• Gradual rollout began in mid-June this year, with final impact at its completion in August
• From June 17th onwards, Google has started using page experience signals as a ranking factor for the top stories carousel and section.
• The update will consider several page experience signals, including the three Core Web Vitals metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
• A new Page Experience report will be introduced in Search Console

What is Google’s Page Experience Algorithm Update?

Google’s Page Experience Algorithm update aims to better measure aspects of how online shoppers interact with a web page by placing more emphasis on user experience in determining ranking. With a gradual roll-out plan, Google is giving websites time to continually refine their website with page experience in mind. This page experience update is meant to ensure that the top-ranking websites are those that users are happy to engage with. 

At a quick glance:

• The page experience algorithm update includes using existing Google Search signals such as mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
• It also includes metrics in Google’s Web Vitals that have to do with a site’s loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.
• For site owners and others, understanding these signals and making the necessary changes should be a priority.
• Necessary updates include optimizing for mobile, improving page speeds, CTAs, and alt text for images.

The new report in Google Search Console will look like the one shown in the image below:

Jeffery Jose, Product Manager at Google, tweeted that the page experience update will also impact desktop ranking, though the roll-out will start on mobile.

Overall, while this update should not drastically impact rankings, it is important to optimize your site for easy navigation and with your online customer top of mind.

How Will The Update Impact E-Commerce Websites?

Google is adapting its algorithm to show first the sites that users love the most, which is quantified by a good, frictionless user experience. The page experience update will place more emphasis on a website’s user experience.

For an e-commerce site, it is important to make sure that the user journey — beginning with the search for a specific product or brand and ending in the final checkout — is seamless and as frictionless as possible. Analyze your web pages, starting with the most popular pages such as the homepage, main category, and product pages, to identify any gaps and fix them. 

Some of the focus areas you should check are:

• Page load time — make sure your website is mobile-friendly and loads quickly
• 404 errors — ensure there are no 404 pages
• Website design — analyze your website design and make it intuitive, especially to those who are new to online shopping (if you’re unsure exactly what is intuitive, consider surveying your customers for what they like and don’t like about your site)
• Competitor’s experience — check out your competitors’ website and compare them with yours to find areas of improvement

As always, you can reach out to the experts at NetElixir for assistance in optimizing your page experience. Our SEO Team approaches your SEO channel with a hyper-focus on attracting new users to capture user intent (UI) and buyer behavior along every touchpoint of the funnel.

Read More on SEO

• Update to Your Core Web Vitals
• SEO Strategy to Responsibly Engage Your Customers
• Preparing for the Cookieless World With Google Analytics 4

The post Google’s Page Experience Algorithm Explained appeared first on NetElixir.

These digital-native stores were uniquely positioned during the coronavirus pandemic to weather the near-total shift to online shopping because they didn’t have to change their business models. They were already able to meet customers where they were. The changing e-commerce landscape has opened tremendous opportunities for more and more brands to reach their customers directly and cater to their online shopping behaviors. While the e-commerce boom certainly heightened customers’ interest in DTC brands, the customer experience of these brands is what truly gives them an edge compared to other retailers.

The DTC E-Commerce Explosion

eMarketer forecasts that DTC e-commerce is on the path of exponential growth. Sales from DTC brands currently account for 14% of total retail e-commerce sales and consumer interest in DTC brands is rising, as detailed:

A digital presence is becoming increasingly important for all brands, not just as a way to sell to consumers, but to communicate and engage with them. Direct engagement with customers will play an especially crucial role in the cookieless world. 

More consumer demand — greatly accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic — is driving the DTC growth as customers like the direct engagement and community aspect of interacting with DTC brands.

The DTC Experience

Luckily, there is no singular way to become better online. To adopt more of a digital-first strategy, brands should look to those with a similar product strategy and a strong digital approach, rather than simply looking to copy bigger online brands like Amazon and Walmart. While these bigger brands are seen to dominate the digital commerce landscape, your brand’s digital approach should fit your own strategy and objectives.

The key to a good DTC experience is customer engagement. The DTC model gives brands better control over every moment of a customer’s experience. With better control comes more nuanced insights behind customer motivations and behaviors at each and every touchpoint. Aggregating this data to learn more about customer’s interactions will better inform the overall marketing and business strategy, to be able to create that frictionless experience that will encourage a customer to return again and again.

