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End of Financial Year Performance – Digital style

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

There has definitely been staggering growth in the Australian digital space during the 1st 6 months of the year. With a new financial year upon us I have no doubt that companies in Australia will continue to shift funding from offline to online. Thus I felt it timely to release a compilation of general digital statistics from the first half of 2010 to assist marketers and agencies alike to build their business case for online marketing initiatives. Enjoy!

eCommerce & General Internet Usage

1. Online Internet Usage in Oz - According to Nielsen, Australians spend an average of 17.6 hours a week online, making up 33 per cent of their total media time.
2. Online retail spend in Australia - eBay-owned payment company PayPal predicts online retail spending to reach $33.8 billion in Australia by 2012 – a significant increase on the $24 billion generated during 2009.
3. Loss of online sales to international providers - 40% of Australians online spend is going to overseas stores. Compare this to the US who are losing 10% to overseas counterparts and this crystalises the impact of delayed online investment by Australian retailers.
4. Average consumer online spend Australia - According to Frerk-Malte Feller, Managing Director, PayPal - in the last six months alone the average consumer spent $1,223 online, an increase of $130 from the second half of 2009.”
5. Retailer online investment in 2010 - According to a Forrester report released in July “online retailing in Australia 2010: Marketing, merchandising and customer service”, 69% of retailers are planning to invest in improved site content and 66 per cent will spend more time on online marketing to drive sales & growth.
6. Online purchasing frequency - According to the ACRS’ latest report: “Value and Optimisation in Multi-Channel Retailing”, approx 36% of Australians are making purchases online at least once a month and 6% are buying online once every week.
7. Online / Offline Channel Effect - According to the ACRS by 2012, nearly half of all retail transactions are expected to be executed by consumers crossing channels - making multi-channel retailing essential.

Social Media
8. Social Network & Forum Usage - According to Hitwise Australia social networking and forum usage increased 36.1% in the past year and overtook search engines as the most visited industry by Australian Internet users in March 2010.
9. The power of online WOM - According to a survey conducted by RightNow 16% of Australian consumers said they had stopped doing business with a company because of a social media discussion they had seen about how the company treats customers. Another 16% stated they had also seen a positive consumer discussion about a company and had gone on to make a purchase.
10. Influence of Online Reviews - A study by RightNow found more than half of respondents (58 per cent) deemed customer reviews and feedback online to be the most important source to influence decision making, of least importance was advertising in any shape or form.
11. Online Community Usage – Australians look to communities of interest such as parenting or sports sites as a key channel for social media discussion – 62 percent of Australian Internet users visited a message board or forum in 2009.
12. Online Video Usage - Australians have a huge interest in online videos and this continues to grow. In January 2010 alone, Australians consumed 33 million videos online daily.
13. LinkedIn Members - LinkedIn has seen one of the fastest growth trends amongst social media sites in Australia, with unique audience numbers increasing by 99 percent from July 2009 to May 2010.
14. Twitter Users - According to Tribalytic Twitter subscribers in Australia are estimated to stand at 2.5 million.
15. FourSquare Members - According to socialmedianews.com.au Sydney FourSquare users have reached the 60,000 mark.

Mobile Statistics
16. Australian Mobile Internet Usage - Australians’ ownership of internet enabled phones now sits at 43 per cent, with 29 per cent regularly using it to search, email, find maps and share their lives on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.
17. Mobile Internet Behaviour - Internet searches are the most popular online activity on the phones. Some 73 per cent of mobile internet users users conduct online searches by mobile now, compared with 30 per cent a year ago.
18. Mobile Device Share - Nokia has 35% share of handsets in Australia vs Apple’s at 28%. Apples share is expected to reach 61 per cent this year, according to MediaSmart.

