On 27 September, Bang Digital ran its Retail Connect event in partnership with Google. The collaborative event gave guests the opportunity to hear exclusive insights from leaders at Google on everything retail marketing and the tools and resources needed to position their online business in the digital space.With ecommerce driving growth in Australian retail in 2017, it’s important that potential customers can easily find your business online and seamlessly move from product research to purchase to brand loyalty. Here’s some of our main takeaways from the event and how you can use Google Shopping in your retail advertising strategy to expand your online presence.What makes a great user experience?1. DiscoverabilityAs most shoppers begin their research process online, it’s important to ensure your brand and products are easily found. In fact, by making the products on your site easier to find, your business could see a 51% increase in its conversion rate.So it’s important to start now by preparing for key shopping days such as Christmas. With shoppers increasingly using their mobile devices for research, 82% turn to search engines when looking for a local business. Using search, you’re able to drive discovery and ensure you can be found when they search for you.2. PersonalisationMass messages are now meaningless and the one-size-fits-all approach is no longer relevant. Today, customers expect businesses to deliver personalised experiences. In fact, 90% of consumers say they would make a purchase from a company that best predicted their search and shopping intent and made good recommendations based on those predictions.Shoppers are also more likely to shift brand loyalty to whatever brand can fulfil their needs directly. With only 1 in 10 smartphone users set on a particular brand when they begin their search, the rest are open to the brand and online experience that proves to be the most relevant and helpful.So how do you customise these experiences? Help customers find, buy and get what they want through:
3. Friction = FailureHave you ever left a site because of a poor user experience? You’re not alone, with 53% saying they would abandon a mobile website if it took more than 3 seconds to load.Customers are looking for a frictionless shopping experience and expect every point of their journey to be seamless. A slow site or clunky checkout process can directly result in lost customers. With site speed shown to have a direct correlation on both bounce rate and conversion rate, it’s imperative to check and make any necessary changes to your load time across all devices.With the web being accessed more and more on mobile devices, it’s important to ensure your websites are mobile friendly. Using free tools such as Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, you’re able to test how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device. Simply enter a page URL to see how it scores. Remember, it’s all about constantly improving on your results to reduce the load speed over time.Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are also a great way to improve your mobile site speed, helping customers get through the shopping process on your mobile site more quickly. With 90% of publishers experiencing higher click-through rates and 80% experiencing higher viewability, AMP is helping business’s pages load faster and vastly improving the user experience.How to get started on Google ShoppingAs user expectations change and the role of the store shifts, Google has come up with new and innovative ways to improve the user experience through Google Shopping. With Google Shopping, your business is given a compelling format to promote your online business and local inventory, boost traffic to your website and find better qualified leads.Your ads appear on Google and around the web, showing users a photo of your product, title, price, store, name and more. This gives users a stronger sense of the product you’re selling before they click on the ad, which gives you more qualified leads.To get started, simply send through your product data (not keywords) to the Merchant Center and create a campaign on AdWords. Google will then use these details when they match a user’s search to your ads, making sure the most relevant product appears.As a Google Premier Partner, we have access to unique learning opportunities from Google every month. We also have a fantastic Search team who can use our connections at Google to gain the latest insights and stay informed with trend reports and best practice guides to ensure the success of your retail marketing campaign.If you’re interested in finding out how you can leverage user online behavior and maximise business results with Google Shopping, contact Bang today.