For customers, DTC is about a direct relationship with the brand their buying from. Customers are looking for a value match from the brands they shop from, both in terms of monetary value and social causes. Because they have so many options available, customers can afford to be choosy about who they buy from.

In regards to the overall DTC journey, Google shared the following consumer stats with NetElixir:

• 57% of consumers say they go out of their way to purchase directly from brands
• 55% of DTC online shoppers are under the age of 45
• 39% of consumers say they are constantly experimenting with different brands, while 61% are loyal to specific brands

So why are shoppers turning to DTC brands more and more? According to Google’s data, it’s about a better value perception: 68% of online shoppers say individual brands offer better quality than third-party retailers and 61% say that individual brands provide a more personalized and authentic experience. 

As DTC brands learn from their customer’s engagements and perceptions, they can improve their site experience and product offerings to appeal more to those customers. 

What Drives Shoppers to a Specific Brand?

To shoppers, quality, experience, and values drive brand love. They turn to DTC brands because DTC offers:

• Consistent quality standards.
• Assurance that brand values are in line with the shopper’s own.
• Superior shopping experience and more informed customer support.
• A better understanding of the environmental footprint of the shopper’s purchases.

Some drawbacks to DTC brands include an increased difficulty comparing prices and products across brands, a smaller selection, and less access to discounts and promotions. However, strong communication between brands and customers, sharing their values and quality, can go a long way in winning over customers. More informed customer support informs the brand directly about what customers are looking for and helps the brand target customers more precisely.

For DTC brands to be successful, they need to be vocal about their values and missions. They need to share original creatives that tell their brand’s story and the social causes they actively support. Because DTC e-commerce is online-first, brands have simple and frictionless shopping experiences. Additionally, DTC brands deliver experiences, not just products. They invite consumers in to be part of the brand’s community and story. Personalized messaging accrued from first-party data helps these brands personalize their customers’ experiences and win new customers. It is a unique experience that relates back to the brand story and value at each and every touchpoint along the customer’s journey so customers know exactly who they are shopping with.

Steps to Elevate Your Brand Experience

Some next steps to help you improve your DTC experience are:

1. Create clear messages so consumers can learn more about your brand story and values.
2. Ensure your brand is discoverable by using non-branded keywords when customers are researching products you sell.
3. Have an easy-to-navigate site through a clean design, clear directions, and a curated selection of products.
4. Begin building your first-party data foundation by collecting insights from site navigation, online sales, and omnichannel interaction.
5. Create opportunities for loyalty and cross-community relationships (which will also give you rich first-party data).
6. Lean on your first-party data by evaluating the more effective strategies for gathering data about your customers.

How NetElixir Can Help

We help brands amplify their values through responsible communication. Our proprietary customer analytics platform, LXRInsights, connects brands with their customers to give deeper insights into their online shopping journey. Request a demo today to start learning about your customers, like what time of day they are more likely to shop and how frequently they make a purchase.

With better insights into your customers, you can craft creatives that engage your target audience and authentically share your brand’s story. Contact NetElixir to see how we can elevate your content strategy to boost your overall brand experience.

Read More

• Using Data to Guide Your Content
• Repeat Customer Prediction of New E-Commerce Customers
• SEO Strategy to Responsibly Engage Your Customers

The post Insights into the DTC E-Commerce Explosion appeared first on NetElixir.

NetElixir Data Drives Consumer Insights

Our proprietary customer intelligence platform, LXRInsights, provides a wealth of information about your customers. This tool allows you to compare the shopping patterns of your high-value, mid-value, and low-value customers.

What makes a customer “high-value” typically is their loyalty. These customers make repeat purchases from your store and have a high lifetime value. LXRInsights also provides data about the time between purchases — key information for when you should be retargeting shoppers. Decreasing the time between purchases often increases the likelihood of creating a lifetime customer!

You can also use LXRInsights to track your top products by revenue and quantity. This information can help you plan what products to promote in advertising or feature on your homepage. You should also think about why this product — what is it that sets it apart from your competition?

LXRInsights also provides information about customers’ first touch points for your site (paid search, social, or organic) and what device they use to shop. These insights can be helpful when planning paid media campaigns, site design, and more.

