SMB Online Best Practices

Marta Obrebska, SMB Online Marketing

April 2010

Global Marketing

DELL ONLINE TODAY

Our vision is:

to be the technology e-commerce leader by offering the most relevant experience and solutions to drive high customer loyalty

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WE ARE INVESTING IN TOP 3

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10 TIPS FOR ONLINE BEST PRACTICES

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1. CONVERSION – KNOW THE LEVERS

Effective Traffic Browse Config Cart

• Page design

• Path to most effective pages

• Comparisons

• Targeting

• Strong internal search

• Offers & Pricing

• Drive online demand

• Optimize entry points

• Targeting bytraffic source

• Simplified Config

• Learning content

• Improved search • Payment approvals/options

• Simplified checkout

1000 Visits (example)

60% or 600 visits to product pages

Consideration

62% or 369 visits enter config

Total Checkout

Conversion

21% or 77 visits enter cart

40% or 31 visits advance to checkout

Convergence

45% or 8 visits complete order

eClose Rate

51% or 16

visits

complete

checkout

System Checkout

• Persistent Cart

• Saved cart email/outbounding

• Share cart options

• SMB: ~98% abandon rate and from config through checkout for systems• Explore ways to shift the funnel & reduce leakage in each stage of path

TIP: Focus design, data and testing on highest leakage areas5

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2. ENSURE SITE STABILITY & QUALITY

• Downtime impacts your customer experience and bottom line

• Build processes to monitor site uptime and quality (applications, network and content)

• Establish an automated audit an notification process for site issues

• Obtain root cause reports to prevent future recurrence

Small Business Site Orders by Hour

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Dec 11 - Dec 12

Dec 4 - Dec 5

SITE

DOWN

Customers returned, but

revenue still lost

Downtime impacts both financials . . . and customer experience:

4.19

2.56

4.32

0 1 2 3 4 5

24 hrs after

9pm - 7am

24 hrs before

Servers down,

site slow

Buyer satisfaction rating

Very unsatisfied Very satisfied

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3. TRAFFIC – DRIVE DEMAND & OPTIMIZE ENTRY POINTS

• SEO and SEM are critical – B2B Internet users use search engines first to find out about a product or service (83% use Google)

• Develop CRM powered customer lifecycle programs and deliver via online vehicles

• Email – Grow an opt-in email subscriber list aggressively, provide clear benefits to subscription and track opt out

• Consider segmented OA/email programs that add value beyond just promo/price

• Offer value-added and exclusive promotions to affiliates

ODG vs. Non-attributed traffic:

• Brings in qualified traffic

• Higher conversion% and RPV

• Higher intent of buying

• Helps increase brand/ product awareness

Tip: Avoid landing pages that don’t convert.

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4. MAINTAIN SIMPLE & INTUITIVE SITE, OFFER SUPPORT

• Clear and user friendly site navigation:

• Online Support improvements reduced Customer Care contacts into (costlier) phone support over 30%

Quick and intuitive access to Order status application

Fast and easy access to Order Support FAQs

Improve visibility and relevance of Order support Self-help tool

Product Advisors

Merchandising content

Promotions

Imagery

ANAV (assisted navigation)

Learn content

Monetization assets

Ratings and reviews

New Product AdvisorNew online support platform New Builder: Redesigned configurator

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5. SEGMENT YOUR AUDIENCE

If you are X, then you belong to group Y and will get relevant to your segment price, promotion and content set.

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EnterRecognize

•Authenticate and validate identity

•Determine Rights/access

•Retrieve:•Opt-in/out preferences•Browsing behavior

•Customer ID

•Sales Rep ID

Group•Assemble data attributes

•Match to predefined segments

Target•Populate pages with group specific pricing, promotions, and content.

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6. DRIVE CONVERSION VIA SITE MERCHANDISING

• Consider the site as an extension of the sales force

– Call to action with phone number, chat, lead gen forms should be hard to miss

– Control the Sale and Upsell

• Navigation & Design– Make forward-moving navigation clear. Side

paths can provide additional information, but should always lead back to the main path

– Provide robust comparison and filtering tools

– Enable various sorting mechanisms: Deals, Top rated, Best Sellers, All

– Integrate relevant content in addition to just selling products for customers there to learn

– Integrate content/customer stories/insights

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Tip: Target this content based on

behavior or authenticated data where

possible for improved RPV/MPV

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7. DEVELOP MEANINGFUL CONTENT TO DRIVE STICKINESS

• Content marketing = engagement

• Think beyond the sale – remember that most customer are here to learn not purchase

• Content can be your own or from your partners or customers

• Simplify language and choice

• Be consistent in all messaging and drive reassurance

Unclear Better

TIP: Robust content is a great search traffic driver

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8. LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS

• Create baseline site and user experience metrics and measure often – NPS

• Document your user needs - are they accomplishing the purpose of their visit?

• Identify possible barriers to visitor success

• Quantify and categorize the key visitor demographics and attitudes

• Use customer insights to prioritize improvements to the site – and then start over

• Trust the wisdom of the crowds, solicit ideas and implement >>> http://www.ideastorm.com

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Tip: Develop short and long term projects to fix the larger CE issues tracked on site to improve NPS and conversion.

