I’ve no doubt from the latest drop in inflation that demand is subsiding, but that doesn’t mean that demand is disappearing. The drop in consumer demand, I believe, is masking an increase in online consumer demand.

Webdiverseon, Jersey’s leading search marketing business, has seen an increase in traffic and conversions across a wide range of its customers, including fragrances, memory, and domestic consumables. All sectors are showing increases in online demand, and expanded demographics as new shoppers come online to seek bargains and online savings. The smarter online businesses are therefore commencing aggressive cross-channel online campaigns, and securing immediate wins.

There’s lots of businesses complaining about shrinking demand, but all market conditions have an equal number of winners and losers. It’s up to you to decide which group you want to be in.

ShareThis

Still, it got me thinking what the opposite of a purple cow might be. I’m going for dead sheep. Here’s how to be a dead sheep.

1. Don’t answer the phone in under 5 rings.

2. When you do answer the phone, don’t ask my name, don’t check my customer history, and whatever you do don’t do an early home delivery for me - it would break the rules.

3. Don’t deviate from your inventory, list of services, menu, whatever. The customer’s not got enough taste to demand these things!

4. Don’t store my details on your website. After all it shouldn’t be easy for me to re-order.

5. Make sure your ecommerce process is beautiful. Lots of Flash, lots of stages where I can exit. And best of all make sure the final payment page is in a screen popup that will be blocked by 90% of today’s browsers.

6. Never offer refunds without a fight to the death.

7. Deliver my stuff late, without an explanation.

8. Spam me with lots of offers I didn’t ask for.

9. Don’t stock things people will want, and direct them to online competitors.

10. Reduce your staff levels in a bid to cut costs, the customers won’t notice really.

This list of 10 (I’m sure you can add more), was gleaned from real experiences with Jersey businesses this week. The good thing about a recession is that dead sheep might bleat for a while, but eventually they’ll be properly dead.

Care to share some dead sheep experiences?

ShareThis

But all of this good work is destroyed when you pause your ads. You’ve withdrawn from the marketplace (this is analagous to selling shares, you’ve left the market), and you’re no longer playing. When you re-enter the market you can’t expect the dynamics to revert to the point when you exited.

It’s a pain though, because there’s lots of times when you need and want to pause - your site might be down, or performing badly or you might be releasing new products. You’ll need to make the call on what you do at this stage. Perhaps the safest strategy would be to reduce your keyword bids to very low levels. You’re still in the market, but your traffic will be practically non-existent.

ShareThis

PB: What do you do on Stardoll?

FB: You click on a celebrity, or an athlete, or a singer and they’ll come up with lots of clothes next to them. You click on the clothes and drag them to on to the person. You can do Princess Diana, and royalty. You can dress Queen Elizabeth in casual clothes or rich clothes.

PB: How often do you visit the site?

FB: Quite a lot, normally after school. The site’s quick and I can do it before tea and after my homework. And I do it a lot in the holidays.

PB: Did you know there are clubs where you can meet other people?

FB: No, I haven’t discovered those. I just enjoy dressing up people.

PB: How did you find out about the site?

FB: It was from my friend, Sophia. We were having games in ICT and we were allowed to play on different sites, and we were allowed to play on Stardoll.

PB: How does Stardoll make money?

FB: I don’t know.

PB: Did you know you could pay to be a community member?

FB: No. I just thought you went on to dress up people. I thought there might be something else, but didn’t want to do it without my parent’s permission.

PB: How could Stardoll be better?

FB: I’d like fashion advice on what goes with what. And the men should be more interesting …

PB: Is Stardoll better than Club Penguin?

FB: With Club Penguin you can’t really do anything without being a member. With Stardoll there’s no real reason to pay to be a member.

PB: Thanks Florence.

<end of interview>

Great insight from Florence. I quite like the fact that Stardoll hasn’t pushed a commercial route for Florence. I suspect she will grow out of Club Penguin, and Stardoll will provide a teen-aspiring environment in due course.

Stardoll’s real achievement, like Club Penguin, is that their target audiences are buzzing offline. But unlike Club Penguin which has the hallmarks of an impermeable classic, Stardoll will need to constantly reinvent itself if it’s to remain ubercool.