NetElixir Research Supports Industry Learnings & Comparisons

Our data-driven team also does our own research into trends. Every year, NetElixir analyzes shopping data across several key e-commerce industries. We look at high-value customers’ shopping patterns during “typical” months versus the holiday season, then aggregate the data into our annual FACES report.

As you examine your business’s data, compare it to that of your industry with FACES. Consider what opportunities exist for refining or redefining your personas. Also consider whether you should be making any shifts during the holiday season to maximize sales.

Google Analytics Adds To Your Data Set

Google provides a wealth of knowledge about those browsing and purchasing from your e-commerce site. Some key areas that can help you with defining your ideal customers are demographic data like age and gender, as well as affinity and in-market audience information. 

Age ranges and gender data paint a broad stroke for who is interested in your brand. Affinity markets show you other interests that your audience has, like “30-minute chefs” or “fashionistas.” In-market audiences are those that are likely to be shopping for a particular product, like home decor or apparel.

Extrapolating Data Into Customer Personas

By putting together all of this information, you can start to develop a sketch of your high-value customer persona. Consider the top revenue-generating age group and gender, and assume that that is the high-value customer identified by LXRInsights. What information can you interpret from layering this data?

If your high-value customer is a woman in her late 30s who is interested in 30-minute recipes and family life, you can interpret that to mean she’s likely busy with her career and her family. Give her an easy-to-remember name, like Mary the Mom. Then, start to define how she is a key client of yours and why. This will help you develop ads, onsite content, and even offline activities such as customer service training. 

Let’s say you sell crafting supplies. Your top-selling product, per LXRInsights, is a block of wood that people make into a carving. The time between purchases averages 15 days. On Google Analytics, your top affinity group is Do-It-Yourselfers who are in-market for Personalized Gifts. Maybe you can define a persona that is someone who makes and sells custom carved wooden pieces: Wally the Woodworker.

Turning Personas Into Effective Content

Once you have your personas developed, the next step is determining their wants and needs, and expressing how your brand and products can help your customers.

Consider Mary the Mom. Based on her interests, you determined she’s very busy. Therefore, she’s probably in need of products that are convenient or make her life easier. In your content, share ways you can help her achieve this. Use language that shows you care and you’re here to help. Highlight the simplicity of your products. Think: “Meals ready to heat & eat!” or “Diaper bags that hold everything you need for a day out.” Mary would probably especially appreciate “Fast, free shipping” and “Easy returns,” too.

What about Wally the Woodworker? Based on his data, you know how often he’s shopping, so aim to send him an email about 13 days after his last purchase to encourage him to come back for his next material stock-up. You could consider retargeting him with different raw materials or list out some carving tools on the product page for the best-selling block of wood. You might even try developing an influencer program or sharing user-generated content on social media to highlight DIY products your users have completed with your products.

As you examine your data, think about any surprising or new data to see if there are any opportunities for your brand. For example, maybe you’ve always considered your brand to be female-dominated, but there’s a rising trend of men purchasing on your site. Perhaps you run a site that is primarily geared towards baby products, so you’ve always been writing ad copy and site content around “mom.” With this new data about men, you should think about revising your branding to be inclusive of all, like using “parents” instead.

Creating Impactful Content Using Customer Personas

Ultimately, identifying your customer personas helps you relate to them on a more personal, more human level. According to a survey by Sprout Social, 64% of consumers want brands to connect with them, and when they feel connected to a brand, 57% will increase their spending. Developing personas can help guide your copy towards being more personal, genuine, and honest, and drive those key feelings of connection and trust.

Instead of writing generic ads or blog posts, imagine you’re speaking directly to Mary or Wally. Consider what they would want to hear. Highlight the ways your product or service will benefit Mary and Wally based on their wants and needs. It’s frequently said that you should walk a mile in someone’s shoes to understand them — but developing a persona works just as well!

Future-proof your content creation strategy by pivoting to a strategy that uses insights to build real relationships with your customers. By connecting with them on a targeted basis, they will feel like the ads are personal, driving affinity and trust for your brand, building out a community, and ultimately growing your brand for years to come.

How NetElixir Can Help Your Brand

NetElixir is here to guide you through your entire e-commerce journey. We can help you gather and interpret data, introduce you to LXRInsights, work with you to develop your personas, and create targeted content for paid search, social media, your website and store, and blogs. Contact us at growth@netelixir.com and connect with our experts today!

