How attention to detail produces effective search results at QVC
Online retailers should make the time and effort to analyze the metrics of their search engine marketing programs to obtain the best results, Carol Steinberg, director of online marketing and business development at QVC, will tell the audience at the eTail 2005 conference in Palm Desert, CA, next week.
As bidding becomes more expensive and retailers look to optimize their advertising return on investment, a metrics reporting program and web analytics can help retailers truly pinpoint click-through and sales conversion rates to better predict and react to customer behavior. “The right tools and analysis help,” Steinberg says. “We use the 80/20 rule. If it’s 20% of the bids that bring in 80% of the results, we concentrate on optimizing that 20%.”
QVC.com, the e-commerce arm of the home shopping channel that reaches more than 80 million U.S. households, can use between 80,000 and 100,000 key word and phrases in its search engine marketing program, the company says. But even though it’s getting more expensive to bid on some brand names, QVC’s analysis shows that it’s still an effective strategy to bid on QVC-related brand words and phrases. “Retailers should look at buying their own brand terms and decide if it makes sense for them,” she says. “In our case it’s still very worthwhile.”
Steinberg, who will focus on 10 lessons that QVC has learned about creating and running an effective search engine market program, says effective bid management and click-stream analysis aid in the quest to truly understand what factors are driving traffic. “The analogy is a $1 bid on an $800 treadmill,” she says. “If people are clicking through, but then buying a commodity item, they may want to make an adjustment.”
QVC likes to continually test what’s working and what needs adjusting to obtain effective search engine marketing results–and stay current with the latest industry trends such as natural search. “Every retailer needs to define their goals and how they measure success,” she says.
Steinberg will speak at 4:55 p.m. Tuesday during the Track B search optimization track.
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