Join Impression’s experts Mike Weir and Yas Burchill as they explore the challenge of changing consumer behaviour online over the last 5 years.
Yasmin notes that impulse buying may not be as common as it once was and that the customer journey has grown. This has led to changes in how we create digital marketing strategies, as we adapt to how we structure campaigns based on user behaviour.
- 00:06 – Navigating changing online consumer behaviour
- 02:46 – Opportunities and challenges in the automotive industry
- 05:14 – Data quality, online privacy and user-consent
- 08:26 – How to convert more clicks into customers
Yasmin Burchill: I think one of the biggest challenges for us, not just necessarily in PPC but across all channels, is the kind of change in consumer behavior that we’ve seen over the last few years. So, you know, the way that people behave online now, as I’m sure you’re aware, is very different to how people behaved three, four, or five years ago. And actually shopping behaviors specifically on Google have really, really changed. And what we tend to see now is that people are doing a lot more research before they buy. There used to be a little bit more impulse buying, I would say, but not quite the case anymore.
Mike Weir: So I think what we’re having to do is adapt to some of the new formats that Google are bringing in. So Performance Max has been the big one that everyone’s been talking about for the last few years, but also adapt how we’re running and structuring those campaigns based on user behavior.
Yasmin Burchill: So, yes, obviously, you’re seeing these big changes in user behavior. I suppose one of the things is like people coming in from adverts, sort of scrolling around a bit, and jumping straight back out again, and then using the Google shopping like they might do a catalogue or a listing page.
Mike Weir: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a big challenge because obviously if those ads are paid, every time someone clicks back out and then clicks back in again, that’s going to drive up your costs.
Yasmin Burchill: Yeah, and that’s exactly what’s happening. We’re seeing the click-through rates can rocket for some people, but the detriment is conversion rate. So we’re seeing a lot at the moment that the products that people are clicking on aren’t necessarily the products that they go on to buy. And actually, the way that we’re looking to structure campaigns is more based on how the user behaves rather than what Google tells us, so actually we’re doing a lot of work to understand what the aspirational products that people see and click on and think, “I’d really like that,” versus what do they then go on to buy? But then the next step is when they get on to the site and they’ve clicked on that aspirational product, how do you get them to go through to those final products?
Mike Weir: That’s really interesting. Back in the day, you used to work with a large fast fashion client. And what we used to find was that if we put very sensible clothing into the adverts, the adverts would perform worse and perhaps some of the more high contrast colors and some of the more ‘out there’ stuff. Actually, the reason for that was is that black dresses will sell themselves almost. But actually the thing that brings people in is the thing that grabs their attention is actually the novelty. And it’s that standout product, that wow factor that draws that emotion, that sort of drives people into the website.
Yasmin Burchill: I suppose speaking back to your point about the behavior changing now, it’s a case of like, try and sort of design those list pages so that when people come onto a product page, they land onto it. If I don’t like that product, or they don’t trust it immediately for whatever reason, what’s around that product used to be a description of that product. Increasingly, we’re seeing tests around sort of bringing a catalogue onto that page, so similar products, outfits, bundles, all of that good stuff.
Mike Weir: We’re seeing as well, lots of challenges in the automotive industry, companies like AutoTrader where you didn’t have as much competition historically, and I’ve seen loads and loads of new entrants into the market. I suppose that’s going to increase competition from like a user experience perspective, but also for an advertising perspective as well.
Yasmin Burchill: Yeah, absolutely. We’re lucky enough to work with a few automotive clients, actually one quite major one, and that’s definitely a trend that we’ve seen over the course of the last year. It’s a really saturated industry now, which it didn’t used to be and it has meant that, you know, there’s CPC spikes, costs are a lot higher than they used to be. We’ve actually done some really, really innovative work for that client over the last six months or so. We were one of the first advertisers actually to get onto the Google Vehicle Ads beta, which is really, really cool. It’s like shopping ads but for vehicles. Since we’ve implemented that strategy for them, we’ve seen loads of really good results. We’ve actually increased leads by 99% for that client since we took them on board, nearly 100, we’d love it to be 100, but it is 99%. There is a lot that we can be doing for them, but you’re absolutely right. What we have to bear in mind is the impact of competition. And unfortunately, even whilst we’re bringing in those new features, CPCs are going to continue to rise because the market is getting really saturated. But we’re doing everything we can and we can see some really good results starting at the moment.
Mike Weir: That’s really interesting. I suppose that industry trend of a sort of new template, those new layouts, is going to be across other stuff as well in the future. So that sort of shopping behavior of flicking between different landing pages is going to become really important. So, making sure that you’re optimizing your landing pages based on the traffic, the level of intent, what they’ve seen immediately before is going to become more and more important.
