Shopping cart abandonment. Many marketers are aware of the phenomenon but fail to grasp the amount of revenue that they are losing as a result. Thanks to this infographic from Invesp, marketers can now see just how much shopping cart abandonment has the ability to decrease revenue and more importantly– why it occurs.

Consumers abandon online shopping carts for a variety of reasons (many of which you can see in the infographic). Some prefer to compare fees and reviews while others are simply interested in learning more about the product and/or the company before they make their purchase. Regardless of the reason for abandonment, businesses are losing a massive $18 billion in sales per year because of it.

How do you entice customers to to follow through with their online shopping without abandoning their carts?

We recommend that our clients implement a cart abandonment solution. For example, an email-based cart abandonment solution can help you:

• Re-engage customers through personalized offers and relevant messaging
• Remarket specific products/services that customers abandoned
• Grow and maintain customer loyalty
• Cross-sell related products/services.

Potential customers find it easy to walk away from bookings because there is no salesperson to speak to, meaning that there is no persistent force persuading them to buy. To combat this, a solution that emails customers who have abandoned shoppers who abandoned online carts to let them know that their purchase is valued. These emails are highly customizable and can feature things such as pictures, special offers, and reminders of coupon codes and/or promotions. Other options to battle cart abandonment include the retargeting of shoppers via pay-per-click and display ads. We have the capability to develop full remarketing campaigns that will remind previous visitors to your site to come back and can feature information about the products they were browsing to further entice them.

Keep your shopping carts safe from abandonment– implement a remarketing campaign. Your bottom line will thank you.

Seeking to cash in on the popularity of tweeting during sporting events, ESPN and Twitter have announced a partnership that will open the door for brands to sponsor sports-centered Twitter campaigns. The first campaign, GameFace will launch during the NBA Finals and will encourage Twitter users to tweet a picture their best “gameface” during the Finals (think painted and otherwise adorned fans dedicating their faces to their favorite team). The photos will be tweeted with the hashtag #GameFace and some of the top tweets will be shared by “NBA Tonight,” shown on television at the end of every finals game.

ESPN and Twitter have created a package that includes promotion from ESPN, ESPN.com, and parent company ABC. While the first deal with a brand has yet to be inked, we can expect it to include a series of promoted tweets as well as some on-air promotion during the NBA Finals.

Who can blame Twitter and ESPN for attempting to make money off of sports tweets? According to Twitter, there were average of 10,000 tweets per second in the last minutes of the 2012 Super Bowl. Add that to the findings of a Nielsen study from April that reported that 41% of smartphone users use their phones while watching TV and almost half (45%) of table users browse on their devices while viewing.

Twitter isn’t stopping with just basketball. Other opportunities for Twitter to incorporate itself into the sporting world include the Final Four, BCS Series, NASCAR, and the World Series.

Read more at Ad Age.

As if Google’s updates in the month of April weren’t enough (if you missed that, here’s our April SEO Update), Google announced a new wave of tweaks, updates, and “fixes” last Friday. Here are some of the highlights:

• Improvements to Freshness Signal– Google really cares about providing searchers with new and useful content. As we’ve seen from its past updates, Google is consistently updating how it reads the “freshness” of content. Our best advice– keep providing new content to your site visitors. The more Google returns to your site to index content that it feels searchers will find useful, the better your standing in the SERPs will be.

• No Freshness Boost for Low-Quality Content– No surprise here. If you’ve kept up with the Google Panda and Penguin discussions, you’ll know that Google absolutely abhors low-quality content such as keyword stuffed articles and duplicate (or plagiarized) content. Google didn’t go into a ton of detail on this, but they did say that they have tweaked their freshness algorithm to recognize (and penalize, we assume) content that it deems as low-quality. As we’ve said before, content is king.

• No More Keyword Stuffing– According to Google: “We have classifiers designed to detect when a website is keyword stuffing. This change made the keyword stuffing classifier better.” That should speak for itself.

Other updates include:

• Improvements to Search Ranking “Scoring”– Google’s attempt to ensure that your searches return the most relevant content available based on how the content appears on the page.

• Updates to Anchor Text Reading– Fixed a bug causing issues with reading anchor text.

Read more about these updates at Search Engine Roundtable.

SEO is a complicated process. There are factors that search engine optimizers can control and some that they can’t (Google Panda and Penguin updates, anyone?). Since the SEO world is full of opinions over which website factors matter more than others in terms of increasing SEO rankings and traffic, we felt that we would share some online marketing stats that put some data behind the practice of SEO.

For example:

• 70% of search users clicks come from organic results
• 75% of users never reach the second page of a Google search
• Over 88.2% of 14+ year olds in the US will do online product research in 2012.
• Search drives 300% more site traffic than social media.

Read the full article from Search Engine Journal.

So a Penguin stole your rankings. What now?

First of all, you aren’t alone. The Internet has been full of posts from individuals who have seen their rankings drop as a result of Google’s latest algorithm update, inauspiciously dubbed “Penguin. While its name sounds gentle enough, Penguin has been getting pretty heavily mixed reviews. Some have lauded Google’s rededication to fighting all things webspam, but just as many other webmasters have lamented about drops in rankings and overall organic traffic.

Take heart, if you feel like Google unfairly impacted your rankings with its latest update, you have several courses of action available.

