Advantages of E-Commerce Systems

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An all-in-one solution has its advantages, especially for small business managers who prefer not to outsource their search engine marketing efforts, or lack the resources to set up sophisticated tracking systems in-house.

E-Commerce Plus E-Marketing

It's convenient to operate an online store and promote it all from within one system. E-marketing features can include coupons , refer-a-friend, newsletter, affiliate, and ad-tracking management. An ad-tracking tool can be used to monitor sales from virtually any online marketing effort. If you can include a link from a banner ad, email, or search engine listing to your web site, then you can track the resulting orders. In your e-commerce system, all you do is create a campaign name (for your reference) and set the destination landing page. Your system should generate a unique tracking URL that you'll use for your paid placement or paid inclusion campaigns .

Uh-oh. Only one link has been generated, right? Well, you'll need to generate a different tracking URL for each campaign component you want to monitor. I suggest that first-time Internet marketers start with the following:

  • By search engine (for example, Ask Jeeves)

  • By groups of keywords (for example, an auto insurance company could name one campaign "insurance," which would track "auto insurance," "auto insurance quote," and "car insurance" under one tracking URL

This allows you to evaluate campaign performance by each search engine and by groups of keywords. Ready to take your advertising campaigns to a higher level of performance? If so, go deeper with your analysis. Generate different tracking URLs for the following:

  • By search engine

  • By groups or individual keywords

  • By ad listing (separate title and description if you create different ones for testing purposes)

  • By landing pages (you can set up different ones for the same product for testing purposes)

Let's use the car insurance company as an example. Pretend the company wants to track one search engine and keyword group as identified earlier. Then, they want to test two different ad listings and landing pages. This firm would set up four campaigns, which would generate four tracking URLs:

Ask Jeeves, Insurance, Ad 1, Landing 1

Ask Jeeves, Insurance, Ad 1, Landing 2

Ask Jeeves, Insurance, Ad 2, Landing 1

Ask Jeeves, Insurance, Ad 2, Landing 2

Name each tracking URL anything you want. Each e-commerce system has different limits on character length; if you're faced with a low limit, abbreviate your names or use codes to keep them short. The tracking URL that's generated won't display this information; it's for your reference when you check the performance of each ad.

Tip

Use a tracking URL when promoting your products and services in your own e-zine. You'll learn what promotional copy and which offers get the best response from your subscribers. Use this information to develop new offers for them, as well for your other marketing campaigns.


Because I use an e-commerce solution (1ShoppingCart.com), I can show you how this process works. Let's say my first tracking URL is for the keyword phrase "search engine tips" on Ask Jeeves. Perhaps I'll test two versions of my ad listings and two landing pages (the home page for this example, although a custom landing page would be better). I could name the first ad listing and associated landing page:

Ask Jeeves, search engine tips, Ad 1, Home 1

Figure 16.3 shows how I could create a tracking link using this method in 1ShoppingCart.com. Figure 16.4 shows the URL that's generated. I'd use this as the destination URL for the first listing in Ask Jeeves. When clicked, it would send consumers to the home page of my book web site (www.searchenginesales.com).

Figure 16.3. Generating a tracking URL using an e-commerce solution such as 1ShoppingCart.com typically requires only a campaign name and destination URL.

Figure 16.4. A unique tracking URL is created for each listing you set up.

Easy Setup for Non-Techies

I confess that I'd rather throw a computer out the window than fix it. I lack patience for learning about hardware or software. My time is spent teaching, writing, or executing my clients ' search engine marketing campaigns. When it's time for me to send out my monthly e-zine or launch a paid listing campaign, for example, I want the process to be quick and painless. Can you relate?

Well, merchant solutions are a good match for nontechnical marketers, like me. Numerous business owners tell me that they're swamped directing daily business operations. Yet, they are responsible for marketing their company. Solutions by 1ShoppingCart.com and Yahoo! enable site owners to easily track incoming orders from their search engine campaigns without doing any additional programming work. Other tracking programs require integration of at least a few lines of code into their web site. This step is already taken care of in combined e-commerce/e-marketing solutions. That makes me, and other non-techies, quite happy.

Low Cost

For less than $100 per month, entrepreneurs can run an online store plus promote it to new and existing customers through a variety of programs. And unlike with other return on investment (ROI) programs mentioned in this section (with the exception of web analytics), it doesn't matter how much money you spend on search engine advertising, or how much traffic you get. The monthly fee remains the same. Other ROI tracking solutions charge additional fees, which means you'll need to include this number when budgeting for your search engine campaigns.

There can be a transaction fee in addition to a solution leasing fee, but it's relatively small. It's better to pay a reasonable sales transaction fee than to spend additional money for clicks that don't convert.

Marketing Perks and Discounts

Users of Yahoo!'s Merchant Solutions score bonus marketing opportunities. These customers are included in Yahoo! Shopping and can save 20% on marketing costs for all categories. Yahoo! merchants are offered discounts on shopping destination listings, Pay-For-Placement (PFP) search engines, search engine submissions, and email marketing services provided by third parties.

The trend of e-commerce providers partnering with third-party marketing vendors will continue. It's a great enticement for new merchants to leverage low-cost technology and services by essentially joining a network of partners .

Entrepreneurs aren't the only beneficiary of these solutions. Plenty of large-scale corporations use an e-commerce solution that's designed primarily for small businesses. Corporations might have an in-house custom solution plus a Yahoo! store with a few of their top-selling items, or excess inventory. Why would they do this? To get access to the marketing perks. A few years ago, only Yahoo! merchants could enhance their store visibility by advertising in Yahoo! Shopping.

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Search Engine Advertising. Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales
Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0321495993
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 155

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