Comments on: The SEO Tip Online Retailers Still Are Not Taking Advantage Of!

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By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:48:11 +0000

@dan barker, that’s the evil side of coupons. You either offer them and they run out of control, or you don’t and you keep all your margins at the expense of sales. Interestingly, the latter might be the better strategy for many retailers But that’s fodder for another post

By: dan barker

dan barker — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:37:57 +0000

@jason i agree entirely. the sad downside is you risk giving away 5-15% on purchases that wouldn’t even use a discount if/when this leaks into your main brand SERPs. managing it through PPC allows you to control & avoid that risk; managing it through natural search gives you no control.

By: Antonette Jeltema

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By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 23:38:01 +0000

After posting this, I received an email from a large multichannel retailer who has been using this tactic effectively since last holiday season. The coupon page ranks #1 in Google and has “converted very well.”

I have posted a couple other articles on coupon tactics if you’re interested:

How to Grow Your Email List from Your Shopping Cart
http://www.getelastic.com/email-list-shopping-cart/

How Much is Your Coupon Box Costing You?
http://www.getelastic.com/coupon-box/

By: Jason Billingsley

Jason Billingsley — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:47:30 +0000

The key point here… if the shopper is behaving in this fashion (leaving site to search for a code after adding items to the cart) it is best for the merchant to own the top search engine listing for ‘brand + coupon’. If an affiliate owns those spots, it erodes the margin by another 5-15% + the discount granted by consumption of the coupon. The merchant would just be hedging against affiliates sniping easy to convert customers.

By: Martin Hayman

Martin Hayman — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:14:29 +0000

Good points made by Dan and Jon above. Initially I thought this seemed like a good idea. But then the more I thought about it the more I struggled to see the real benefits. As Jon stated, most people tend to look for discount codes once they are already at the checkout… and therefore going to buy anyway. So would there be any real benefit in creating a landing page to outrank others for discount code searches on your brand?

And as Dan stated, you wouldn’t want this page showing as an additional link in regular (non discount code) searches.

By: Jon Schneider

Jon Schneider — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:45:26 +0000

Interesting strategy by Macy’s. I know when I’m making on online purchase, my workflow often goes something like this:

(1) On the eCommerce site, find the item I want
(2) Add item to the cart
(3) Go through the check-out process until I see the “Enter Promo Code here” field.
(4) Think “oh yeah, I should see if there’s a coupon,” open a new browser tab or window, google for “(SiteName) promo code”, and check out the top couple of results. Usually there’s nothing relevant, but occasionally there is — enough to make it worth the 60 seconds of my time to check.
(5) Enter the promo code (if I found one).
(6) Complete the check-out.

It might make sense for retailers to experiment with trying to keep me on their own site in step (4), as Macy’s is doing. Maybe there’s opportunity for upsell?

I don’t think I’ve ever personally abandoned a purchase due to not finding a promo code in step (4), but I have saved some money (and cost the retailer some margin) in a few cases when I have found and applied a promo code. I wonder if a valid strategy would be to not have a visible “enter promo code” field at all at check-out, and instead to offer only “click through” coupons that are automatically applied at check-out, to avoid triggering the “reminder” to customers to go off-site and search for a coupon code as part of check-out?

By: dan barker

dan barker — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:14:50 +0000

hi, Linda, how are you?

I actually would not do this. The reason being it’s too risky. If the page is very popular, it will make it into your google sitelinks (the little sublinks under the main listing) when someone searches for your brand. ie, you will end up giving away discounts on a large proportion of brand searches that would have resulted in a sale anyway.

You can exclude individual pages from sitelinks, but (in my experience) the more popular ones then tend to show up as the additional link google shows below the sitelinks.

Instead, I’d create a ‘coupon codes’ page that can’t be indexed (as macy’s have done), and *only* publicise it via PPC. The cost of a click will be tiny as it’s your brand, and this allows you to control it more tightly.

Let me know if you think I’m missing something here!

dan