Here is an interesting graph using Google’s financial tools and search query results. The blue line shows searches for phrases like “financial planning advisers”, “fidelity” “smith barney”. The red line shows the trend line of the S&P 500. Note how clearly they correspond to each other! As the S&P500 does well fewer people look for a financial planner.  This seems to be the most closely corresponding vertical.* But negatively.Why?

Imagine a middle class person has a little extra cash and wants to invest it. If the S&P500 is doing well, they can just buy a couple companies they recognize and watch their worth increase. In more difficult financial times people start to look for financial help. I would guess the correlation coefficient is -.8: Strong negative correlation.

You can do this for any vertical you are in or thinking about getting in. So we saw that financial advisers has a strong positive correlation. What vertical do you think has a positive correlation? My guess was luxury but I was wrong. Here’s luxury:

If I had to guess a correlation coefficient for luxury it would probably be .35. Small correlation but nothing I’d bet the house on. So what has the best correlation? It’s Automotive! I would guess the correlation coefficient as .55: Medium positive correlation.

Durable goods and house buying are about the same. So people perform fewer searches in these verticals as the stock market fluctuates. How can you use this to your advantage? Well, if you are a financial adviser I suppose you should be rooting for the S&P500 to go down. Or if you are a financial adviser and you suspect the stock market to go down you can start increasing hiring advisers.  Or for my readers who are search marketing consultants- if/when the stock market goes down expect belt-tightening from your car and housing clients but seek out financial advisers!**

Notes

*Google doesn’t mention which search terms it uses to define a vertical. It just gives examples. I’ll assume they put a little thought into this. It also does not mention every vertical. For example, I don’t see aerospace.

Also, google does not provide exact numbers so we can’t find true correlation we can only use “eye-ball analysis”. I think that is fine.

** One other thing to note that while I implied a cause and effect relationship—or a causal relationship of some sort—I think it is stock prices that are doing the causing not vice versa. I have made this assumption in all commentary.

Shopper marketing is a relatively new idea in the CPG world. The idea is that a manufacturer representative will use her knowledge of the product to help a retailer optimize their site towards increasing sales of that product. In other words, if I am a shopping marketer at Welch’s assigned to walmart.com I would try to increase Welch’s sales on Walmart.com.

That’s the extent of it.

You may be asking “Isn’t that the retailer’s job?” Well yes and no. A retailer wants to sell more jelly, but he doesn’t care if it is Welch’s or Smucker’s jelly unless Welch’s is the highest margin product in that category or Welch’s inventory is getting out of hand. So a retailer wants to sell more jelly, but not necessarily your jelly.

A shopping marketer works with (or without) a retailer to increase sales at that retailer. The question is-How do we do this? There is a lot written stating that is beneficial for manufacturers to do this, but not a lot of practical advice. So I will provide some advice on this here blog.

Shopper Marketing Tactics
The best techniques are methods that we can use without the retailers knowledge. (Again-this is web only). It is not that we are trying to be devious; the reason is that I don’t want to have to go plead with Wal-Mart to make the changes that I want and/or negotiate terms for every change. I want what I want now. If I can get this, that is best! Let’s take a look at what that my look like:

It turns out Smucker’s is killing it. We have a lot of work to do.

When I say Smucker’s is killing it, I am not looking at sales numbers, so how do I know Smucker’s is winning? Because I know the way that online merchandisers think and how merchandising algorithms work. The “best” products get put at the top UNLESS retailers are trying to get rid of excess stock. Smucker’s has the top 10 spots…it is winning. I don’t need to request sales numbers. (Though maybe walmart provides them. I am not sure).

Our Welch’s Strawberry is in about spot 10. In spot 9 is Smucker’s strawberry. Let’s see what we would have to do to get the Welch’s above the Smucker’s. That is, what can I do on my end without even talking to Wal-Mart to increase sales.

Analysis
Why is the Smucker’s strawberry above the Welch’s strawberry? It is a culmination of things. Let’s take a look at them:

1) The total price for Smucker’s is lower but the price per/unit for Welch’s is better. I don’t think it is the price. Next.
2) Smucker’s has double the reviews. That is an issue. Whether we can do anything about this is another issue
3) The Smucker’s product has the word “jelly” in the product title. Welch’s says “spread”. This is a search for jelly! Advantage Smucker’s. We could change this in our feed.
4) There may be another issue-I’d just have to ask my team. If Smucker’s is stocked by Wal-Mart but Welch’s is third party, I am in trouble. Most companies will try to get rid of what they stock first. If I had to increase sales of Welch jelly on Wal-Mart I’d tell someone to sign a contract with Wal-Mart getting inventory in their warehouse or we might have just hit a wall. This is not the case here, but for Amazon or Newegg it might be.

Let’s Compare the Two Product Pages: *all pics click-able*

and…

1) Note the URLs-The come from the product titles. So again, the word “jelly” gets left off another field in our product. We need to be more careful on product titles.
2) Not shown- Smucker’s seems to import reviews of their product from their own site…that is bound to increase reviews. We could do this.
3) The Smucker’s packaging is nicer. This isn’t really immediately fixable, but the packaging makes it look better. One of the ranking metrics is probably click through rate. So we should make cuter packaging.
4) Inventory levels- Ours could be low in stock..if we are using a feed I would know if this the case. Also, Wal-Mart may favor brands that offer more variety..we could try to offer more variety.
5) I could also link-build to my product. I haven’t heard much about this, but it would increase sales.
So let’s review the “free” tactics we have at our disposal: Product title optimization, changing price-(mostly if we are a third party provider), change picture/packaging, increase reviews, use seo e.g. use jelly in product copy, play with assortment. That is a pretty good about of tactics to use without interacting with the retailer. Imagine the results if I hoped on the phone!
The paid tactics don’t involve interacting with anyone at Wal-Mart. I can buy ads on Wal-Mart that advertise my jelly, not Smucker’s:

Those circles are ads I can buy. I can write ads on the Smucker’s products that says “did you hear Smucker’s is being recalled for Salmonella, try Welch’s instead.”