The post Using Data To Guide Your Content appeared first on NetElixir.

The one-time buyer problem is one of the most widely known challenges for retail e-commerce brands, as it is difficult to identify the potential repeat customers from only one purchase instance. E-commerce companies often acquire new customers in large numbers through intelligent marketing strategies, but it’s imperative to identify which of these customers are likely to repeat purchases.

Our objective of building a repeat buyer prediction model into LXRInsights, NetElixir’s proprietary customer analytics platform, is to anticipate potential repeat customers among the one-time buyers in the last two months’ duration. Our solution is twofold: one, brands can start accruing loyal customers, and two, retaining existing customers costs less than gaining new customers.

Understanding Your Customer’s Buying Behavior

Through LXRInsights, we track customer’s paths-to-purchase from the first point of attraction to purchase to determine what behavior leads them to conversion. The transaction data we collect includes the time and day that the customers made their purchase, the number of items in the cart, the average order value of the purchase, the referrer or the channel that led them to purchase, the device, and more. We interpret customer profiles from the transaction data that unveils the customers’ purchase patterns. Based on this profile, we use a machine learning model to predict whether a first-time buyer will repeat their purchase. 

Request a full demo of LXRInsights for a holistic understanding of how to grow your business responsibly with data-driven insights.

How Your Customer’s Purchase Journey Trains Our Machine Learning Models

LXRInsights needs key features of the customers’ online shopping behavior to train the model accurately. The accuracy of the model depends on the relevance of the features generated. The following list describes some of the features generated for this model:

1. Pageview information such as the total number of pageviews or average daily pageviews made before completing a purchase.
2. Visit action counts to determine the number of website visits per timeframe of the purchase cycle, from first website visit to purchase.
3. The order information, which includes product diversity, number of items in cart, and order value.
4. The top five browsers, top ten first and second referrers, top landing day of the week, top landing hour, and top checkout hour.

For a sense of how we segment this customer data, download our FACES 2021 report, which catalogs the online shopping behavior of high-value customers across ten e-commerce industries, such as food and grocery and online gifting.

Machine Learning Model

Machine learning algorithms come in handy to accomplish our objective of predicting potential repeat customers. By following the ritual of training ML models, we separate the data into two parts —Training Set to train the model and Test Set to test the model’s accuracy.

Pseudo Code of the Model

Below is the algorithm our model uses to predict the likelihood of repeat customers among first-time buyers:

1. Collect data from the past thirteen months.
   
2. Label the customers with repeated purchases as “Repeat Customer” and the customers with single purchases as “Non-Repeat Customer” for a baseline of your brand’s existing customers.
   
3. Chart relevant features of each segment’s path-to-purchase as outlined above.
   
4. Separate the data into two parts as Train and Test data.
   
5. Train the model by using a set of ML algorithms.
   
6. Measure the accuracy of the model by using Test Set data.
   
7. Select the model with the highest accuracy.
   
8. If the accuracy value is high, share the list of anticipated potential repeat customers.
   
9. Provide the features of the predicted customers that could be used to retain and retarget them.

Conclusions

We use the past transaction data to generate the relevant features of the customers and train the model. By understanding your customers’ buying behavior, your brand can better ascertain repeat customers among your current one-time buyers. You can then generate more personalized campaigns to re-engage these potential repeat customers with your brand and possibly convert more loyal customers.

Visit LXRInsights to request a demo of our customer analytics platform to better understand your new and repeat customers’ online shopping behavior.

References

1. Guimei Liu et. al. “Repeat Buyer Prediction for e-commerce” 2016, KDD August 13-17, San Francisco, USA.
2. https://www.custora.com/blog/four-steps-to-solve-one-time-buyer-prob

The post Repeat Customer Prediction of New E-Commerce Customers appeared first on NetElixir.

Let’s dive into some prominent SEO trends brands should know to give their digital storefront a little boost in the search engine result pages.

A SERP SEO Strategy That Goes Beyond the Ten Blue Links

Most retailers have significant market share to capture when it comes to organic search engine results features. While a spot on the traditional list of ten blue links is still coveted, there’s so much more to gain on that results page. In fact, zero-click searches in Google rose to nearly 65% in 2020, reports Search Engine Land.

