Small Business Blog

Here’s your small business sound byte for the day: all of the millions of Web searches completed daily can be group into just three categories. Do you know what they are?

1. Research
2. Shopping
3. Buying

It’s important to know all about these three types of searches so you can focus your Web marketing efforts on bringing buyers to your site. Shoppers and researchers can pad your site’s traffic numbers, but they aren’t helping your bottom line. Also, if you get traffic but you aren’t making sales, you can’t fix that problem until you know if you are you bringing in the wrong people, if you are carrying the wrong products, or if your site is too hard to navigate.

Identifying researchers, shoppers and buyers

You can identify which group your visitors fall into by the terms they searched to find your site. Researchers tend to use short, broad key phrases. These folks might search “computers” or “laptops.” They don’t know what kind of computer they want and they’re looking for reviews, specs and related data.

Shoppers get a little more focused. A shopper might search “Dell computer” or “15-inch laptop.” This user has narrowed his search to a subcategory of the product, in this case a Dell computer rather than any computer. He’s ready to compare specs among different models and even do a little price-shopping.

Shoppers become buyers when they start searching for specific models, such as the Dell Inspiron 1521. At this point, the user is looking for a reason to buy. The call to action might come in the form of a good price, a shipping discount, availability, add-on features, etc.

Keyword marketing implications

If you spend money on PPC advertising, think about how these different users apply to your online store. Say you offer an extremely competitive price on a specific product; in that case, consider bidding on long-tail key phrases for that product. You’ll get straight to the buyers and have a call to action waiting for them. On the other hand, if your site contains a lot of information about the products you carry and it’s easy to navigate, you may have the advantage if you get to the customer before your competitors do. That customer may not buy on the first visit, but he might come back later when he’s reached the buying phase. In that case, it might make sense to purchase general key phrases. Either strategy could work, as long as you proceed based on knowledge of your target customer and an objective perspective on your product offering.