Search
19. Search Engine Market Share - According to Hitwise for the week ending the 10th of July 2010, Google’s market share in Australia equated to 92.52%, Bing was 3.44% and Yahoo was 2.39%.
20. Political Term Search Growth – Given the upcoming election this last one is a timely. Political related search terms are on the rise - Yahoo recorded a 6829.44% rise on the search term ‘Julia Gillard,’ a huge 8164.49% increase on the term ‘Julia Gillard biography’ and a 2600% increase on ‘Julia Gillard pics,’ from Wednesday 23 June until Friday 25 June. Additional search terms on the rise at Yahoo! included, ‘Australian Labor Party’ (2597.72%), ‘Tony Abbott’ (3107.65%), ‘Kevin Rudd’ (3106.67%), ‘Kevin Rudd biography’ (2042.72%) and ‘Julia Gillard MP’ (1334.60%).

References

http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=C9356544-1A64-67EA-E489E8D76F64ADA4
http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/aussie-advertisers-yet-to-take-bite-of-apple-20100708-102ej.html
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/australians-take-to-mobile-internet-20100429-tszn.html
http://www.socialmedianews.com.au/foursquare-has-60000-users-in-sydney-business-urvey/
http://www.digitallabblogasia.com/?p=408&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
http://www.insideretailing.com.au/Latest/tabid/53/ID/8517/Australia-reaches-customer-experience-impasse.aspx
http://www.dynamicbusiness.com.au/articles/articles-news/online-retail-grow-40-percent-by-2012-1785.html
http://blog.tribalytic.com/2010/05/13/how-many-australian-twitter-users-are-there-and-where-are-they-from/
http://www.hitwise.com/au/datacentre/main/dashboard-1706.html
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/351204/search_engines_running_hot_gillard_krudd/
http://www.buzznumbershq.com/2010/australian-social-networks-and-forums-usage-increased-36-1-in-the-past-year/
http://www.marketingmag.com.au/news/view/consumers-go-multi-channel-for-retail-2238

Written By: Teresa Sperti

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Posted in Digital Trends, SEO, Social Media, eCommerce | 3 Comments »

The Next Big Thing – Social Search?

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

There is no doubt that over the past few years search marketers have turned their attention to social media as a key channel to support the viral creation of links and to dominate SERPs onsite and offsite. However whilst most of our attention has been focussed around ranking in Google – many of us have failed to see the search opportunity that has grown within social networks and now many social networks such as Twitter search channels in their own right.

The sheer volume of users on social networks has even Google shaking in their boots and for good reason. Over the past few years Google’s direct search competitors have attempted to take on Google in the search race without denting their share. However in the meantime an unlikely competitor has risen to the top. Facebook has captured the attention of users on the internet and is now dominating the users internet experience attracting more visitors than Google in the month of May. And whilst the primary function of Facebook and other platforms like Twitter is not to search – social search is becoming significant. In fact according to a recent Nielsen study, social media sites such as Wikipedia, blogs, and social networks account for 18% of where searches begin. If this is the case social search is much bigger than Bing and Yahoo search combined in Australia.

Why is this so? In a recent article on Search Engine Watch – Mark Drummond put it nicely – “Facebook brings an entirely new opportunity for flavored search: ranking search results using the social connections between people, as captured in the open graph. What Google lacks is intimate knowledge of our interests and plans to proactively deliver information to us and this is precisely the advantage that Facebook has over Google.

Social Search Facts For Facebook & Twitter
Facebook
Facebook racked up over 600 million searches in May 2010. Compare this to January 2009 where search volumes were a mere 161 million and it is obvious to see that Facebook search is becoming a sizeable opportunity. A significant portion of searches are obviously related to people search as the average query length on Facebook is 2 words – however search is starting to evolve to cover topics related to fashion, electronics and travel. What is however most interesting is that Facebook are actively focussing on improving search within its eco-system with the launch of Open Graph. By leveraging content from its “LIKE” feature combined with sites actively integrating with Facebook ie like TripAdvisor, Facebook has started to collate content to serve up to users when they search for a particular theme or topic. Whilst still in a very premature stage – get it right and this could significantly move the goal posts in the search landscape as content is served up on the basis of user popularity. For more on Facebook search – refer here.

