HITWISE, an online competitive intelligence firm announced the search engine market share in the United States for April 2008. Refer the above chart to see the percentage of share own by major search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK and other.

It is clear that even if yahoo and msn merge together they cannot compete with Google. For more details visit Search Engine land and HitWise

Amazon.com has always played a revolutionary role in determining the operations of e-retailers. But, when marketing web sites are taken into account, Google takes the upper hand. It has added to the growth and prospects of the e-retailers. Since its commencement, Google has given sole importance to customers, not to the publicity returns; even a paid advertisement is search dependent.

Through this attitude, Google has won hearts of millions of customers and has become the top search engine worldwide which has boosted its image among the advertising market as well. Its brand value has made Search Engine Marketing as the primary and productive means of marketing web sites and the most revolutionary marketing form. Google has a better expertise of consumers approach and develops the results and SEM offerings accordingly. Google’s substantial leap in Internet searches is beyond comparison. No other search engine can compete with this giant search engine.

Google has recently launched its latest tool for helping e-retailers to improve conversion rates by using a starter web analytics package. This tool will not hinder other sophisticated web analytics product’s business; rather the smaller retailers can gain a basic know-how of their business flow with this innovative package. It is experiencing an overwhelming response from smaller and larger e-retailers as well.

This tool has substantially helped the retailers to improve their online sales. Google has always rendered a variety of innovations to the market. From Google Site Search and Enterprise Search to Google Checkout, it has always made its statement. When RSS feeds became the rage, Google made a timely acquisition of FeedBurner last year. It has never hesitated to round out its web offerings through acquisition than internal development. The acquisition of YouTube is a spectacular example from a financial and strategic perspective.

Google has taken retailers, who rely on it, to a new horizon by taking over the web business. The term “Googlespeed” stands perfect for how quickly and efficiently it has taken eminent position in the market. Microsoft’s fear to lose its position and the rush to buy Yahoo in $45 billion is an remarkable example of Google’s glory.

According to a study by Engine Ready, a San Diego-based search marketing firm, visitors who come to a web site by directly typing in a URL or bookmark constitute the most valuable traffic for an online retailer. The result was based on a study of traffic to 27 retail sites for a period of 2 years and was analyzed in terms of four types of site visitors--direct access, referrals (via links from other Web sites or email), paid search and organic search traffic.

"Visitors arriving via direct access or a bookmark stay longer, view more pages, are more likely to purchase and more likely to spend a higher dollar amount than visitors from other sources," the report said.

Online retailers who have created brand loyalty among consumers through online and off-line advertising and other propaganda benefit the most out of direct access traffic as their URLs are imprinted in the minds of consumers.

These brand-driven consumers have a conversion rate of3.3% which is considered to be the highest. They spend just over $170 per order. Also, direct access visitors spent 312 seconds on-site per visit and viewed an average of six pages each time.

The second-most valuable visitors are the referred traffic, or consumers who arrived via a link from another Web site or email. They have a conversion rate of 3% and spend about $168 per order. These referral visitors also had the highest bounce rate owing to various reasons like incorrect offer in the referrer email and so on.

Though search traffic is less expensive to generate than brand-driven traffic, it was not appealing in terms of conversions or average order value. Paid search visitors converted 1.4% of the time, about 20% higher than organic search traffic. The average order value from both paid and organic search visitors was much lower than direct access traffic, at $138 and $117 per visit, respectively. The second-highest level of engagement was shown by organic search visitors who viewed an average of five pages per visit.

Different companies will have different online retail goals. But it is always good to have a holistic retail strategy that includes paid search, SEO (search engine optimization) and branding efforts.

Watch this interesting video made by Invisible Shield; a company that makes scratch protection covers for gadgets.

JupiterResearch employed Ebillme, an online payment service provider, to conduct a study on the factors which online shoppers take into consideration when choosing how to pay on the Internet. The study revealed that online card users care more about fraud protection, product and service guarantees, and getting the best price than earning points or rewards.

Among the 2,700 consumers who were surveyed, about 81% of online card users stated that liability protection was their top priority. Ironically, 68% of online consumers who pay with their credit cards and 65% of those who pay with their debit cards were ignorant of their fraud protection coverage. About 77% of credit card users are willing to accept changes in the existing online checkout process if it would result in better security.

An independent study by Javelin Strategy and Research reveals that nearly 50% of consumers prefer to pay with cards because they find it more convenient.

Forrester Research Inc., a research and advisory firm, says that retailers’ priority this year is enhancing their websites’ usability.

According to a study conducted by Megan Burns and Forrester analysts titled “Customer Experience Spending Intensifies in 2008,” more than 80% of respondents believe that usefulness, usability, and enjoyableness of the online experience are more important this year than they were in the past. Moreover, 83% said that adding online functionality has become more significant, while 66% place greater importance on using rich Internet applications. In the coming year, 66% of respondents said they would spend more money on web analytics, 55% plan to spend their dollars on customer satisfaction surveys, and 53% claim their money will be going towards usability labs.

Experts opine that making websites more useful and interactive with rich Internet applications increases the demand for testing the efficacy of different technologies. For instance, Ajax (Asynchronous Java Script) and XML enliven online content by including some software processing in the visitor’s web browser. However, Vice-President Geoff Galat of Tealeaf Technology Inc. believes that if processing partly takes place in the visitor’s browser, unearthing problems which forced the customer to abandon transacting at a site becomes difficult.

Tealeaf has invented a technology in their CX software suite that lets retailers view previous shopping sessions for sites with rich Internet applications. On entering the customer’s account number and the date of a previous shopping session, the retailer can review every page visited by the shopper. Geoff Galat explained that with this technology, retailers can better address individual grievances. If a particular problem persists among many customers, the retailer could potentially take action to prevent it from occurring again.

