mortiz077

When it comes to brick and mortar stores, misinformation runs rampant. For instance, search results only send consumers to e-commerce sites, retailers lose the shopper who checks a phone in store, and buyers only visit stores to transact or showroom. Those are three common myths debunked in Digital’s Impact on In-Store Shopping 1 , new research conducted by Ipsos MediaCT and Sterling Brands for Google, based upon purchasing behaviors of more than 6,000 smartphone shoppers. Although 95% of all retail transactions still occur in-store 2 , smartphones have quickly become consumer’s favorite and most trusted “shopping assistant.” These handy devices reduce buyers’ remorse, raise consumer expectations for getting more accurate and faster information from store associates, and present new challenges for hungry retailers. For instance: 68% of shoppers surveyed said they were happier with store purchases when they did research online before buying, according to those surveyed  71% expect c...

There’s no doubt that technology continues to transform the pace of business. In the past, it wasn’t possible to track online conversions back to ads in real-time. You couldn’t always be sure you were advertising only in-stock items or immediately traffic out seasonal assortment changes. But now advanced digital marketers are able to take advantage of real-time conversion and product data in their advertising campaigns to great effect. Forrester recently completed a global study of 240 retailers’ search campaigns. What they found was… opportunity. Most retailers still don’t take advantage of existing real-time capabilities in digital marketing, and leave a significant opportunity for savvy marketers who do. Come hear Forrester and Google talk about:  Results from Forrester’s retail search study  Insights about the retail search market, and where you can take advantage  How to become more “real-time” in your own digital advertising  Speakers: Shar VanBoskirk, Princip...

December of 2014 may be remembered as the first truly omni-channel holiday season: the year retailers really stretched the sales funnel to include mobile, store visits and online buying under one big connected holiday umbrella. Let's take a break from the holiday dash to see what we can learn from companies that have been creating unified shopping experiences for consumers while ringing in bigger and better profits for themselves. We'll start with a salute to three great examples of omni-channel thinking: Macy's , Sephora and REI . Macy's  When over 15,000 people streamed into Macy's main New York City store at 6 pm this Thanksgiving Day, CEO Terry Lundgren wasn't too surprised. Omni-channel helped put those shoppers there. “So far, people are gravitating to the doorbusters," Lundgren said the next day. "There’s so much information online, so they’re doing that research and going right for those doorbusters." 1 Macy's has been working for yea...

With more and more retailers offering holiday deals earlier in the season, the excitement about Black Friday is no longer confined to a single day. Now it’s more like a month-long event. As a result, one in five shoppers plan to head to stores on Thanksgiving Day to capitalize on Black Friday deals. 1 To get a read on the trends heading into Black Friday, we took the temperature of holiday shopping online. We looked at search trends on Google, insights from Google Consumer Surveys and top trending purchases on our same-day delivery service, Google Express. Mobile shoppers are out in force As smartphone shoppers hunt for deals during snackable moments throughout their day, this holiday season will likely be the most mobile ever. Shopping searches on Google coming from smartphones have increased 3.5x year over year and continue to grow. 2 And we’re currently sending more mobile traffic to retailers per week from Google Shopping than we did during the peak of last holiday season. 3 The ...

(cross-posted on the Google Analytics Blog ) "Enhanced Ecommerce in Google Analytics made it extremely easy to analyze the metrics that are important to an ecommerce site and garner the insights to make smart changes to our website, driving significant improvements in performance!" -- Danny Gavin, VP and Director of Marketing at Brian Gavin Diamonds Our Enhanced Ecommerce features in Google Analytics are officially out of beta today, complete with brand new tools like Product Attribution . Combined with our new Shopping Campaigns report , Google Analytics provides our retail clients with an integrated view of their customers. As part of today’s announcements, we’re also excited to highlight partnerships with Shopify , PrestaShop , Blue Acorn for Magento, and mShopper . Using Enhanced Ecommerce in conjunction with our partners’ products simplifies the implementation process and gives you a full set of tools to create and optimize your ecommerce site. Please see the end of th...

Conventional wisdom suggests that the rise of digital is making local retailers obsolete. But the reality is much different—technology actually presents new opportunities to help savvy retailers connect with consumers, drive them to the store and increase sales. To better understand the impact of smartphones and online information on in-store shopping, Google partnered with Ipsos Media CT and Sterling Brands to conduct an online survey. With this new research, we were able to uncover the real relationship between digital and local retail, as well as debunk three common retail myths. Myth: Search results only send consumers to e-commerce sites. The Reality: Search results are a powerful way to drive consumers to stores. Many retailers believe that when shoppers look for products online, they limit their research strictly to e-commerce websites. In reality, three out of four shoppers who find local information in search results helpful are more likely to visit stores. When information ab...

(Cross-posted from the Google Analytics Blog ) Plan ahead. Over the past few years, we’ve seen the holiday rush begin earlier and earlier . And we’ve also noticed that the shopping frenzy is extending beyond the traditional season, with transaction rates in 2013 boasting lifts even after Christmas. These trends make for a lot of opportunity for online retailers, but you need to play your cards right. The most important thing you can do to ensure seasonal success is to plan your digital strategy now.  We’ve analyzed transaction behavior from a portion of our Google Analytics accounts over the 2013 holiday season to develop a guide for seasonal success.  Which days drive the most transactions? In order to develop a successful holiday retail strategy, it’s important to first understand the days that drive the most sales for your business. Once you understand this, you can craft a strategy that optimizes your media and promotion not only for these days, but for the entire holiday...