Or maybe something like “Welch’s tastes better”. This would increase sales of Welch’s on Walmart.com which is the goal of the shopping marketer.

Conclusion
In conclusion, manufacturers should think about the tactics an internet retailer uses every day to increase sales. Then use those on your product. The less you involve a retailer, the faster you can move. If you have the highest margin product in your category look for the retailer to be more likely to work with you that if you are a discount product.

Exhaust all free methods before trying the paid methods so as to achieve the best ROI. If you have a huge budget use the paid methods first so you can see results faster. It is possible that your product just doesn’t belong in that retailer and nothing you do will increase sales. If this is the case why waste a ton of time on it? Fail faster.

Tractor Supply Company sells to the rural handyman and the small farmer. Interestingly, they don’t sell tractors (online anyway). Imagine a walmart merchandized for the Midwest- but without the human food. They compete with the homedepots and petcos. Keep in mind that huge farms buy wholesale, so they wouldn’t buy bulk supplies from TSC. Most of TSC’s business is done through their B&M stores.

The Creative & Branding

The creative for Tractor Supply Company is solid; that is perfect for its brand. The space on the sides is used well- it is the side of a barn and it is light-almost white. Nice. Right away, I get that I can buy “country-living stuff”…but that is mostly because of what the word “tractor” conveys, and the slight barn feel from the side creative of the website. There are products on the site, which is good.

If I have any concern it is that the category is not completely defined for me in a 3 second glance. Can I buy hunting supplies here? Camping supplies? Maybe a tagline like “everything you need for the farm, except the land”. A better-defined, pared-down top navigation might go a long way to helping the creative and brand too. (More on this later).

The ‘know how’ section has a lot of good pics that shows off the vibe of your brand. You have to incorporate that into the site better. You could even use these as a homepage banner for a couple of days and see how it does. A manly-man picking up hay pushes your brand just as much as instructions on how to redeem your giftcards.

The primary color of TSC is red which is appropriate. I might check out other brands that are red (like target) and see how they used red on their website. You want to try to use your reds and greens judiciously, our eyes gravitate there.

Let’s take a peak at where they miss on creative…on the clothing:

Clothes Look Good on Models

This picture shows that they are somewhat inconsistent about how they display their clothing. Some clothing is on models, some isn’t. I’d imagine that the ones that are are vendor shots. Here is a good rule of thumb for people selling clothing: Always show your clothing on models. It looks better, the quality looks better, and it converts better.

Secondly, when TSC uses a model, they make the creative decision to cut off her face. Presumably this is to show more of the product in the pic or so that the customer can concentrate on the product not the model. This is the wrong decision. It is distracting. Test it…

Several years ago a competitor of mine used this same logic-they photoshopped the heads off all the models. Well, one day they must have hired a new creative director and they reshot every pic on their site to include the model’s faces. They gained marketshare. Will this always work? I am not certain, but I would test it.

The Navigation

I don’t think “horse” should be a primary category on any site unless you are selling live animals. I could see “Pets & Livestock” or an “animals” section. I might make my nav- Hardware, Lawn/Garden, Animal supplies, Clothing, Vehicles & Parts.   Then everything would be a subsection of those…I think you could fit almost everything into one of those things and it would make it much quicker to find on the site. Now I can quickly know, “do they sell guns”? No. “Do they sell tents?” No.

Multichannel

The site is adaptive, but not responsive. For a multichannel retailer I would use both. At the top of the homepage you can see it tells me where my closest store is. It also looks like they are just testing out “free ship to store” or in-store fulfillment. I am not sure I would test that during q4 but whatever.

Here is a pic of the category page:

The biggest problem I have with this display is that both online and in store welders are in the default view. Online-only should be the default and “all” should be the alternative. I would also set rules so that when all is selected, online always appears first. Get the bosses to agree then set the attributes correctly.

The only reason you need these additional attributes is for in-store fulfillment, and I am certain the customer doesn’t need to see those 5 options (just online and all inventory). On the backend I am not even sure you need these attributes to fulfill orders at the store anyways (if this is what we are going for here).

The Product Page

See the alternate pics that are available to view? These are fun, and they do not cost a lot extra to produce. The vendor shots that come with the staged families are great, but for your other products just shoot two different angles so I can get a better feel for the product. Most of the products don’t have them.

Again, like The Vitamin Shoppe, TSC has an active community that likes to talk about their products…you need to have the default view display these reviews. (At least on the desktop…hide them on mobile devices if you must).

You also have the product manual on this page…that’s a cool feature that is kind of hard to find.