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9. TRACK CORE COMPETITORS & INDUSTRY BEST PRACTICES

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1O. DON’T FORGET TO UPSELL

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• Best time to recommend complementary purchases are at POS

• “Candy Aisle” recommendations offer customer-based, impulse purchases after a computer

or S&P item is added to cart

• Behavioral targeting helps make recommendations more relevant.

• .

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SMB ONLINE BEST PRACTICES

1. Establish rigorous KPIs and focus on conversion levers

2. Uptime is king – fix site stabilization issues first

3. Develop robust email, online demand generation and search programs to drive traffic

4. Maintain a simple and intuitive site, offer support

5. One size does not fit all – segment your visitors and target

6. Drive conversion via navigation, merchandising and promotions

7. Develop meaningful content to create stickiness

8. Listen to your customers

9. Track your core competitors and industry best practices

10. Don’t forget to upsell

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Introduction to SEO

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• Natural search is our fastest growing and #1 online traffic driver• Fostering an “SEO” culture can ensure that all those who create,

maintain or influence online content will contribute

From Omniture17

THE IMPORTANCE OF SEARCH

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WHAT DOES SEO MEAN?

Google Search Engine Results Page

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a phrase that is applied to many different areas of search engine marketing.

For our purpose, we will focus on optimizing Web pages so they are easily recognized to be highly ranked by the major search engines. This is referred to as Natural Search or Organic Search as opposed to the paid advertising placement called Paid Search

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• People tend to scan online content, not read it—especially search engine results.

• Top rankings for your targeted keywords/phrases is crucial. This is because searchers:

1. Predominantly focus on the first 3 search results of the first page1

2. Rarely view the second page

3. Almost never browse past the third.

The Sweet Spot: the SERP “Golden Triangle”

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1 Over 40% of users will try a new search rather than go to the second page of search results (http://www.accuracast.com/search-daily-news/seo-7471/first-page-listings-on-google-even-more-important/). 19

HOW PEOPLE SEARCH

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• Web l News l Images l Video Content l Blogs l PDFs

Images

News

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THE POWER OF DIVERSE CONTENT

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KEY SEO ELEMENTS TO OPTIMIZE

The most important search elements that we can influence are:

Site StructureThe “ticket to entry” providing

the foundation

• URLs

• Spider accessibility to content and links

ContentMatches searched keywords

to content

• Primary subject matter

• Keyword usage

• Titles

• Emphasized text

• Filenames of images and multimedia

LinksEnabler to achieve

high ranking

• Interlinking between company owned sites

• External inbound

• Hyperlinked anchor text used

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Browser Title

URL

Content

Anchor Text Links

Multimedia & Image Filenames, Alt Tags

Page Title

Customer-facing Onsite Dell Content Hidden HTML Source Code

Pulled into Results

Meta Keywords

Meta Description

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SEARCH ELEMENTS ON PAGES AND IN SOURCE CODE

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SERP

Listing (or Browser) TitleMeta Description

160 characters displayed

HTML Source Code

• Results that grab the most attention:

1. Match the searched keywords

2. Are well written and easily skimmed

3. Include descriptions with compelling soft calls to action.

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TITLES & DESCRIPTIONS ARE SEEN FIRSTSERP

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1) Descriptive Filenames

2) Descriptive Alt Attributes 3) Content Surrounding Images

dell-inspiron-laptops.jpg

• Search engines use 3 factors to indirectly determine what an image is about because they cannot “see”

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IMAGES MAKE A IMPACT

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Discover keyword ideas and gauge popularity with Google Adwords Keyword Tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Example 1: Search volume for keywords related to wifi in Australia (EN)

Determine popularity of keywords, even by region with Google’s Trends

www.google.com/trends

Example 2: Popularity of wi-fi, wifi, wireless in Australia (EN)

See the Tools section for more details.

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FIND POPULAR TERMS

• Use tools to discover or validate local high volume search terms:

• For example, Dell is moving away from “notebooks” >> “laptops”

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Passing the “Link Juice”

very

authoritativesomewhat

authoritative

low influence

Link Juice

“PageRank” authority derives from a page’s:

1. Popularity

2. Subject matter

3. Update frequency

Types of Websites:

1. Educational Institutions & Organizations

2. Industry Topical

3. News

4. Ratings & Reviews

5. Partners

6. Social Media

7. Blogs

8. Other Company Domains

• Sites linking may pass on their link juice, boosting rankings.

• Quality over quantity: a link from an “authoritative” trustworthy site may be worth a lot more than many links from lesser sites.

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INBOUND LINKS BOOST RANKING

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• Contextual links lead to supporting information.• Search engine algorithms take into account the text surrounding the

links.

Contextual Links Guidelines:

Use the most relevant keyword rich anchor text that supports the page it links to, not the page that it is on

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PLACEMENT OF CONTEXTUAL LINKS

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www.seo-browser.com

Full Multimedia Version Text Version Read by Search Engines

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TIP: VIEW HOW SEARCH ENGINES SEE PAGES: SEO-BROWSER.COM

• See a page the way a search engine sees it: blind of content embedded in multimedia (images, Flash, Javascript, video) but able to read “Alt” tags describing content and multimedia filenames.

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http://www.seo-browser.com/

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TIP: VIEW HOW GOOGLE SEES PAGES: CACHED TEXT• See a page the way a search engine sees it: blind of content embedded

in multimedia (images, Flash, Javascript, video) but able to read “Alt” tags describing content and multimedia filenames.

Google SERP

Google Cached Version

Google Cached Version (Text-only)