per week and is contributing to an overall increase in Lego sales. The company also sells its products through toy retailers.

Lego started dabbling in Internet search in 2001, but wasn’t sure how to best take advantage of it, Hawco said. After testing search along with online banner ads as part of its overall online marketing strategy in 2001, it began to emphasize search over banner ads in 2002, then expanded search with French and German terms to cover European shoppers. By 2003, it was running year-long search programs and analyzing their performance with web analytics tools. It now figures paid search accounts for 35% of its leads from searches, the rest from organic search.

One of its more effective search strategies, he said, is to analyze the keywords its shoppers use in Lego.com’s site search feature, then include those terms in its paid search and natural search site optimization programs. A member of the panel’s audience asked if it made sense to take effective paid-search keywords and turn them into only natural search through site optimization, saving on the costs of paid search. Hawco answered that, in Lego’s case, it makes most sense to use both paid and natural search for the hottest keywords. “It’s best to take a strong product and get the most sales out of it,” he said.

Garrett Mathews, manager of Internet marketing for consumer electronics retailer Crutchfield, said merchants should consider using database management software to manage large numbers of keywords and monitor their performance. “Using a spreadsheet to manage a few hundred keywords is OK, but when you get close to 1,000 you need database management,” he said.

The most important part of managing keywords, he added, is pulling out ones that are costing too much too quickly without leading to sales. To stay within a keyword financial budget, he suggested temporarily pulling out some of the hottest keywords from broad tests of multiple terms, saving on cost-per-click expenses, then researching their effectiveness separately in a follow-up test.

Hawco cautioned, however, that marketers should be aware of the seasonality and other time-sensitive aspects of their retail sales. Brief tests may not reveal how well certain keywords would work in particular seasons or even particular days of the week or time of day, he said.

Alan Rimm-Kaufman, president of consulting firm Rimm-Kaufman Group Inc., who moderated the panel, pointed out that retailers need to support web search programs with landing pages that offer effective merchandising designs and compelling value propositions.