There is another cool thing that is going on here, but it feels like it is still in test phase…you can click the “check store availability”:

This didn’t appear to perform any calculation…either that or their erp system is lightning fast. I am not certain whether it is saying “Yes we carry these here” or “Yes these are currently in stock at this moment”. If it is checking inventory, you could automatically check the inventory of the customers cart with your local store and offer them options like at checkout:

• Want to pick it up at the store today for free? (if everything is in inventory at the local store)
• Want to pick it up at the store in 5 days for free? (if you need to ship stuff to local store)
• Just ship it to me now and ill pay.

That would be cool!

Conclusion:

There is a lot going right. I think we could help the branding on the site by pushing the manly men pics and also tightening up the nav. Let people know instantly that they are in the right spot. Also, spend a little money for models and extra angles of product photos.

I am not certain what their multichannel capabilities are, but given the hints in the website, I have provided a couple applications to make it smoother for the customer. Make sure the customer experience on the web is solid then worry about them getting to the store. Either is hard to do well.

Also, celebrate and feature your customer reviews. They differentiate you from competitors and that helps conversions and increases engagement.

Two last tangential notes: It appears it is trying to install Silverlight and/or use an adobe plugin my cart. I am not sure why, just tell me what it is for. (I also would have another question- why not sell guns and camping gear? But this is a true question, not a suggestion based on any data…I would need to see analytics to see if your customers want that).

To contact me: eric(dot)zwickler(at)gmail(dotcom)

The Vitamin Shoppe is a multi-channel retailer that sells vitamins and supplements. They have a brick and mortar and an ecommerce presence. I’ll only be talking about their website, but the effects the website have on the B&M are important.

Again, standard disclaimer-this writeup probably sounds more negative than positive, it isn’t meant to. This isn’t a SWOT analysis, it is the “how I’d improve my favorite stores” series. Also, all comments are based on desktop, because, well, this analysis has to end sometime.

Brand

There are a ton of vitamin companies. Since the B&M came first…before the web, lets try to get a feel for what the brand is about by taking a look at the aesthetic of their stores. This might be a good place to start. Here is their logo above. (I believe this is their most current one).

Simple, classy. I notice the distinct looking “V” and the spelling of “shoppe”. I also note the blue and orange.

Let’s take a peak inside a store:

I am not a visual merchandiser, but I certainly note the blue and orange. The pics on the wall are of healthy, happy people and the “V”. Note, not all vitamin companies go for the “healthy, happy people” vibe. Beachbody.com and bodybuilding.com go for “ripped and hot…and healthy”. Note the two big sections on the wall mentioning “Vitamins and Supplements” and “Herbs and Homeopathy”. And of course, they carry tightly displayed vitamins. I don’t see any sales mentioned.

So I think we have some idea of the branding. At the very least it is orange and blue, healthy happy people are important, and the products they sell are vitamins, supplements and herbs”. I would recognize another Vitamin Shoppe if I saw it. If I were a vitamin shopper, I’d know this was a reputable brand if I walked past it in the mall and I’d go shop.

The Website:

I see the logo in the top left. Good. But I don’t see any other instances of those oranges or blues. (The links don’t count…I don’t think they are the same color blue). On the sides of the website, that is not tire tread or walkway tread, it is a series of “V”s. But not The Vitamin Shoppe V’s. It is clever but it misses. Not because you can’t instantly tell what it is. These “easter eggs” can be fun. The reason it is a miss is because I feel the vibe is “urban” or “trucker” rather than happy and healthy. Also, it should incorporate orange and/or blue.

The Creative

The creative is busy. I mentioned in my review of party city that the creative was too busy. That is a stylistic choice that their brand has chosen. I questioned whether toning it down a bit would lead to higher conversions. In this case, The Vitamin Shoppe’s brand is “simple and classy” were the words I went with.

In the next pic we come closer to the vitamin shoppe vibe. Notice what the only difference is. There is orange in the banner and it is less busy (but still busy):

A couple notes on the creative. Our eyes go to red use it once on something important. One more note on the creative. I have found that creative gets worse the more people that get involved. It is usually the creative and the acquisition people have conflicting performance incentives or instructions. While I am an acquisition guy first, I have found that nothing makes my life easier than a nice looking site. So I tend to be a mostly silent advocate of the creative team.

The Navigation

I don’t have the aid of analytics but I am pretty certain what the nav should look like. Vitamins, Supplements, Herbs and Food should be the four primary categories. (I am assuming that supplements are different than vitamins?) Those four categories should be bold and on the left. It appears people must search by brand and health concern.

Those are two great categories, but they still need to be to the right of those other categories. It just makes sense. I’d need more space to prove why, if this is not apparent. I like weight being in the top nav since I imagine most people are here for that reason, but I would try to limit the others. Make it a feature on the homepage.

The SEO & The Category Page

The technical SEO is a strength of the site. In one sense that is fantastic because you get free traffic, but sometimes your seo is so good that you don’t want to touch your site for fear that Google will wipe out your work. Free money really is that good!

One aspect of the SEO is puzzling. The lack of the use of the words ‘weight loss’ or ‘diet’. That has to be purposeful. Perhaps to get around child-blockers or google adwords restrictions? Hmm.

I have a feeling this (the good seo results) explains some of the decisions regarding the top navigation. You can see the benefits and the power of the top nav and how it can influence google’s rankings. Remember though, the point of making adjusting the site-including the top nav- is to improve customer experience and hopefully conversion rate.

Knowing this what would I do?

Ugh.

It would 100% depend on the analytics, and even then I am not sure the analytics could tell you everything you need to know. You would have to do a test which would involve redesigning your site and sending half your traffic to the new temporary site and seeing if the conversion rate improves well enough to justify making radical changes. Most companies can’t afford that. Or you could take a leap of faith. I don’t know if I’d do that either.

