On the Web: Every E-Tailers’ 2011 Wish List

Direct
Direct traffic is critical to cross-channel merchants. These visitors primarily arrive at your website as a result of some form of offline advertising — e.g., direct mail, radio and TV advertisements, in-store signage, catalogs, etc. However, it's difficult to track sales generated by offline campaigns back to a specific promotion. As a result, many retailers have cut back on offline advertising. But yet they're then surprised when the growth rate of their online store declines.

A decline in direct traffic has a second consequence for online retailers: Generally, direct traffic is the highest converting source of web traffic. These shoppers know who you are. Therefore, you might need to add 30,000 visitors from SEO or PPC to make up for 10,000 direct shoppers lost.

It's very important to measure direct traffic, with a close eye on spotting trends. If you see direct traffic declining and know that your company is cutting back on offline advertising, make your case for increasing online ad spending, which is more trackable, to offset this decline. Look for opportunities to promote your online store more prominently in offline advertising as well.

You can also encourage direct traffic by adding a buy online/pick up in-store option to your e-commerce site. This functionality can be a particularly effective part of a mobile site strategy. Allow shoppers to purchase items impulsively on their phone or iPad when the thought occurs, not when they're home in front of a computer. In-store pickup of these impulse items makes this even easier. And don't forget to promote this option in-store as well. Give shoppers the idea and they'll do it.

PPC
You can make an enormous difference in the traffic generated via PPC advertising by focusing on landing pages. PPC programs tend to spend time and money on developing new key phrases and ads. These are critical in driving more traffic to your site, so this effort makes sense. However, most merchants simply find a page on their site that's most relevant for the keyword or phrase, usually an existing category or product page. The problem is that category and product pages are designed for shoppers navigating from your homepage who already know who you are. Many PPC-generated visitors are either new to your site or haven't been there in a long time. You can improve the conversion rate of these shoppers up to 20 percent by simply adding the ability to dynamically recognize and welcome them.

More importantly, the impact on your PPC program is much greater than a 20 percent improvement appears to be at face value. Let's say that for a particular key phrase you can only afford to bid up to position six. At position six, the phrase produces about 50 visitors a month. After a 20 percent improvement in conversion rate, you can afford to bid more, helping you reach position three. At position three, you generate 250 visitors a month from the same phrase, resulting in a five-fold increase in profitable traffic from the key phrase! This is the magic of landing page improvements related to PPC.