The theme of my week, this week has been mistakes that people make on Facebook ads. I have been asked to write an article about it, which I’ve done and submitted it to a magazine. I have been asked to give a talk on it, which I’m going to be doing in a couple of weeks’ time. And I have been, so it’s been on my mind a lot this week.
[Read more…] about Mistakes with Facebook Ads (Pixels)Ecommerce
Facebook Ads for Retailers
Hello. So today I’m going to talk a little bit about how Facebook adverts can work for retailers to increase your conversion. I’ve worked for years and years, basically, on both the organic aspect of advertising strategy and the paid aspect of advertising strategy for eCommerce stores of all sizes; from really small startups, right up to multinational corporations as part of an agency and also with my own agency, which I started a couple of years ago.
[Read more…] about Facebook Ads for RetailersXmas is a four letter word (at least in August)
We’ve already started discussing Christmas in the office. Colleagues have spotted Christmas items in the shops and adverts are creeping in. Now, I totally understand why, from an e-commerce shop owner point of view they need to optimise the amount of sales they make between now and the end of the year but not everyone feels that way.
Super organised mums
We mothers have to be super organised, and though I have a long list of birthdays to get through in the next couple months, I have also started planning Christmas gifts particularly for those friends and family that live overseas.
Wishing you a merry Christmas!
Top of my wish list this year is jewellery, which I think is always a special treat, like the chunky charm chains from Tilly Sveaas.
I also need/want to replace my trusty yellow Radley handbag that was ruined by a spillage this year. One that I can’t even blame on the toddlers. My beloved Radley is admired by everyone and is the conversation starter I have used to my advantage at networking events and in shopping malls.
Is this an affiliate link? By golly yes it is!
Don’t click it if you don’t want to be tracked
I’m admiring this pretty pink handbag by Kate Spade, the stripey inside appeals to my sense of humour…..although I also like the really bright cherry/vivid combo of the Cedar Street Hayden Satchel, my sister would have an apoplectic shock as she hates pink/red as a colour scheme.
These are closely followed by the usual suspects of clothes, perfume and candles. As I will probably devote my energies to the presents I need to purchase for friends and family, I may have to leave these ideas as hints for SO and other loved ones to buy on my behalf 😉
My inbox is full
My inbox is full of emails from Pay4Later, Paypal and Channel Advisor regarding Singles Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday with tips on how to use email marketing to maximise the benefit of these key retail dates and gain those extra sales. It’s also full of the eCommerce retailers that I have signed up for trying to do the same.
Email offers great conversion opportunities
I still meet many online retailers who don’t take advantage of their existing customer data and contact their customers regularly. It is proven that conversion from email marketing is one of the most cost effective forms of promotion, so why are there still companies who don’t use email marketing software to send out emails?
Email frequency
We’ve all encountered that web store that sends you weekly, daily and even hourly emails after you’ve not noticed the box that needed to be ticked or unticked, or the small print was indecipherable or incomprehensible, and been deluged with emails that we didn’t really want. Some of these even contravene the law by not carrying an unsubscribe link. I think the genuine shop owner can make the sign up process clear and they can also spend some time working out how often their customers want to hear from them (you can even ask!)
Kiss me goodbye when I unsubscribe
When I decide I want to unsubscribe from your newsletters Keep It Simple Stupid – make it easy to do so. Forcing a customer to jump through hoops to stop unwanted emails is just asking for trouble and kiss them goodbye – a great marketing tactic is to say something nice at the final unsubscribe page. Even hardened marketers like me have been swayed by we will miss you messages into changing our minds about unsubscribing.
Can’t pay, they’ve taken the ability to make online payments away!
In response to security concerns of SSL 3.0 vulnerability to Poodle attack, Sagepay are upgrading their system and subsequently have announced they won’t be supporting Internet Explorer 8 and older from the 2nd December. Does this really matter when these users make up less than 5% of the global users in 2015?
Biggest payment processing providers in the UK
It made me wonder who are the biggest payment providers in the UK and whether they offer services to older browser users. I can’t blame them for not supporting every legacy browser, especially if it makes them vulnerable, as security is their priority, but is it a real possibility that IE6, 7 & 8 users will soon see a day when they can’t pay for anything online?
The largest payment processors in the UK are likely to be Worldpay (+-40%), Barclays (+-20%), Global Payments who bought out HSBC’s merchant services (Global Iris and GP Webpay, +-20%) and Paypal (+-20%). Sagepay is a small but growing member of this band. Worldpay offer limited browser compatibility for IE8 but full compatibility from IE9+, Barclays appears to be IE9+, Sagepay (from December) IE9+, and though I can’t find a browser compatibility list for Global Payments or Paypal, Paypal ended community support for IE8 in July 2015 and the forums are full of users who find the pages don’t work in older IE versions.
So yes, this could be a real problem for older browser users. What can be done about it? For the consumer, upgrade your Internet Explorer (at cost) or download a free modern browser (Chrome or Firefox). For a shop owner, some kind of message along the lines of ‘these payment pages work best in IE9 and above, we recommend you upgrade’ would help users.
Know your panda from your penguin?
I was asked recently to explain the difference between these two algorithm changes made by Google in 2011 and 2012 respectively.
Panda, named after a Google engineer, was designed to root out real content. It was no longer enough to stuff a bunch of keywords onto a page to achieve page one ranking. Google got smarter about checking the rest of the page and the site for real relevant content.
Penguin on the other hand went looking for backlinks or inbound links and measured the quality of the domain that they came from and what the links actually said about the site they were linking to.
Algorithm changes
The double whammy of these two changes coming within a year of each other toppled many a website that had enjoyed page one dominance, especially those which had used somewhat underhand tactics to get there.
I was lucky enough at the time of these seachanges to be working for a web agency that had always practiced what they preached in terms of SEO and their websites, while not unaffected, benefited from a solid structure and optimisation advice.
Hummingbird – a total rewrite of Google
The next update to happen along caused less ruffled feathers than the previous two but was in fact even bigger. Rather than a change in algorithm, Hummingbird was an overhaul of the whole, keeping the engine humming along (pardon the pun). It makes Google much smarter at figuring out who in the internet world is a genuine supplier of the services or goods described.
Update: In case you didn’t know Panda, now on update 28, and Penguin are still rolling out today.