What I might start off with is removing one of the top nav sections (lets say the ‘kids and pets’) and moving it somewhere else…maybe a feature on the homepage. I’d wait three months and see what the damage is…concentrate on off-page SEO. If organic traffic remains flat, I’d pull the next section. The downside to this approach is that I do not think you’ll see a corresponding increase in conversion until the top nav is completely sorted out and pretty.

The Product Page

I think this page could be improved. It’s cluttered. But I want to draw attention to one huge missed opportunity. It turns out there is a huge community here that is participating in talking about this product and I really have to stumble upon it to notice it. I have circled it above. There have been 4 questions and 52 answers about this product! That is a big deal. Where are the comments? I want to see those and the stars when I come to the page. This should be the default view.

Conclusion

I’d like to see more orange and blue. Simple. Give the creative team the instructions “classy and simple” from now on…and fewer words. No one reads on the internet. And more pictures of healthy people. Simple.

The navigation is tough. I really think there is opportunity here but it would take a lot of study to determine how much to change it. I bet we could improve the product page with a little TLC…and money. And if your community is that big you have to show it off.

contact me at eric(dot)zwickler(at)gmail(dotcom)

Party City is a multichannel retailer that sells party goods. They have a brick and mortar and an ecommerce presence. I’ll be talking about their website. Again, standard disclaimer-this writeup probably sounds more negative than positive. This isn’t a SWOT analysis, it is the “how I’d improve my favorite stores” series. Also, all comments are based on desktop, because, well, this analysis has to end sometime.

The Creative and Site Merchandising

I think the biggest challenge for “party sites” like Party City is to find the right balance between conveying ‘fun’ while still maintaining solid design practices. For example, does anyone ever want to party this hard?:

(click all pics to zoom)

There is a physical limit to how much information I (or anyone) can process when I look at an image. I think Party City is pushing the boundaries towards “too much fun”. (Though I am a boring person)

Obviously this isn’t a technical website problem, but my stance is if I see it or it affects my web sales it is a web problem. I might want to discuss what works on the web and what doesn’t with the creative team. Is it possible I am wrong- that the extremely busy look is just what the party crown wants? Maybe. The biggest issue here is that there is a 50% off offer that I did not notice until just now, after looking at it for the 20^th time. See it there?

On the whole, the physical merchandising displays too are very busy. I understand that this is the style for this type of store but I wonder if we are still going overboard. We don’t need to show every item in a collection on the homepage. We can tease it by showing a few items and getting the customer to click through to see more. Remember, people can only buy by adding things to the cart, so lets try to move them that way.

To sum up, more blank space in all online creatives.

The Homepage

If we take a look at the homepage of any business, what do I want the customer to see? First, I want a customer to quickly know what we sell. I get that they sell party supplies. Good. Can you tell that Party City sells costumes? It seems kind of hidden there. It is not apparent to me that every party supply store would sell costumes, so we either have to point that out or create a new web business for those alone. (Or both). It is possible that this is a new throw-away category that they are testing out. But if not, I think we need to highlight it better. (more on this later)

The Navigation

What are some types of parties I might have? A birthday party, an anniversary party…okay so “Occasion” should be a category in some way. They have a “special occasions” section, but birthdays are not under that section. I think birthday is a really big occasion. So they tried to make it its own category. Your primary nav is not the place to do this. Your primary nav must be functional by categories. It appears that they may have separated things out how they do in the physical store (I am guessing).

Continuing on, theme is another way I might want to look for supplies. Gender might be another. Or gender can be an attribute we use to sort once they get to the category page. (Or is gender a theme?)

So I think we could narrow down the nav to “Search by Occasion”, “Search by Theme”, Costumes & Supplies. Once they click on search by occasion, then I’d show them all the options like birthdays and weddings. I just discovered they sell candy too. That should be one of the top tabs. One tab should be “candy”. One could argue that it is a party supply and put it under there, but that is not what we want. When people arrive on the homepage we want them to know we sell candy-it is a pretty big category. Thus it belongs in the top nav.

Party Supplies, Costumes, Candy are the three primary categories I would go with as well as two supplemental “search by occasion” and “search by theme”..and maybe sales. See? It is tough to keep the number of categories low. Each of these would have many subcategories.

Category Pages:

It is easy to miss what is happening here. Maybe that means whatever party city is doing it working?! First I want to draw a quick distinction. I call the category page the (usually) dynamic page that lists your products. It is sortable and filterable. You should recognize it. Here is Zappos‘:

This is different than what I call a “category landing page”. These are not sortable and usually maintained similar to how you manage your homepage. You’ll recognize it. (Some companies call them the “category page” and the “subcategory page” respectively. I don’t think there is universal agreement on this point. Whatever.) Here is REI.com:

Some companies ignore the category landing page- usually smaller companies due to time constraints- but I have never seen a company not use a category page. Party City does sometimes. For some of their party supplies they use solely a category landing page categorization while for their costumes they use a traditional category page.

Is this a next-level marketing technique? Probably not. While I do think that the traditional category page will continue to evolve, I am not certain this is the best choice. It was probably made because they believe their items are not easily categorizable (I am guessing). But everything is categorizable. For example, I may want to search to see what Hershey’s Candy they sell, or what red licorice they have. You can’t make a category for everything. That is what the traditional, sort-able category page is good for.

