In part three of our holiday video series, we hear from retailers on how they will tap into the multi-channel consumer to drive holiday sales.



Click here to view part 1 and part 2.

Stay tuned for more retailer advice from your peers next week, and check out our Fast.Forward. Channel to connect with marketing leaders across industries.

Posted by Julia Tang, the Google Retail Team

Earlier this week, we saw that search interest in Black Friday is starting earlier than ever. Today’s consumers invest more time searching for a bargain, and Black Friday has proven to be a key example of consumer savviness. In fact, using Google Insights for Search, we see that over the last seven days, 50% of the top ‘Black Friday’ related search terms include ads, sales, and deals.

Clearly consumers are seeking out deals heading into this important shopping day. Interestingly, when we look at Black Friday rising searches over the last 7 days, we see that "Early Black Friday" is the second rising search term, meaning it has grown over 2,000% during this time period with respect to the previous time period. It also may indicate that consumers are not only leveraging "Black Friday" and searches to locate promotions on these days, but may be seeking out similar types of promotions and offerings even before Thanksgiving weekend.

To capture bargain hunters’ attention make sure your ads appeal to thrifty, deal-seeking searchers. Text ads should highlight specific price points, discounts, coupon codes, and special promotions. Also, remember to keep an eye on search trends in your own category by leveraging Google Insights for Search.

Erin Piper, the Google Retail Team

As retailers gear up for the holiday season, maximizing website conversion rates will be more important than ever. Evidence suggests high quality search can play a big factor; for instance, according to MarketingSherpa, 43% of visitors who land on a website go immediately to the site's search function. And customers who use the search box on e-commerce sites convert at nearly three times the rate of general browsers. We've taken these trends to heart, and we're now excited to announce a new search product specifically built for retail websites: Google Commerce Search.

Google Commerce Search was built with two principles in mind - speed and relevance. Both of these are critical to an end user's shopping experience. To optimize both, we decided that a hosted, cloud-based model would be best, leveraging the power of the Google platform. Typical Google.com search results are delivered in 0.25 seconds; in context, the average blink of an eye is around 0.1 seconds. Google Commerce Search will also leverage the relevant information from millions of product-related clicks on Google.com and in Google Product Search to bring the most relevant search results to shoppers using online stores. Another main benefit of being hosted is how easily the solution can be deployed - in days, as opposed to weeks or months for an on-premise e-commerce search tool. Retailers can also now use the same product feed for both Google Product Search and Google Commerce Search, which cuts down on time and tech costs.

To enhance the user experience, we also added numerous retail-centric features. Parametric search enables customers to view and sort search results by category, price, brand, or any other attribute. Spell check, stemming, and synonyms makes sure that users find the exact product they are looking for. Product Boost and Promotions enable retailers to promote certain products during sales or to cross-sell related products.

Birkenstock USA has implemented Google Commerce Search on one of their online properties and found it has already made an impact on their business. "Google Commerce Search is improving user satisfaction -- bounce rates have decreased and we're seeing more return customers,' said Jeff Kilmer, COO, Birkenstock USA. 'The search results are ultra-fast, so customers more easily find the specific products they're looking for. We deployed Google Commerce Search quickly and easily, and we've seen dramatic conversion improvement since implementation. It has also meant a better shopping experience for our customers, which is critical given the holiday season rush."

Read more about Google Commerce Search on our Enterprise Blog, or on our website.

Posted by Vijay Koduri and Salmaan Rashid, the Google Enterprise Search Team

More and more people worldwide are accessing the web with their mobile phones and, as we heard Monday, retailers are looking to leverage consumer use of emerging media this holiday. This year, half of all new internet connections will come from mobile phones. [1] As mobile internet usage is on the rise, so too is mobile search. In fact, compared to last year, mobile search traffic has grown significantly.

Source: Google internal data

What does this mean for retailers? It means big opportunity. One way to capture this opportunity is to enable mobile users to find your nearest store locations. About 1 in 3 mobile search queries has local intent . [2] Mobile advertising can help you drive more traffic to stores by offering a way to reach customers who are close to point-of-sale and want to spend now.

In addition to driving purchases in-store, mobile advertising can motivate users to purchase directly on their mobile devices. Mobile users aren't just spending money on mobile content and apps. One in three US web buyers who used their mobile phones to make a purchase spent over $50, buying a range of items including electronics, clothing, books and jewelry .[3]

If you'd like to create a mobile ad campaign within AdWords, check out this FAQ to learn about your options.

Source:
[1] eMarketer, 2008 and 2009
[2] The Kelsey Group, 2009
[3] North American Technographics Retail Online Survey, Q3 2008; PriceGrabber.com “Consumer Behavior Report: Mobile Internet Shopping Trends” 4/30/09

Posted by Meredith Papp, the Google Mobile Team

With November upon us, Black Friday (November 27) and Cyber Monday (November 30) are just around the corner. Consumers are showing early interest - as we see in the Google Insights for Search graphs below, 'Black Friday' searches began increasing the week of August 2, 2009 versus mid-September in 2008 and 2007. And while everyone knows how crowded the malls are on Black Friday, note last year's online sales of $534MM on Black Friday. That's up a modest 1% over the previous year and during the height of the downturn in the economy. [1]

Cyber Monday is also increasingly top-of-mind. The term 'Cyber Monday' was first used in 2005 in the e-commerce community (coined by Shop.org) and was based on research that indicated that the vast majority of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales the Monday after Thanksgiving. As we see below, the uptick in searches for Cyber Monday started the week of September 13, 2009 versus mid-October in 2008 and 2007. Also of note, we saw e-Commerce sales on Cyber Monday reached $846M in 2008, up 15% over 2007.[1]

With both Black Friday and Cyber Monday driving even earlier consumer interest online this year, ensure that you are reaching these consumers through creative online promotional efforts now to ensure your brands and products are in the consideration set when consumers head in-store and online to buy.

Source: Google Internal, Insights for Search. [1] comScore Press Release, 12/3/08.

Posted by Eric Lopez, the Google Retail Team

In part two of our holiday webinar series, we hear from retailers on their plans to leverage emerging and social media this holiday season.



Posted by Julia Tang, the Google Retail Team

With search being central to the consumer shopping cycle, search should be part of your strategy to not only drives sales, but also build your brand awareness as consumers are considering what gifts to buy for the holidays.

In a joint test with Levi's, Google found that paid search ads, whether or not clicked, raised consumer awareness of the Levi's brand.

When in-market consumers were asked which brand of jeans came to mind, 53% of consumers named Levi's when a Levi's search ad was in the top sponsored position, compared to 30% who named Levi's when there was no Levi's search ad on the page. (a statistically significant lift)

Better yet, when Levi's "non-customers" (people who hadn't bought Levi's jeans in the past 6 months) were asked the same question, 45% named Levi's when the ad was in the top sponsored position, versus 23% who named Levi's when there was no ad in the search results. (also statistically significant)

Placing your ad in top paid position can increase top of mind awareness for both current customers and non-customers, a desirable outcome at the time when consumers are making their holiday gift lists.

Source: Google/OTX Brand Lift of Search study, April 2009. Research was sponsored by Google, conducted by OTX, an independent marketing research company, in a controlled "laboratory" format that mimicked an actual online search query. Question asked: "Thinking about specific brands of jeans, which one brand comes to mind? Please only write in the first brand that comes to mind." Results are a significant increase from control (no exposure) at 95% confidence. n=2,000 online consumers who had recently purchased jeans or intended to soon.

Posted by Sara Kleinberg, the Google Retail Team