Yasmin Burchill: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the general theme that we’re seeing as well is that the new products that Google tends to be bringing out, like Vehicle Ads, Performance Max, all speak to this changing user behavior. And the fact that people are using the shopping page like a catalogue clicking back and forwards, you need as much information on that page as possible to entice the user to be able to get them to site, and that kind of speaks to the level of competition there is at the moment as well.
Mike Weir: Yeah, exactly. I suppose as well, traditionally people thought of their homepage as their shop window, so that’s where all the brand messaging was, that’s where all the trust signals were, that’s where the value proposition was. Now, increasingly it’s like people walking through a door and they’re in a retail environment. And if they’re not familiar with it, all of those things, like the trust signals, the social proof elements, they play an increased role for people who have never seen or heard of a business before. So, how they get that right is really important.
Yasmin Burchill: A big issue that we’re facing at the moment and very, very recent, is changes to consent mode, you know, everything that’s going on with the cookie over the next year or so, the impacts that we’ve seen for a lot of advertisers over the last few weeks is actually when consent mode has been implemented, we’re seeing from a tracked perspective traffic dropping off, conversions dropping off, and the impact of that for us is bid strategies have really, really little quality data to work with. So from your perspective, what do advertisers need to be doing at the moment to combat this?
Mike Weir: So, I suppose cookie stuff for the legal aspects is they have to be compliant. So the first thing is to check that you are—you’d be surprised how many businesses actually aren’t compliant at the moment or, in what I describe, as some kind of grey area, but that grey area will get tighter and tighter. And the other thing to consider is the design of the opt-in cookies are not all equal. And actually, some of them are really, really good at subtly encouraging people to accept them. And they’ve been tested as such to do that type of thing. Now, obviously there is a line here between being legal and being too pushy, but I would suggest that by designing the optimum and testing it and remaining within that compliant zone, you can probably increase the amount of people who are giving you their first-party data. On top of that, look for other areas to get consent. So if they haven’t consented in the first interaction and they’re further along the journey and they’re now starting to display signs that perhaps they are interested in purchasing from you, is there something you could do further in the journey to try and encourage them to then give you consent after the fact? So there’s lots of opportunities in that. So what are the considerations from your side, I guess, to deal with that?
Yasmin Burchill: Yeah, absolutely. First-party data is obviously everything and the way that bid strategies work on all paid platforms is they’re only as good as the data that you give them. So even in instances where we are seeing that overall tracked traffic is reducing, the thing that I want to see as many advertisers do as possible is be pushing to include micro conversions in the data that’s being tracked as well. So there’s lots of different metrics that we would really push for advertisers to be including in their micro conversions at the moment. So things like email sign-ups, add to basket clicks, product clicks, page scroll depths. All of this is really valuable data that we can be feeding into the bid strategies. The more data that they are given, the better they’re going to optimize and the better they’re going to understand what a potential customer looks like, what a customer who comes on-site but doesn’t end up purchasing looks like. So we can make better decisions off the back of that as well. So the big thing for us is, any data that you can get feed into the platform because it’s going to make a big difference.
Mike Weir: That’s really interesting because like, back in the UX and digital analytics perspective, it’s the type of data that we’d use when we try to diagnose what’s wrong with a website, we’re looking at page clicks, scroll depths, add to basket ratios, all this type of stuff to try to understand which pages are performing best and why. And now actually feeding those back into your ad campaigns is a really good tip because if you know this, if you know the add-to-basket ratio and page scroll depths are high on certain pages, you can start to prioritize those and optimize them. So I think that’s a really good shout. I think it’ll be a bit of an education piece for a lot of people. So if they haven’t been doing it historically, they’ll need to sort of think about what things can be classified as micro conversions because it’s not always obvious, it’s going to be different for each business.
Yasmin Burchill: Yeah, absolutely. And the key thing there as well is the data is only going to be as good as what we’re feeding in, so as much as possible is really good. But you’re absolutely right, the key thing that I like to see advertisers do at the moment is really start to hone in on their own analytics as well, because there’s lots of insights you can be getting from the data that’s already there. And I think for a lot of advertisers, especially a few years ago, we would see that it was just accepted that whatever Google says is what’s happening. But actually, the reality is for a lot of advertisers, that’s not the case. We know that Google Analytics, for example, often vastly underreports what actual revenue is coming through and it’s great that there’s new platforms and tracking capabilities out there, like Shopify Analytics, that are giving advertisers a more holistic view of what’s going on. So I think it’s getting used to different types of data sources as well and not necessarily just taking what Google says as gospel, but really trying to build as full a picture as possible because that’s the only way that we’re really going to be able to feed everything back into the campaigns and make sure that they’re running at their best.
Mike Weir: That’s really interesting. That’s great, thanks for that.