Using the Site: UI/UX

Say I want to look at all their balloons:

I click under party supplies>balloons and arrive at a category landing page above. So far so good. I don’t see an option for all balloons (that’s fine…some companies do that) so I’ll click on the first link because I just want to get to some balloons. So I click on girls birthday balloons:

Hmm…another landing page. Okay, not my favorite way to go but some of the companies I admire most seem to put you in an endless maze of landing pages sometimes (zappos, victorias secret) so Ill go with it. I’ll click on the Frozen Balloons banner because I want to buy some balloons:

Hmm…another landing page. One more time? I’ll click on those cute purple balloons:

The Product Page

Not what I was expecting, but I have seen companies I admire use this quick view default as their product page setup (lane Bryant did this at one time though you had to add to cart from a traditional category page, if I remember correctly). Usually this “quick view” option is not the default on desktop computers. I would only use this after a lot of testing. Even if it converted better I’d still tell my analysts to run the tests again just to be sure.

Conclusion

So, I think the big problem is the categorization. People can’t buy if they can’t get to the product page. Also, we want to reduce the number of categories in the top nav so that we can quickly communicate to the viewer that we sell candy and costumes.

Usually we want to reduce the amount of steps to get to the cart. We also want to utilize the category page more often than the category landing page. I’d default to the traditional product page, but I could be convinced otherwise. I would also explore toning down the creative but we could hammer this out in an A/B testing environment since I am least certain about this conclusion and it can be easily tested. Perhaps a happy medium could be reached.

To comment contact me at eric(dot)zwickler(at)gmail(dotcom)

Zoro Tools Homepage (Click all pics to zoom)

The Branding
The fox is a good branding tool. Kind of like the Travelocity gnome. I would like to see a universal look for the fox. That might require hiring 1 designer to do all the “fox-art”, or spending some time making a cool logo with the fox peeking out behind the letter “O”. Then just have the fox in the logo.

The current logo could be improved by making all of the letters some sort of tool…not just the two “O”s. Like ladders and a hammer? A designer would love this assignment.

The Creative
On the whole, the creative on the site does not match the intended audience. On the homepage the sections (or aisles in a hardware store) are represented by cartoon art. I am not certain if that is meant to be a differentiator or a placeholder. I would go with real photos of tools when possible rather than drawings for this company.

The creative for the promotions is great if the target audience was my grandmother. She loves snowmen! The problem is that men shop here. Not just any men…masculine men- men who use tools. These men don’t like frilly and hippy things- they like metal, tools, cars, sports and women. The vibe of the site should be more like that (though I’d leave off the women). The site needs to look sleek, not hokey. And the homepage needs pictures of tools on it!

Navigation
Let’s talk about the navigation, because I think it is a miss. There are two ways to go with navigation. One is to try to simplify everything for ease of use and understanding. The other is to try to artificially inflate your navigation so as to potentially improve your SEO. For a category this large (hardware) you must choose number one. We have to make sure we can simplify the navigation while retaining the seo. But how?

On the homepage, there is some seo value in the blue text links under the category. E.g., if you look under the category “gloves and safety apparel” there is a link “work gloves”… that has seo value.

The problem is that this section is a mess. There is too much information for me to parse as is. How I would solve this is to hide the blue links and only have them appear once you hover or click the “gloves and safety apparel” section.

This would free up so much room to merchandize the homepage better and I would not be so overwhelmed with options on how to find my stuff. If I wanted a safety helmet I could hover over the “gloves and safety apparel section” see and if it is in there. If not, maybe I could hover over safety equipment and the gloves section would collapse. This seems a lot cleaner.

Top Nav

The “all categories” dropdown goes for seo again. When I select it, all I see is a wall of text. Ideally, this would list the exact 16 primary categories that are listed on your homepage with a similar visual icon next to it.

A secondary flyout could popup showing the subcategories once you select the primary category you want to explore further.

The SEO links on the secondary flyout can be a little longer, but for the primary nav I would aim for trying to communicate the category in as few letters as possible.
Category Page

The category pages are mostly good. I might try to incorporate more attributes. E.g., maybe some products have an attribute like color or size. Zoro Tools carries a lot of products so that would help.

Product Page

The product page is interesting. It is very functional IF you take the time to figure out what is going on. The problem is that nobody does that. The problem that Zoro has is that some products have multiple features and sizes and you have to communicate if you carry that option and if it is in stock. This problem is hard enough to simplify for the customer, though I think they do a good job.

What I would do differently is hide the “buy in bulk” grid when someone first arrives at the page so that customers are not so overwhelmed. Have a link that says buy in bulk next to the ‘add to cart’ button and then the grid can display. Even if the majority of customers are buying things in bulk, I think this is the way to go. Again, this is a lot of information to process. Here is how it would look “hidden”:

Better?

Conclusion:
Great store, but everything can improve. Also, most of these ideas can be safely tested. To comment, email me at eric (dot) zwickler (at sign) gmail (dotcom).

This is a common problem for small and medium size businesses. Often the HIPPOS (Highest Paid Person In the Organization) will insist that there is a lot of “feel” involved. There isn’t. It is math.

Don’t tell them. They get upset.

Today we’ll be talking only about re-ordering products we already carry. We are not addressing buying products we have never carried before. In accounting it is called “merchandise inventory”.

