Datalicious Blog - Data Driven Marketing

Google launches new special search engine designed to enhance user experience on retail sites

Google Commerce Search is a search solution designed to optimise the on-site search experience on retail sites but interestingly this product is not for free this time, pricing starts at $50,000 (pretty hefty for Google). 

Google has been offering on-site search services for a while now so this isn't an unexpected move but I'm surprised the pricing model is not the usual cost per click or cost per conversion. Please comment on this post if you know what the underlying platform is (is this another acquisition?).

Google Commerce Search offers the following features
  • Enable visitors to find the right products faster
  • Filter results by category, price, brand or other attributes
  • Provide user-friendly spelling options and synonyms
  • Increase website conversions and sales
  • Boost or promote chosen products within search results
  • Deploy search solution in days, and scale effortlessly
  • Customize, track, and optimize performance
Find out more on the official Google website here

Clickz: marketers fail to optimize on-site media

A survey of marketing executives found that two in three allocate less than 10 cents of every marketing dollar to optimize on-site media to encourage Web site visitors to "convert" or take an action such as make a purchase or download a white paper.

Of 1,050 marketing executives surveyed, 42 percent said they are spending less than five hours per week optimizing advertising media such as search, e-mail, and display advertising, according to Omniture's Online Conversion Benchmark Survey released this week. "This may be too low, considering many companies are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per month in advertising," the study suggests.

Astounding results and probably true for Australia as well. From experience we can say that companies in Australia still tend to focus more on the top part of the funnel (i.e. attracting cost effective traffic) rather than the bottom part (i.e. on-site conversion) even though the bottom part holds the most potential for overall conversion growth.

Clickz article
http://www.clickz.com/3634901

Omniture survey
http://www.omniture.com/go/23937