Product Training
Sales Training
A Fast Internet Connection
Two or More available phones
Decision Making Guidelines
Roboform
Dual Monitors
Your time
Collaboration Tools
CRM Tools

Visit Plumbersurplus blog to know more...

Systemax Inc., the New York based electronics marketer, ranks no.24 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. Systemax, parent of the most popular computer reseller TigerDirect, now adds its competitor CompUSA.com and select stores to its asset list. Systemax acquired CompUSA.com from Gordon Brothers Group LLC, a Boston based investment banking firm, for an undisclosed price.

"We believe the value of the CompUSA brand remains very high. The company has a long legacy of value pricing, service and customer loyalty among consumers nationwide," said Systemax CEO Richard Leeds in a statement. "We view this acquisition as a strong complementary business to our TigerDirect operation

Systemax CEO Richard Leeds said that CompUSA would be retained as a separate E-commerce site. The list of Systemax stores at present includes about 11 TigerDirect retail stores in Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and Ontario, Canada. Further to the list, 16 CompUSA stores would be added during the first quarter of 2008.

CompUSA.com has now been updated with advanced searching options and enhanced content. Complex products, mostly consumer electronics, have been explained with the aid of video clips and photo galleries on the site. The CompUSA website is being operated by Systemax since January and from then on there has been an increase of traffic on the parent site.

In 2007 Systemax witnessed an increase in sales by 19%. It has risen from $2.34 billion in 2006 to $2.77 billion. A similar rise in revenue is highly expected, so this acquisition will definitely bring monetary gains to Systemax.

The leader is always magnificent, Google is no exception to it. Google is the “fastest growing company in the history of the world.” – Times of London, 1/29/06. Google has definitely taken a lead over its competitors in terms of search market share. According to Nielsen Online data for January, even if Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. join forces, they would only have half of the market share of the giant leader Google Inc.

Nielsen says, U.S. internet users alone have searched on Google 4.2 billion times in January representing 56.9% of all the online searches made during that period. Also, Yahoo had 19% of the search market followed by Microsoft’s MSN/Windows with12.1%. The three search engines together accounted for 88% of U.S. searches for the month of January 2008.

An average Google user carried out 39.6 Google searches compared to 25.1 times for Yahoo and 30.1 searches for Microsoft’s MSN. Nielsen also published the top 10 U.S. search engines for the month of January. The publication also included other details like the number of searches, market share, and number of searches per individual.

Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine." - Sergery Brin (Google Co-Founder). This definately proved that Google is the most popular search engine as most people prefer to search here than elsewhere.

Most online retailers and internet marketing professionals invest time and money on driving traffic to their website but all strategies end right here. They never think of encouraging a shopper to navigate from one page to another. In other words, online retailers drive traffic to the home page or product page with least or no site/page objective and finally end up in increasing the bounce rate. Due to this negligence, all traffic generating internet marketing campaigns like PPC, shopping engine campaign, email, and search engine optimization will fall flat. The investment and effort you put together to increase your traffic will go down the drain if there are no or very few conversions.So what makes or breaks the online sales conversion? Definitely, it is the landing page.Optimizing landing pages with surefire marketing techniques is one of the best ways to persuade visitors to become prospective buyers. There are few proven techniques by which an online retailer can improve his landing page …

Harmonize the message: The contents of the landing page (especially the page headline) should relate exactly with the advertisement. The aim of this technique is to ensure the user that he is visiting the right page.

Avoid Content Plagiarism: Plagiarizing content from online/offline market place will not add much value to the online shopper and the search engines. Add a persuasive marketing message along with unique product description, features, and images. Insert the relevant SEO keywords into the content. This will help search engines to crawl and index pages giving your site top ranking in SERP. The user can make his buying decision much quicker. Provide separate product usage guide so that the user can download to get information about the product’s functionality. (Mobius provides unique product description along with SEO keywords plugged in, Buying Guides and other content creation activities. Go ahead for Free Consultation)

Play with Price: Pricing is one of the ways to bolster a brand. When the user lands to the product page he usually scans the page to find the price along with the other important information like product name, features, etc. Be informed of the price quotes offered by other merchants in various online market places and decide your price.

User Opinion Matters: User reviews and opinions help customers to learn about the performance of the product. It is equal to taking a word of mouth suggestion about buying the product. This tempts the customer to proceed in actually buying the product. Make sure to include the user-review functionality in the site and also request your visitors to write a few words about their experience with the product. This is one of the best ways to increase the conversion rates and to improve the credibility of the site.

Product Usage Guide: Providing a product usage guide makes a shopper understand how far the product meets his requirements. But make sure you use good navigation that gets him back to the product page.

Freebies: Including offers like free delivery, free gifts, and coupons are definite ways to woo the customers, which increases the conversion rate.

Delivery time estimation: Shoppers surely would like to know how quickly the product will reach them after ordering. Online retailers like Amazon do it very efficiently.

Trust and Security: Provide icons, images, symbols that would give a tremendous positive impact of trust and security. Even large online retailers are influenced by these symbols and logos. The icons/images of VeriSign and eTrust logo are two examples.

Get money through different means: Don’t just stick to credit card or debit card payment. Not everyone likes the idea of credit card or debit cards. Provide payment options like Paypal, BillMeNext, and Google Checkout.

Avoid distractions: Avoid using high graphic pictures, flash and other fancy features which require latest applications. The user’s system may not be installed with the software supporting those files. Don’t use too many tricks to woo the shopper which usually ends up with the shopper leaving your website due to frustration without bothering to know what is so special in your product.

I think you had a good time reading these techniques… revise these changes in your website and realize the impact… but wait this is not an end list there are few more techniques left. Before I come up with more techniques in part II, I leave it open to the readers to suggest me few more reliable techniques they use in their website.