Calculating Ideal Stock Levels

The basic equation you need to know is:

Ideal inventory= (sales/day) (time to reorder) +(safety stock)*

The first thing I need to do is to calculate how many Hammer1234 I sell per day. Obviously every day I will sell a different number and every week I will average a different number but for now I just need “the number”. I can look at the last 90 days and see that I have sold 400 hammers. Not bad. I sell about 4.4/day. But I remember that I was out of stock for a lot of that time, so that number must be low. We will have to error on the high side. I probably sell closer to 5/day. (Days where I don’t have stock don’t count as days I can sell).

So in the past 90 days, it turns out that I have been out of stock 9 days. Now I will redo the math: (400/(90-9))= 5/day

“That is great, but how does that tell me how much stock I should buy?”

Patience.

The next thing we need to know is how long it takes from the time you reorder the hammer till the time you are able to sell it again. In this case we buy Hammer1234 from China. It takes 30 days to reorder. This includes all of the following:

1. Place phone call to vendor
2. Vendor makes product
3. Vendor loads products
4. Vendor ships product and travels to your warehouse
5. Your receiving team unloads.
6. Your inventory team counts them, enters them and puts them in warehouse.
7. Web team marks it as available on website.

The total amount of time from step 1 to 7 is 30 days for Hammer1234. Other products are different.

What this means is that if I run out of stock today it will take me 30 days to get a new supply. Since I am selling 5/day that means I will have lost 150 sales (30×5). 150 is also an important number because that tells me the minimum amount of hammers I must have in stock at any one time to avoid being backordered if I sell 5/day from this vendor.**

A Little More Depth: Safety Stock

Most companies would not keep 150 in stock. You probably need more to make sure that you have a hammer for everyone, or to cover any eventualities. Usually losing a sale is worse than carrying too much inventory. So, you might want to add some “safety stock”. Some companies just carry a certain extra percentage of each sku. There are more advanced ways to determine the best number just like there are more advanced models to determine the amount of hammers you sold per day. That is for another discussion. For this, I’ll recommend 5% safety stock: (5%x150=7.5). Obviously I can’t order half a hammer so Ill round up and buy 8 Hammer1234 of safety stock.

Ideal Stock = (sales/day) (time to reorder) +(safety stock)

Ideal Stock=(5) (30)  + 8

Ideal Stock= 158 hammers

Conclusion

At any one time I need to have 158 hammers in stock to avoid backorders. As the orders/day changes I can raise or lower my inventory levels to accommodate. The more often I make this calculation, the better I am able to know what my ideal inventory level should be! You can also see what variables you can use to be more efficient with cash flow: choose a vendor closer to home (or someone who ships quicker), carry less safety stock and take inventory as often as you are able to order. I suppose selling fewer is always an option, but that is rarely ideal.

*There is one more factor that we didn’t consider, as most products don’t have to worry about it-shelf life or “freshness”. For example, those who sell flowers or fish have an added layer of complexity since their products spoil. This will effect inventory level calculations quite a bit, but this would take it beyond an intermediate level.

**This is obviously a simplification for ease of understanding. It assumes you can only count inventory 1/month or that you are only able to re-order 1/month. Reasonable assumptions, but not always true. I could reorder from China every day and keep 5 hammers in stock and pay a lot of shipping costs.

Take a look at this list of great companies. What do they all have in common? I believe each of these companies (and yours too) is being swindled- and I’ll show you how. A lot of people don’t think there is anything wrong with the practice I will show you. That is, they don’t think it is a scam. You decide.

companies with ad problems

Here’s the downloadable list

..There are many more companies, but I have to stop somewhere. What these companies all have in common is that they do business over the internet, use ppc advertising, and are part of at least one affiliate network.

Though, perhaps that describes most companies.

Intro
The scam involves the display URL in your pay per click ads. I am arguing that this ad should direct traffic to Amazon.com.

Regular ppc ad. When you click it, what site do you expect to go to?

It doesn’t necessarily.

I can publish an ad right now that replaces it and sends the traffic to my site. I can “highjack”  Amazon’s traffic and send it to my site. That is happening to all of these companies, or at least it has happened to them in the past–I have proof, though I won’t publish it here.  I doubt all of these companies know about ad hijacking.

The Background
Every one of those companies is involved in e-commerce: they are companies that do business over the internet. These types of companies usually participate in affiliate marketing. It just so happens, each of these 170+ companies do.* Affiliates usually get paid a percentage of the total sale for each customer you refer to a site. For example, if I was an Amazon affiliate, you could click on this Amazon link, then go purchase something, and then I get 10% of the total.

So far no problems.
Most internet companies also use pay-per-click advertising to advertise their product. Google, Yahoo and Bing are the big ones. Every-time you search for a “blue t-shirt”, or “mobile phone”, etc, I can pay a couple bucks per click to show my ad in the search results for any keyword search. You can clearly see the company that is advertising…that is called the display URL. You can’t see is the destination URL- the page on the site that the ad is going to.

Everyone should recognize ads like this. You probably don’t know the vocabulary. Depending on your job title you probably don’t need to. However, to understand the scam you will.

The Scam- Ad High-jacking
In the ad above you expect to visit Amazon.com after you click the ad, right? Of course. The problem is, there is no certainty that this is an Amazon ad. Watch, I’ll “steal” Amazon’s traffic right now. Here is the Google Ad Editor interface:

Pic of Google Editor: Note different Diplay and Destination URL

Pretty easy, right? Mysite.com will now get Amazon.com traffic for whatever keyword I bid on. I just have to press “upload”. Note that my display URL is Amazon.com and the destination URL is Mysite.com. In other words, I am writing an ad saying that I am Amazon, but sending you to my site. The display URL amazon.com can only appear in the search results once, so there is a 50% chance that my ad will show- thus sending traffic to mysite.com, and a 50% chance that Amazon’s ad will show sending traffic to Amazon.com.*

In other words, anyone can write an ad in the search engines saying that they are your company.