ShareThis

The team has written a new OSCommerce contribution that exports all product data to TurboAds. Using a sophisticated template system, TurboAds then lists Adwords for every product. With Healthspark we have 106 products. TurboAds created 3 variations per product and promptly listed 106 Adgroups with 3 variations per group, that’s 318 Ads!

Best of all, each Ad is very specific, e.g.

So, the ad lists on the keyword ‘psyllium husks’, the prod description, price, display URL and destination URL are all pulled from Peter’s OSCommerce Adwords Feed.

I’ll post more about what we’ve learnt from the TurboAds data, but I’d thought you’d like to know about it. If you’d like to sign-up for TurboAds just fill out the Contact Baldy Form.

Needless to say I’ve been dancing around the room a lot.

ShareThis

But when should you start work on conversion rate optimization? Never without stringent testing. Assuming your site is reasonably designed, and your product offering is reasonably priced, you should be able to achieve 6-10% click through rates (CTR), and 6-10% conversion rates. So roughly 1 in 10 clickthrough, and 1 in 10 of those on the site buy.

You can increase your CTR by analysing your copy and keyword cohesion. Spin out the higher CTR keywords into their own ad groups, and just use the target keyword in the Ad title. Speak the language of your customers.

But to increase your conversionr rate, you’ll need to roll up your sleeves and start someone serious work on the design and information hierarchy of your site. But again, I’d stress, don’t do it without testing. These guys know their onions, and their 101 tips for using the Google Optimizer are an excellent place to start.

ShareThis

This shouldn’t just be the activity of a start-up. If someone bowls into your shop, you should talk to them. Consider LiveChat, or better still call them.

ShareThis

PB: Florence, how long every day are you spending on Club Penguin?

FB: I don’t have much time to play after school, normally maybe half an hour a day. My Mac stops me at five hours a day, so I should have enough time.

PB: I reckon you’re spending on average one hour a day.

FB: Maybe…

PB: Tell me about your role as an agent on Club Penguin?

FB: To start off, I needed to click a yellow button (to see what it does). I had to answer a quiz to become a secret agent. The quiz covered issues like when you see a penguin being rude, or mean, or asking for personal information. Then you report them to the moderator. What I do is I normally just do missions like ‘the missing puffballs’ and you get this little phone and you can teleport to places, and you read codes and all sorts.

PB: As an agent, have you had to report any naughty penguins?

FB: I reported this man for saying, “move your big butt off the chair”, so I reported him for rude behaviour. He’s now on my ignore list, and he can’t talk to me, or come to my igloo.

PB: Do you think Club Penguin is a safe environment?

FB: I think so, because mum and dad have told me not to give out personal information, and no one’s asked me for that. I make friends with people who seem friendly, and report people who are unfriendly. Lots of people are friendly on Club Penguin. I go round visiting people’s igloos.

<end of interview>

As a parent I couldn’t be more pleased with the Club Penguin environment. It’s well policed, and Florence is learning important online social networking skills. Skills, I think, which will be foundational for the next generation.

ShareThis

If you’re in a competitive market, you’ll see from the amazing Google Trends tool that customers really shop around. Look at this analysis of the Vitamins Minerals & Supplements (VMS) sector.

In order to compare prices, browsers are tending to cut and paste the product title into their browser bar, e.g. Rosehip 2000mg 60 Tablets. So, an easy win against your competitors is to take the product title from a leading product on their site, and incorporate it into the title tag for your equivalent product page. Then you’re making it even easier for consumers to compare prices with your competitors - everyone wins.

ShareThis

ChangeThis is a very cool site which was the brainchild of Seth Godin. It’s a site for perpetuating new ideas and new thinking. High quality ‘manifestos’ are published, and then the ChangeThis community spreads the idea.

I’m close to finishing my new book on how to become an ecommerce gazillionaire, and I’m going to pre-release the book for free on ChangeThis. To get ChangeThis to carry the book, I need lots of votes (this is the favour bit). So please please can you click this link, and forward it to your mates to click also.

http://www.changethis.com/proposals/1292

Thanks to all who’ve voted already, we’re currently no.4, which isn’t too bad for 24 hours voting!

ShareThis