As Audrey and I gathered all of our expense and profit information from the last fiscal year, we thought it would be helpful to put together some advertising stats that might be useful to you.
After combing through the data, we found that fully 38% of all of our
Yahoo! Stores income was derived from shoppers who found us through the
Yahoo! Shopping Network. And that’s great news!
It simply means that the principals of Yahoo! Store Ownership remains
sound, despite all of the traffic building schemes that are flying around
the Internet these days.
In the last few weeks, we’ve received numerous emails from folks who have
put the system to good use. One couple in particular opened a Yahoo! Store
in far less than the 30 days that we thought was a reasonable lead-time.
They proudly asked us to take a look at their brand new Yahoo! Store. It
was really heartwarming to see such great progress in such a short amount
of time. Still, we had some suggestions, and we wanted to share them with
everybody.
Because the Yahoo Shopping Network represents such a large percentage of
our own business, we take great pains to make sure that we can actually be
found in the YSN.
Here’s the basics:
Being in a Niche market will keep your from some of the cut throat
competition that’s lurking out there. But, who says that you can’t toss
your hat into their sandbox, especially if it costs you nothing?
So, with that in mind, you need to pay special attention to how your
product listings are worded.
You see, The Yahoo Shopping Network works a lot like a traditional search
engine. And once you understands how if determines whether or not your
products are “Relevant” to a Yahoo Shopper’s search, you can stay
comfortably and powerfully in our own niche, as well as get a crack or two
at the Big Dog’s Customers.
For example:
In the Yahoo Shopping Search Field, type in the name of a product. Let’s
say we are shopping for Binoculars…
Okay, in the search results, you’ll have a listing of Yahoo! Stores that
are selling binoculars.
Now, the binocular market is pretty competitive, so one of the things that
you must do in order to rank highly in a search is to ensure that your
product listing and your product description had the search term
“Binocular” somewhere in them.
If the name of your product is “Tasco 10X25 Rubber Coated Field Master”,
even though you know it’s a great model of binocular, the Yahoo! Shopping
Network Search Engine will have no way of knowing that.
So, instead, name your Product “Binocular –Tasco 10X25 Rubber Coated Field
Master”
Now, Binocular is the first keyword that the Search Engine sees when it’s
crawling your site.
Then, to really wrap it up, make sure that your product description has
the search word “Binocular” peppered through out .
Example : Before –
Brand New • 10 Power Magnification • 25mm Objective • Roof Prism • Fully
Coated Lenses • Center Focus System • Weighs 9.2oz. • Rubber Fold-Down
Eyecups • Carrying Pouch and Neck Strap Included!
Example : After –
Brand New Tasco Binoculars • 10 Power Magnification • 25mm Objective •
Roof Prism • Fully Coated Lenses • Center Focus System • Weighs 9.2oz. •
Rubber Fold-Down Eyecups • Carrying Pouch and Neck Strap Included! Tasco
is a highly regarded Binocular manufacture that has been producing the
finest field-use and hunting binoculars since 1964.
We’ve not only included that keyword “Binocular” in the description, we’ve
also included that Brand name as well. This way if your store happens to
specialize in this brand of Binocular, and a shopper is also looking at
this brand, you’ve got all the bases covered.
Note: The above example of product description kinda sucks.
Why?
I have no idea what 10 power magnification means. What is a 25mm
Objective? (Sounds like a small objective to me ). And a Roof Prism? I
though Roofs had shingles on them? And a center focus system is better
because???
My point is, if your going to compete, compete with knowledge and gusto!
Educate your customers and tell them what all of the technical jargon
means!
By doing that, the shopper will start to trust you and regard you as an
expert! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, your product
descriptions are your sales pitch. They must include concrete benefits
that your customer can understand and apply to their needs!
If a center focus system helps those who wear reading glasses adjust the
focus of the binocular, then please help your customer out and tell them
that.
If 10-power magnification is suitable for watching a football game, then
tell them that too! If they need binoculars to stargaze, and they now know
that 10-power magnification is not strong enough, they are going to need a
different pair of binoculars.
Guess what? If they learned that little tid-bit of information form you,
the FIRST place that they will start to look for Stronger magnification
Binoculars is…
… in your Yahoo! Store.
Be the expert! Tell them the benefits!
PayPerClick Search Engines.
Almost 28% of our sales come from the PayPerClick Search Engines. Our
biggest traffic pullers are Overture and Findwhat.
Still this kind of advertising has come at a cost. At one point early last
year, our keywords were so general on Overture, and the resulting traffic
so un-targeted that we were having trouble breaking even with some of the
sales .
The truth is, Overture is not news anymore. There are a lot of folks that
have quietly placed their listing on this pay per click, and as a result,
it’s getting harder and harder to find keywords at a good value.
Still, you can’t argue with the traffic that Overture brings. We just
needed to find a less expensive way to utilize it.
Our answer? Super Niche Keywords.
Instead of using general keywords like “Sword” or “Armor” we stated using
the specific keywords and keyword phrases that we know people are
searching for.
We used the Overture Term Suggestion tool to determine those super niche
keywords, and instead of “Armor” or “Sword” we bid on keywords like
“Medieval Knight Armor” and “Braveheart Sword”.
Our overall traffic tapered off by about 10%, but, our close ratio shot up
by over 35%. That meant that we were closing more customers despite the
drop off in shopping volume.
And the best part?
The Super Niche Keywords cost an average of 45% less than the un-focused
ones. We even found over a dozen Super Niche Keyword Phrases that nobody
was bidding on.
And then there’s Findwhat.
This is the number 3 PayPerClick Search Engine out there. And I think that
it’s one of the best-kept advertising secrets on the web. But maybe for
not much longer. It’s growing by leaps and bounds and getting more and
more traffic and bidders every day.
But for right now, the bargains that can be had with Findwhat are
extraordinary. We’ve been able to place number one in all of the super
niche keywords that we bid on in Overture for less than 12 cents on
Findwhat.
And even if we wanted to bid on the general keywords, we’d still pay an
average of less than 65% of the Overture cost.
If you haven’t’ advertised in the PayPerClicks yet, take a look at the
PayPerClick Listings in the Yahoo! Store Profits book.
Shop You Soon!