It troubles me that I can do this. Only Amazon should be able to decide who writes an ad for them. I am the type of person that likes to control what my ads say. That is why I hire someone qualified to write ads rather than allowing my 13-year-old neighbor to write ads for my company. That alone, should allow me to have control over my company’s display URL.

Google does not agree with me. I have talked to them about it. They consider this a feature! Their argument is that they are protecting the affiliates. Something about the searcher’s experience. (Which I think is made worse.) In any case, Google has known about this hack for years and has no intention of changing it. If you feel it things should change, call your account exec. I’ll discuss what specifically should change in the conclusion. (Interestingly, it is hurting Google’s bottom line—which might not be apparent to them– so it is even a more bizarre policy.)*

I encourage the reader to stop here if you can foresee the implications of having your traffic diverted to another site—even an affiliate. Traffic can be diverted from your site, and it can be monetized, and you will make less money. But there is a lot of minutiae involved.
And I am very thorough!

How To Monetize Ad High-jacking
Thus far in the scam, I am just diverting traffic. I suppose I have to prove to you that it is possible for me to monetize this traffic to the detriment of Amazon’s bottom line.
Right now I am paying for Amazon’s traffic. They have a bigger wallet then me. Good thing I signed up Mysite.com to be an Amazon.com affiliate! Now on Mysite.com, I’ll put a link to Amazon. When people click-through to shop on Amazon, I get 10% of their sales. Now I will make money. If I bid on the right keywords, I’ll make more than I spend.

FAQ
Surely, customers will feel something is fishy when they don’t go to Amazon right?
I think so, but enough people will purchase to make this scam worthwhile. There are even ways around this. I will redirect customers instantly from Google.com to Mysite.com to Amazon.com…the customers won’t even see that they were ever on my site.  It will take a millisecond longer for the customer to go from Google to Amazon.com, and I get 10% of all sales for 30 days. Regardless, once someone is on my site, I can put an affiliate cookie on their computer.
Why don’t I just look at the affiliate ID, and just kick those affiliates out of the program?
You should. But it is a hassle to monitor.  My company has thousands of affiliates. Also, there are ways for the affiliates to hide their IDs.

How can I tell if I am being scammed?
First, if you don’t participate in an affiliate program, there is nothing to look for. Secondly, do a search for your company name in Google and see if you recognize the ad. Click the ad, and see if there is a redirect*.  Make sure you recognize all your referrel traffic in your analytic package!
What keywords do the affiliates bid on?
Always your company name. E.g, I would do “Amazon”, “Amazon.com”, “Amazon coupons”, “Amazns jewelry”, etc. Never “Canada Goose jackets”. Too expensive.

I don’t see any fake ads. You’re wrong. It didn’t happen to me.
Just because you don’t see an ad doesn’t mean you are safe. In order to hide my scam from Amazon, I just need to make sure no one at corporate sees these shenanigans. So, I will not put up my suspicious ads in Washington…that is where Amazon corporate is. To be super safe, I could always just run my ads only at night, or only on mobile devices.

Aren’t I just attributing traffic/revenue to the affiliate channel rather than the ppc channel? Does that really matter? I am still making a sale.
Yes, it really matters. The primary reason this is a “scam” and not an “inconvenience” is that you end up paying your affiliates a greater commission than you normally pay for PPC costs. If the amount you are paying to your affiliates from these ads is greater than the amount you spend on clicks from that traffic, you are losing money. And of course it is! If it wasn’t, the affiliates would not have the money to do it. There are other financial implications I don’t have space for.

How do you know that those specific companies were targeted?
I won’t say that here. Obviously, you could just do a search for their company name and see if there are redirects and phony ads.

You’re making a big deal out of this. This isn’t a big deal.
Perhaps.

So you’re admitting you’re stealing from Amazon? Why is it okay for you to do it?
It was a literary device to try to simply the explanation. I am not stealing from Amazon. Perhaps I should have made it simpler.

Is there anything that can distinguish a real ad from a fake ad?
As far as I can tell, there are a couple things. In Google, you might see a map, or product pics or product rankings. I don’t think those can be faked. The problem is that not everyone has those or is able to implement those. Anyways, these legit ads can still be over-ridden with a bogus ad.

In Yahoo/MSN there is a special “Official Site” designation sometimes.

So this happens in Yahoo/MSN too?
Yes.

You just caused us a lot more work! You’re making this scam public! You’re costing us money!
A)The affiliates already know about this, you should too. B) Is that what you tell your IT guys when they find a hole in your security? C) This is fixable.

Obviously Amazon wouldn’t have this problem. They’d just call Google and Google would fix it for them, right?
I don’t know. Sears, Kohl’s, Kmart, Mattel etc are having this problem. They are pretty big companies.

Are all redirects between google and the destination site a sign that something is fishy?
No, your ppc company might be using some sort of tracking mechanism that uses redirects. Most are fishy.

Are you saying all affiliates are evil?
No. Many are affiliates are great. All scammer-affiliates are evil.

What can I do?

