Building Websites, Traffic, and Income
Using Technology to Assist in eCommerce Targeting
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Guest post by Craig Smith of Trinity Insight
Within the Ecommerce marketplace, new technologies have been developed to assist online retailers in properly messaging content and promotions to different users. These "targeting" solutions help improve the "holy grail" metric of conversion and should be evaluated and potentially included within your store.
What these types of offerings provide is the ability to customize a user session based upon data that is stored within the user cookie. Without diving into the ins and outs of cookies and their functionality, essentially cookies allow a web browser to decipher the geo-location of a user, if a user has been to a site previously, as well as what pages the user has been to and where the user dropped off.
This information can be very powerful when properly leveraged. Here’s an example:
Let’s say you are ToysRus.com. You obviously have stores across the entire USA and a variety of products and brands to promote. How do you know which to utilize on the homepage and how do you proactively promote your stores within the user experience? Easy, use dynamic targeting!
So lets say a customer comes to the site and leaves from the "Elmo" category page. The customer is also from Philadelphia. By using dynamic targeting solutions, on that customer’s subsequent visit, you can promote an Elmo promotion on the homepage for a hot item as well as message in-store promotions that correlate to the users closest store.
To the user, the targeting is not really comprehended – they likely think the site is just smart and better meeting their needs and desires. They have no idea of what is going on behind the scenes.
Dynamic targeting is best utilized for:
Search term targeting (branded terms versus non-branded)
New versus returning (offer promos or codes to new visitors)
Clickstream milestones (cart abandonment solutions)
Geographic IP (the "store location" example used above)
All of these components allow an eCommerce business to deliver a site presentation that is better suited to convert. With bounce rates at homepages exceeding 40% for most retailers, its painfully true that users have short attention spans.
By providing an approach of personalized content, you can capture their interest, and then work to make the sale through great site performance, clear messaging, engaging calls to action, and a seamless checkout process.
About Author: Craig Smith is the founder of Trinity Insight, a leading eCommerce consulting company
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37 Responses to Using Technology to Assist in eCommerce Targeting
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I think it is essential to do such as this, its a great way to target potential customers
I think that empathetic attention to customer details is essential & can add value to readers as well as business. It’s effective & worth. What’s most important question is how well do you understand your niche?
&
What can you keep on doing regularly for them?
Thank you for this useful guide. I think it will help me to improve the profits of my e-commerce store. I will follow your post regularly for future useful tips. Thank you and keep up with the good work.
Genuis idea, i will be doing something like this
Thanks for sharing the information about e commerce technology and yes i agree with you its a good way to promote the customer.. Nice pOst Pls keep it up
right mix up of Technology and eCommerce is deadly combination provided you know how to go about it.
-Shanker Bakshi
I’d really like to revisit some scripts I started to do dynamic targeting based on the keywords used to get to my site, plus, put some real time learning all intricacies of analytics and funnels.
great article
.-= Andy Bailey´s last blog ..Worldwide CommentLuv search engine trawling over 150,000 CommentLuv Enabled Sites =-.
The Technology in today’s world is assisting the expansion of commerce online. The availability of products and comparison of products among different vendors makes it possible for the customer to choose the most cost effective and good vendor.
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I think the biggest/best way to leverage that technology is to do what vendors like Amazon does, providing similar products or other people that liked X have also liked y.
I think that empathetic attention to customer details is essential & can add value to readers as well as business. It’s effective & worth. What’s most important question is how well do you understand your niche?
.-= Nice Places´s last blog ..Nice Places to Visit’s List =-.
Technology plays a great role in e-commerce and no wonder anyone can do shopping at comfort of their mobile phones.
Awesome Guide, this is good…
That’s a useful tool, it’s nice if we can use a tool to its maximum ability.
.-= muxin´s last blog ..Retirement Plan =-.
Awesome Guide, this is good…
I believe the best way to improve bounce rate is to match titles and descriptions with content better. Also making your visitor feel secure is a must.
It’s a good idea in theory, but really you’ve got to be careful against simplifying the customer profile too much. I presume I’m not the only one who finds the recommended products by Amazon to be quite irrelevant? After all, I’m not just buying for myself, but for others, but what may seem relevant for the others isn;t very relevant to myself. 2c.
This is a great and sophisticated innovation ….
.-= journal freeware´s last blog ..My diary by wareconsult.com =-.
This is very interesting technology which is certainly out of my grasp at present. I am hoping however that in the not too distant future I will be able to implement these types of technologies on my store.
Great Post! I think equally important is being able to measure the effectiveness of dynamic targeting. Having experienced this first hand, I think this can be a risky trap if one doesn’t have the tools or ability to understand what type of targeting is working well and what is not. Google analytics multi-variate testing is a good way to measure some of these techniques.
.-= Darpan Munjal´s last blog ..Top 10 Low Cost Ways To Improve Site Usability =-.
it is a good text.
With website visitors and buyers refusing to spend time surfing through unnecessary information and with the competition trying to woo each of your buyer by giving them what they want in better shape, size and TAT, it becomes important for any business to focus on providing the best in the least possible time duration.
It is in such scenarios that such applications come in handy.
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this is a good way to attract potential customer..good post.Thanks
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Bounce rates are a huge issue and I’ve had mixed responses with this, but in general i find that the quality of the information on a site really makes a difference to visitor attention spans.
“Hello,
lets discuss about ecommerce usa.In the U.S, every city, county and state has their own separate sales tax with differing rates, limits and deadlines. This mean ecommerce merchants who sell their products or services in the U.S. could therefore be subject to all of these taxing districts. So how are online merchants able to collect their payments of sales tax with the varying sales taxes?
regards
hazz.hazz”
Cool, I didn’t even rea;lise these products were on the market. Thanks for the info
While I do think better targeting will help with bounce rates, I also think that a bounce rate can be improved by simply adding more quality content to the home page. Retailers sometimes forget that along with buying, consumers want to be educated and entertained. This is the difference when the product is something available at other retailers also.
Awesome, almost all technology to make success is almost around us but not yet discovered or implemented. I agree with Jeff “While I do think better targeting will help with bounce rates, I also think that a bounce rate can be improved by simply adding more quality content to the home page.”
Verry good idea , i will be doing something like this..Just wonderful post.Thanks for the info
Awesome. Thanks for the information.
Thank you for this useful guide. I think it will help me to improve the profits of my e-commerce store.nice share
This is really a great and sophisticated innovation. Thank you for sharing.
well thank you so much for this good article. It has inlightened me, and clarifyed some issues.
I had no idea before about the cookies utilities, and it seems that e-commerce is obviously more intresting and useful to captive and win “passing-by” surfers.
Regards,
how useful tips it is, thanks for sharing this article
fantastic approach to targeting, I’ll be implementing same on my shopping cart system soon enough ocne I get some time. thanks for the info and great blog!
This is an excellent way to in crease conversions! Getting them to your site is one thing, but if they dont stay and buy then its all for nothing!
I’m guessing this advanced approach to target customers could lead to a tremendous uptick in conversions.