Your brand can feature prominently in the “people also ask”, “featured snippets”, “image search”, or “knowledge panels”. Optimizing for featured snippets can help drive brand awareness and increase your authority as an expert within your industry. Create content that specifically answers questions people may be searching for to increase your SERP visibility and provide authoritative information that can rank well.

Benefitting from SERP exposure doesn’t necessarily mean getting a click. As the SERP expands beyond simply providing a list of ten other websites, your brand has ample opportunities — through ads, featured snippets, images, and more — to appear on potential customer’s screens. Brand awareness can go a long way in eventually cultivating brand loyalty that ensures repeat customers.

How is Structured Data Markup Important to E-Commerce?

Structured data markup is important for e-commerce retailers because it tells search engine crawlers what the content and purpose are of a webpage. For example, structured data helps differentiate between a webpage selling a specific product and a blog post sharing information. Accurately understanding and portraying these different context elements of a webpage helps search engine crawlers know what can and should be considered for featured SERP results. And, as noted above, having prominent placement in those featured SERP results can generate increased brand awareness and clicks. Together, this helps brands make more of an impact in capturing the competitive share of voice.

If you are selling products, you may want to show more than just a product description in the search result. Rich results are boosted by structured data that pulls ratings, reviews, product images, pricing, availability, and more. When a customer is fully informed about the product they are searching for, they can make the best buying decision for themselves — and learn to trust what a brand tells them. With that, ensure that your product information (especially stock and inventory) are up-to-date.

Optimizing Your Page Experience

In recent updates to core web vitals scores, Google prioritizes user experience. Sites with good user experience will typically rank better than sites with poor user experience, especially if the content is similar. To evaluate a good page experience, Google considers mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, and page speed, among other factors. 

Free tools provided by Google can help compute your core web vitals score. Your grade is scored out of 100 and offers insights into how you compare to industry averages.

NetElixir boasts a suite of free tools to improve your SEO, as well, such as:

• Page Speed Insights
• Structured Data Generator
• SEO Sitemap Builder
• And more!

Once you have a baseline understanding of how your page performs, you can begin taking the steps to improve the overall experience. Try compressing the size of images on your webpage, use static imagery when possible over dynamic content, and ensure your meta descriptions accurately reflect the web page’s content. All these are relatively quick and simple fixes that can make a difference in your user experience and thus your ranking.

Does Google See All the Good SEO on Your Site?

With all these factors that could negatively impact your SEO — such as too many pop-ups, broken and low-quality links, improperly formatted tags and metadata, and more — you may be wondering if Google sees the good SEO as much as the bad. The short answer is of course! A lot of factors determine your ranking across a variety of search engines. Staying on top of the latest SEO trends and algorithm updates is important to ensure your content reaches the right audiences. 

Your SEO strategy is a rich-multifaceted science that needs a balance of strong content and technical implementation; one without the other won’t mean much. While content is queen, technical SEO is the crown that gets her noticed.  

The crown jewels, if the metaphor may continue, are tweaks and insights that help search engine spiders properly crawl and index your website. Some quick tips to improve the indexation of your site are:

1. Check your crawl status within Google Search Console about once a month or so to highlight and remedy any errors.
2. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly.
3. Consistently and continually update content to signal to the search engine spiders your website is being updated and thus should frequently be crawled (and share this content on social for greater visibility!).
4. Decrease on-page resources to help spiders crawl your page faster (as well as help your page load faster).
5. Eliminate duplicate content.

You can use Google’s URL Inspection tool (or third-party tools like View Rendered Source) to learn more about the current index status, inspect a live URL, troubleshoot a missing page, and more.

How NetElixir Empowers Your SEO Strategy

NetElixir’s SEO team is here to help your brand succeed online. Request a consultation for a deep dive into your SEO strategy, benchmark analysis, and potential growth opportunities. Our solutions range from technical implementation to strategic overview.

Our cross-channel approach to SEO means that we don’t silo your digital efforts; every approach works together for one, holistic e-commerce strategy that bolsters your online presence. NetElixir’s cross-channel SEO strategy helps to strengthen your overall content across platforms, increase brand visibility, and build out your link profile that in turn can improve your ranking. We help you responsibly and effectively engage with your high-value customers at each and every touchpoint along their shopping journey with insights into how and when they search and shop online.

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