Twitter
It is hard to pin point accurate statistics for Twitter search with reports ranging from 350 million to 18 billion searches per month. Regardless of this, the numbers are sizeable. Combine this with content that finds users – rather than users searching for content and there is no doubt that Twitter presents a significant opportunity for businesses. But this doesnt come without a high level of competition. Twitter reporting more than four billion tweets are sent using the service in a given month – that is a lot of content that could appear within the SERPs thus optimisation is key.

What To Do About Social Search?Some of the normal rules still apply such as effectively tagging content, using descriptive keywords and the rest but what else do you need to consider?

Optimisation for Facebook
Facebook has released documentation to effectively embed tags onsite for open graph. By doing so you turn your web pages into graph objects, which will enable these pages to become part of the eco-system. For more information on the important tags that should be utilised refer to the below link;
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph

Optimisation for Twitter
In the 2nd half of 2010, Twitter is planning to launch Twitter annotations. The full benefits of this feature is not clear however it is believed to provide the ability to augment our 140 characters with other useful information to assist Twitter to more effectively understand the content its users are sharing. With this I expect a series of key optimisation techniques to emerge to improve your visibility within Twitter search. I also assume this will be combined with an improved search engine on Twitter so users can filter and sort information to find what they are looking for. For more information refer here.

Have you begun to optimise your site for social search? If so share some of your experiences below.

Written By: Teresa Sperti

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Posted in Digital News, Digital Strategy, SEO, Social Media | No Comments »

Search Down Under – SEO Cafe Learnings

Friday, June 11th, 2010

On Tuesday evening in a boardroom in Elizabeth Street MELBOURNE, 12 marketers / search professionals gathered for a roundtable discussion on organic search. This discussion was the first “trial” session for myself and my friends at internet retailing to facilitate a discussion around the topic of search in Australia.

The session was attended by marketers / search professionals from agencies and client side roles and were from all experience levels. What was great to see was the enthusiasm from those with expertise to share strategies and techniques and the thirst of knowledge from beginners. The session covered a range of discussion topics from social search through to algorithm changes, link building and measurement, and this article summarises the key learnings from the events discussion.

Googles Mayday Algorithm Changes
Google’s latest algorithm change in May termed “Mayday” has been dubbed the long tail game changer with many larger websites potentially feeling the effects of a loss in traffic from Google’s algorithm update. The session explored the impact of the Mayday change and the general consensus was that some had definitely seen a decline in traffic from long tail terms whilst others had seen steady month on month traffic.

Has your site been affected? Through Google analytics advanced segmentation marketers / search pro’s can segment short tail and long tail terms into 2 categories and analyse the behaviour of each. For those wishing to utilise this segmentation technique refer to the following article which provides a quick link for the segment to be set up within your Google analytics profile - http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-analytics-short-taillong-tail-segmentation.html

Twitter & Facebook Search
The group discussed the opportunity which lies within social search, however the discussion around “social search” being a search channel in its own right delivered some interesting insight. During the discussion statistics about the current volume of searches being conducted on some of the major social platforms and the growth potential in the future were shared.

Facebook Search; comScore said search queries on Facebook grew from 395 million in January 2010 to 436 million in February 2010, a growth of 10 percent. And by May 2010, search engine watch was quoting 600 million searches.

Twitter Search Statistics; According to statistics released at SMX Australia there are 500 million searches being conducted globally per month.

Leveraging This Opportunity; Viewing social channels as search platforms in their own right provides new opportunities for SEOs. By optimising content posted / shared on these platforms to maximise visibility for relevant searches, organisations can start to tap into the potential value derived from the many searches already occurring within the social space.

Measurement – Metrics To Measure Search Performance
The discussion turned to how search pro’s and marketers are measuring organic search efforts. Whilst personalisation and localisation are playing an increasing role within SERPs it seems many still utilise ranking tools to measure performance alongside of other key indicators such as back links, indexed pages and of course traffic generated through search efforts and the engagement / conversion of that traffic.