I want to emphasize the purpose of this post. I want this problem fixed. It can cause a lot of lost man- hours and financial loss. The search engine companies are aware of this problem, though they consider it a feature not a bug… Perhaps if other companies see what is happening they will complain and the search engines will change.

Google, Bing, Yahoo could fix this in an hour. There are a couple ways. The best solution is to only allow one PPC account to use one display URL.* A company should be able to have an official adwords account. Google requires you to verify your Google Plus account, your webmaster account, your analytics account, your google places account… but for some reason not your Adwords account? That’s the only one that really matters.

Perhaps there is an even more elegant solution. We need to recognize that it is a problem first. Write your google account rep if this concerns you.
In the meantime you could monitor your affiliates, and kick them out when they violate this policy. Also, there is a company that can check all of this stuff for you, so you don’t have to hunt down the scammers. It is BrandVerity.com. They are expensive, but they work. (no-I am not an affiliate). The search engines should offer this service for free though, for all the billions they make.

I still have questions.
Write me.
Eric(dot)zwickler(at)gmail(dot)com

This is really long.
That’s not a question.

Footnotes

*I was going to say “stolen from”, “scammed”, but I’ll let you decide what word is most appropriate. Maybe neither.
*maybe I got one wrong, probably not.
*Okay, technically not 50/50, but I am trying to write this for executives, so work with me.
*If anyone at Google wants to talk about how this hurts your bottom line, I am here.
*linked accounts count as one.

Of course the quality is a lot nicer now.

There are several ways that you can make money using this business model. You need content, SEO, and analytics in order to get advertisers. It is a bit more complex, but these are the basics. The need for good content is a given, so I will concentrate on the other two areas.

Analytics for Digital Magazine & Content Sites

The primary issue is that your readers are consuming content in two completely different areas: the Adobe Reader Magazine and on the web. Some people will prefer one or the other, some both. You will probably have to reconcile this data for your advertisers.

Or just lose the magazine and go with only web content.

Assuming you must keep the magazine, here are the ways to monetize the content:
a) Adsense/ Doubleclick type ads (“non-guaranteed inventory”)
b) Direct advertiser purchases (“guaranteed inventory”)
c) Affiliate links
d) Paid Subscriptions
e) Selling users’ personal information or using it in some way.

A. To make money with this type of content you need good content (obviously), a lot of pages, and visible ads (because we want people to click on advertisers ads). Advertisers care about getting converting traffic to their traffic. If you don’t provide it, they will stop advertising on your domain.
The advantage of adsense is that you can set it and leave it and the inventory will be filled. The disadvantages are that you can’t place adsense on adobe pages and you have little control over your advertisers.

B. There are two types of ad purchases: An ad in the digital magazine and an ad on the site. Getting companies to buy inventory on the site will be relatively easy. Just provide them stats. Getting them to buy space in the digital magazine will be much more difficult. Obviously it may just involve getting a salesman to talk an advertiser into giving you money. More likely it will involve a complex analysis in which you show how many of your website readers subscribe/download the magazine, and what do you know about those users. You can use analytics for this. IF you have everything set up properly it still will take time (to accumulate historical data) and a great analyst to figure out how to “spin” the data into actual business drivers.

C. Affiliate links are relatively easy to set up. You sign up and then embed links in your content. If someone clicks and then goes and makes a purchase you get a percentage. The risk is that you will alienate your readers if you do it poorly or too often, or you will send readers off your site and they will not purchase.

D. If you can get people to pay you directly for your content- that is great. Signing up for an RSS feed is ok too.

E. If you have people’s info, you can sell them stuff. There is a line between re-marketing and creepy that could hurt your brand.

I would assume that most companies use a combination of all of these methods. The problem is that some of these can be labor intensive (C), require incredible talent (A, B, C), and require tough decisions from upper management regarding how to allocate limited resources. In each case, intelligent business decisions will lead to larger advertisers, so analytics plays a huge role in the content business. Also, content sites tend to be the largest.

Acquiring Readers with SEO, Paid search, and Social

You need readers in order to have a business. Good content is important, but it needs to be optimized for SEO so that the engines will pick up your content. Good SEO takes a long time, and gains are incremental. At times SEO can conflict with content and design, so you must have a strong decision-maker at the top who is responsible for SEO/Content/Design conflicts.

There are some cases it may be worthwhile to purchase readers (e.g. advertise) so that visitors to your website buy from your advertisers (hopefully for more than you paid to acquire them). This is called arbitrage; this practice is looked upon unfavorably by some companies, and can get you permanently banned, so be careful how you use it.

Social media is a great way to get a loyal readership going. I would look to involve an intern in this process. It would be a good introduction into the world of internet marketing.

1) Is there a hot product that you haven’t noticed because you’re too busy trying to run your business?
Did you not know that people were already selling model X-2011 already?
Competitive Intelligence can help fill that gap: Order model X-2011

2) Do you sell a great product but people refer to it by another name?
Are you selling “horses” and calling them “mounts”?
No one will find you; no one searches for ‘mounts’ when they are looking for a ‘horse’.
Competitive Intelligence can help you with that: Change your copy.

3) Is there an area you have not explored that your competitors have?
Are you only selling gold jewelry and your competitors thought to sell beaded jewelry? Your customers would never buy that!
They are already buying it. From your competitor! Perhaps you should stock it.

There are endless examples.
Competitive analysis can help you fill the holes in your research and get a leg up on the competition. Don’t reinvent the wheel- learn from others.