Analyzing Internet Sales

Before creating an internet sales/marketing campaign or focusing your products to their niche market, you need to know how buyers think, what their habits are and how to persuade them to purchase from you.

Marketing analyses are constantly performed by companies around the world to measure their effectiveness and how to deal with the new customer's behaviors, and the competitor's strategies; and there are some highlights to remember.

We should take into consideration that half of internet purchases have been made after searching the net, giving a tremendous importance to the organic search results. Of course some categories have a higher tendency (as the online travel market for instance) than others as clothes where customers know more specifically what they are looking for.

Other important fact is that generic keywords are much more used than specific ones, meaning that people prefer to look for broad terms rather than brands of product names. However talking about conversions, even though brands are not so searched, their conversion rate into sales is higher than generic terms.

So here comes a usual question while creating an SEO strategy for your products/services: is it better to drive more generic traffic and then filter the few buyers, or to focus on lower amount of branded targeted searches with higher number of transactions per visitor? Of course there is no absolute answer and the decision should be taken individually obeying the company's policies and the nature of the business.

As most of the searches before purchase come from generic terms, you can find a great opportunity focusing your attention into those keywords by using them as your new brand names and gain an attractive number of broad searches plus the benefit of the awareness for that keyword - as a brand.

Online purchases are made in average after 2-4 weeks from the first research as customers may go from general to particular results until they find what fulfills their expectations.

I expect that period will be shorter each time as customers learn to get what they are looking for faster; and because we - marketers - will continue improving our strategies to offer the right product to our client in fewer steps.