However one of the most interesting comments regarding measurement surfaced around brand vs non brand related terms and how marketers should measure these as part of search performance. As search is an acquisition channel, should brand related searches count as a win for SEO traffic, or brand? Some within the group advised that brand terms are omitted from reporting the performance of search which is an interesting phenomenon. At the very least marketers need to consider if they should be segmenting organic search into 2 categories brand vs non brand search – as brand related searches could increase within any given month as a result of other marketing/brand initiatives and thus could skew general SEO performance.

Google’s Vertical Search Strategy & Implications
Vertical search has obviously been a key area of development / innovation for Google and Bing over the past year and it is interesting to see Google replicate a lot of filtering tools deployed by Bing in 2009. However one of the most interesting which was discussed during the session was the ramifications of the new “fewer shopping sites” filtering options on the search results page. Unfortunately for eCommerce sites, if a user selects this filtering option – it remains selected for subsequent searches – this may therefore result in many eCommerce sites dropping off page 1 of SERPs during an entire user browsing session – which could have significant ramifications on traffic.
It is difficult to quantify the impact these latest changes are having on sites. In addition it is also difficult to determine if Google have made this latest change to support the introduction of Google products into Australia and globally, however there is no doubt that this will be an topic that will be discussed in greater detail by local marketers / SEO’s over the coming months.

Thank you to all who attended the event. And for those that didn’t I hope the above summary provides some useful insight to further improve your organic search efforts.

Written By: Teresa Sperti

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Posted in SEO | No Comments »

How Offline Activity Presents Online Opportunity

Monday, April 26th, 2010

It is often said that retailers are yet to quantify the link between online browsing and offline purchases and it is these trends that are hindering investment in digital. However a similar relationship exists between offline activities and their ability to drive online visitors and conversions and I am not talking about in traditional offline campaigns.
Popular TV series like Masterchef are capturing audiences offline and their love and excitement of this show is being translate into online activity. However is your brand taking advantage of the hype?

How MasterChef Is Driving Online Activity
The latest series of Masterchef has taken Australia by storm with 1.69 million people tuning into the premier of the series. But it isn’t just this 1½ hour slot that people are tuning into daily. Search trends show that at present the terms “MasterChef” & “Master Chef” are attracting 400,000 searches per month online alone.

What is however interesting is when overlaying monthly trends with generic terms like recipes it is clear that increases in food related searches mirror that of searches for the Masterchef show. Combine this with a simple Twitter search for the term Masterchef and it is easy to see just how hooked Australians really are. However whilst this seems like an obvious trend, it seems few are translating this into their online strategy.

Translating Trends Into Traffic
Not every show on TV presents a MasterChef opportunity however following the trends could prove very lucrative online for many organisations who operate in a field related to the latest hit TV show.

At present I believe there is probably 2 or 3 opportunities going by the wayside – MasterChef being one of them. And whilst Coles seems to own the branding rights on MasterChef, there are still many online opportunities to take advantage of – particularly if you were one of Coles biggest rivals. One of the other notable opportunities would be Underbelly which had 2.2 million people tune in to its series premier. Such programs could drive searches and interest in Australian crimes movies and books which could prove particularly beneficial for brands such as Borders.

Online Tactics Not For The Faint Hearted
Whilst planning tactics and initiatives around popular shows is not a completely new, this is not only relevant to offline TV activity. The rise of social media has meant that real time search is becoming increasingly more important as consumers react to their surroundings and move online for instant information gratification related to shows or events or world news.
Earlier this year I covered this very topic in an article about real time search and highlighted how Amazon re-acted to Michael Jacksons demise – with a full micro-site and digital strategy up within hours of his death. As a result of their swift action Amazon had cashed in on the opportunity before their competitors had even considered how to leverage the opportunity.

To build strategies around “pop search & social media culture” is of course not an easy task and requires flexibility in systems, processes and also a change in mindset for planning and reacting to news and fads. However those that do will gain a distinct advantage over their competitors in the coming years and are more likely to gain an advantage over their competitors online.

Written By: Teresa Sperti

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Posted in Digital Strategy, PPC, SEO, Social Media, Social Networking | 2 Comments »

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