Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

The latest confirmation of consumers tightening spending arrived with news from comScore that online holiday sales registered the first-ever year-over-year decline since tracking holiday e-commerce sales began in 2001. The firm said online spending for the first 49 days of the critical November-December gift-buying period fell 1% to $24.03 billion compared to $24.15 billion over the same period last year. This decline is a bit alarming and may be indicative of an overall slow down in holiday sales this season.

The National Retail Federation (NRF), the industry’s largest trade group, still estimates that total holiday sales will grow 2.2% this year, which may prove optimistic and would still represent the weakest gain in six years. However, several other retail experts expect a worse performance, and are even forecasting the first-ever decline in overall retail sales. Since online sales are down, I personally fear overall sales will follow suit this holiday season. Here at JumpFly, we are hearing clients citing economic concerns with increasing regularity.

Following a strong week for online sales after Cyber Monday, driven by large discounts on consumer electronics products, comScore said sales slowed significantly in recent weeks. The softest categories included music, movies and videos (down 24%); office supplies (down 19%); jewelry and watches (down 17%); and home, garden and furniture (down 16%). Some bright spots included sport and fitness (up 31%); books and magazines (up 18%); and video games, consoles and accessories (up 17%).

A recent NPD survey conducted earlier in December indicated that 31% of consumers said they were concerned about their job security and had cut back on their spending. Fear is a powerful motivation to curb spending, as witnessed by this year’s dismal holiday sales season. Let’s hope that 2009 brings better times for our struggling economy.

Happy Holidays to all. May 2009 bring you all great health, wealth & happiness.

More About Brad

About JumpFly:

JumpFly professionally develops, implements and manages Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising accounts, JumpFly is a Google AdWords Qualified Company, Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador and Microsoft adExcellence Member. JumpFly was recently named the #1 PPC Company in the country by TopSEOs.com.

Everybody knows that Conversion Tracking is an excellent way to judge the individual performance of keywords in your PPC Advertising accounts and their ability to cause an action on your website, however as an E-Commerce business owner you may want more detailed information regarding the ROI from your various marketing campaigns. Google Analytics E-Commerce Reporting might be just the tool you need.

Google Analytics E-Commerce Reporting goes beyond regular analytics reports and can actually import sales data from your customers completed shopping cart transactions. Since Google Analytics already imports the data from your Google AdWords account, it can combine the shopping cart sales data with AdWords data to give you a very clear picture as to the ROI generated from your various campaigns, AdGroups, and keywords.

For example, while AdWords Conversion Tracking might report that the keyword “blue widget” converted 5% of the time for an average cost of $12/each, Google Analytics E-Commerce Reporting can tell you the E-Commerce Conversion Rate, Total Number of Transactions, Average Order Value, Purchased Products, Revenue Generated, Per Visit Value, and more. So, you might find out that the keyword “blue widget” generated 5,308 clicks however only 4,102 visits, with an average CPC of $0.22, converted 5% of the time, for 227 different transactions, with an average order value of $192.81, generating $43,768 in revenue, making the per visit value $10.67. It will even show an ROI of 6,796.13%, and an RPC (Revenue-per-click) of $15.37. Now that is data that you can use to really evaluate bidding and budgeting.

Google E-Commerce Reporting will show data for all sources of traffic including; Yahoo, MSN, Comparison Shopping, Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, you name it, it will track it. You won’t see cost data from these sources like you do when tracking AdWords campaigns, although you still see all of the other great data, which in my opinion is still more than enough.

Unfortunately, enabling E-Commerce Reporting in your Google Analytics isn’t as easy as flipping a switch in the settings, although that is exactly how you begin. First, you must go into the Analytics Settings/Profile Settings, and in the main website profile area you will need to click “Yes, an E-Commerce Site”, and then click save. This activates the functionality in the account, however two more things must be done before it will actually track sales data. First, a tracking code must be included in the receipt page, and then below the tracking code you will need to have your webmaster insert some customized calls that import the data from the shopping cart. If that sounds confusing, your right, it is, and it has caused many a webmaster to pull his hair out trying to get this code to work.

Luckily the code directions and an example of the code can be found here. There is also a great forum with plenty of users willing to help.

While the implementation of this Free Google Analytics feature is a little tricky, the reward at the end is well worth the effort for any business owner looking to see a more detailed picture regarding the ROI from his various online marketing efforts.