The most important thing to do is to first confirm that you were indeed negatively affected by the Penguin update. Check your rankings over the last two weeks. If you see a sudden drop off in traffic, there’s a pretty good chance that your site was affected. If your rankings and traffic went up then congrats, you may be one of the sites that received some positive benefit from the update. Once you’ve determined that you were actually victimized by Penguin (insert Batman-related joke here), you have several options to look into.

The first step on the roadmap to recovery is to delete anything on your site that could be misconstrued as spam. If you have duplicate or highly similar content on multiple site pages, change it up. Not only will you be removing what Google views as spam fro your site, you’re also adding new and fresh relevant content to your site, something which Google has made abundantly clear that it takes heavily into account when crawling sites.

The second thing that you can do is to access the Google Webmaster forum and let them know what happened with your site. Be advised however, that Google will probably not be inclined to care too much about your request if you rant and rave about how their animal-themed updates are destroying your site traffic, so try to be polite. Explain to them why you feel you were targeted unfairly (reference factors such as site and content quality to plead your case).

Be sure to keep an eye on your rankings and traffic over the next week or two to ensure that no sudden drops occur, as Google’s update rollouts can sometimes take a while to fully complete.

For more information on what you can do if your site was negatively affected by the most recent Panda or Penguin updates, read what Search Engine Land had to say on the matter.

If you haven’t already heard, Google has rolled out a new algorithm over the last few days designed to prevent spammers from attaining high search rankings through black-hat SEO methods such as keyword stuffing, link scams, and intentionally repetitive content. In case you missed it, read our post here.

While the SEO world was abuzz at the news of Google’s rededicated efforts to rid the search engine of spam, it appears that in practice (at least thus far), the update has caused more harm than good. As reported by SEO.com, Google’s new algorithm roll out has produced some interesting results. As you will see in the article, a Google searcher searched the term “make money online.” In the first position for that term was a URL for a BlogSpot page about making money online. Interestingly enough, BlogSpot is a Google owned domain and service. When the BlogSpot link is clicked upon, the user is taken to a page that is completely devoid of any content. No text, videos, or photos. Google has since edited their site to remove this anomaly after the screenshots began circulating yesterday afternoon.

We can’t help but compare the fallout from Google’s new algorithm to the buzz (and general dismay) that followed its Panda Update. In each instance, legitimate sites that organically perform SEO have seen their rankings drop in favor of sites with less organic SEO content. At this point it appears that Google has a decision to make. They can either tweak the update to restore order, rescind the update altogether, or allow SEO forums and Twitter feeds everywhere to explode with the displeasure of Google’s “webspam update.”

A new search algorithm released on April 24th by Google will attempt to address the issue of webspam in search results. The algorithm will target spammers who intentionally utilize “black-hat” SEO methods such as keyword stuffing, duplicate content, and dishonest link building tactics to artificially inflate their website’s rankings. The update is expected to affect 3% of overall search terms.

It is important to note that this algorithm is not designed to target “overly-optimized” sites. Google Head of Webspam, Matt Cutts, warned of a penalty for sites that Google finds to be optimized to the extreme, but rest assured that this is not that penalty. In fact, Google encourages SEO practitioners to follow white-hat methods to naturally improve their site’s rankings without resorting to shady SEO tactics. You can read more about Google’s over-optimization penalty here.

The most important thing to take away from this update is that Google appears to be intent on helping SEOs who play by the rules and don’t attempt to manipulate or artificially inflate their rankings through shady practices. Google has made it clear that they are determined to weed out the bad sites with no adverse effects for sites that are performing SEO best practices. SEOs take heart– it appears that Google is truly making an effort to weed out the bad eggs.

Read the full article from Search Engine Land.

Read our most recent SEO Update.

Immediate Visibility in Search Engines

When you engage in a PPC campaign, your site can become visible to searches within hours. Interactivity Marketing takes the time to research and plan your campaign launch based on predetermined goals and marketing strategy, providing you with the peace of mind that comes from knowing that an experienced agency is handling your account based on sound principles and methods with proven track records of success.

Controlled Costs and Daily Spending Limits

Search engine marketing (SEO and PPC) is one of the most targeted forms of advertising since you can control the audience that is searching for you by identifying relevant keywords and by setting search filters and parameters (such as geotargeting) as necessary.  By driving a high number of targeted prospects to your web site, you effectively increase the opportunity to generate more revenue for your business.

Controlled Ad Placements

The Internet (specifically search engine sites) has become the hub of all research for major purchasing decisions for consumers. If Internet users are performing searches with keywords that are relevant to your products, services, or industry and your name is not listed, you are missing out on growing your revenues. Effective PPC management ensures that your ad is being seen by searchers and gives you a great opportunity to close a sale.

Control of Marketing Message

Dollar for dollar, SEO and PPC generate a higher ROI than any comparable form of marketing such as TV, print or radio.

Conversion Tracking

SEO and PPC can be tracked unlike most other advertising mediums.  You are able to track which keywords generate leads and sales for your business and determine the costs associated with the leads and sales.

Global Exposure

Your website is visible to a worldwide audience twenty-four hours a day and every day of the year. This means that your website can reach people in areas that traditional marketing cannot.

Increase your Visibility & Build Brand Awareness

Let your customers find you.  SEO and PPC also help target customers find you as opposed to trying to find them.  Getting listed by popular search engines also increases your brand credibility.  Consumers expect big brand businesses to be prominently placed in Google, so what is the effect if you aren’t on the first page or two?