MARKETING
Are High Shipping Prices Killing Your Ecommerce Sales?
As an account manager, I frequently analyze platforms and Google analytics. A bulk of my time is measuring performance, identifying wasteful spend, and looking for ways to increase leads or revenue. Less of my time is spent navigating the clients website like their customers. Perhaps this is a mistake.
Are Website Errors Impacting Conversions?
Over the years, my investigation of poor campaign performance has led me to find issues on the website that were affecting performance. One time the cost-per-lead (CPL) spiked in one of my campaigns, and I discovered the lead form was broken. Another time a form option was removed and those campaign’s leads flatlined.
Another time I noticed a decrease in call conversions. The report showed more than 41 calls, but the call duration did not exceed 30 seconds which is the required length to be counted as conversions. After testing the phone number, the greeting stated the offices were closed. It turned out an employee left the company, and no one redirected the phones and instead all the calls went to voicemail.
Sometimes we forget campaigns can drive the right customers to the right pages, but then the website loses the conversion. The landing page experience is a key factor in the conversion performance for a campaign. If your form is too complex it can frustrate mobile searchers. If the checkout process is too confusing, your customers might abandon their cart.
Tip: Double check your conversion tracking, search impressions share lost to rank, and any potential negatives preventing your ads from showing.
Google Merchant Center Warnings
Recently, one of my clients received a policy violation warning from Google Merchant Center their shipping prices did not match on the website compared to what was in their feed. After receiving this notice, I spent time reviewing the shipping prices in Google Merchant Center versus their website.
If you are new to PPC or Shopping, the Google Merchant Center is a tool that gives you a place to upload and store products data for your website. This tool pushes the products into your Google Shopping campaign. Sometimes your product prices, availability, or shipping prices become outdated on the website. This may require something as simple as logging in and refreshing the feed. However, it may require updating information on the website or in merchant center to make sure they are the same.
Tip: Shipping and tax prices listed in Google Merchant Center can be higher than what is on your website without getting penalized. The prices listed on your website should never be higher than what is listed in your data feed.
In Google Merchant Center, using the Shipping Calculator, one products shipping price was $101.97.
On the website, I then proceeded to search the same city, state, and zip code shown in Merchant Center for the address. The listed price on the website was almost $100 higher at $199.95. This is the reason why the client was flagged for discrepancies.
Next, I tested some other locations to see if they were different. In Utah, the price was even higher at $399.90 for a product that is priced at $618.
Next, I selected Texas for the shipping destination and found the shipping price was $419.90. It is probably impossible to imagine anybody willing to pay that much for shipping.
After seeing these high shipping prices, it made me wonder if anyone had been willing to pay more than $300 for shipping on similar orders that were less than $1000. In Analytics, I downloaded all similar orders over the past year. Out of 293 orders, only 12% of the orders paid more than $200 in shipping, and only 1% paid more than $300.
This finding was significant, because it made me question if we had lost out on orders in states with higher shipping costs. This client sometimes runs promotions offering $200 off orders, and this often produced a spike in sales. After bringing this to the attention of my client, they are testing lower shipping prices.
How Important Is Free Shipping?
Are we coming to a point where people prefer free shipping? One recent article shows customers want items shipped fast and free. It also says more than 70% of customers will not come back after a poor shipping experience. Amazon offering Prime members free shipping was a game changer for internet shoppers. Although I have found merchants often roll the shipping costs into the price. Still there is a perceived free shipping offer available.
One article by Neil Patel says you can make free shipping profitable. He suggests running an A/B comparison where you can measure the differences in your total revenue when you offer free shipping. Is it possible offering shoppers free shipping increases your total orders and revenue? Another option is to offer free shipping on higher order values. ChannelAdvisor says “93% of shoppers willing to take advantage of offers to qualify for free shipping.”
Another good practice is to go through the checkout process as a customer to discover any roadblocks on your website. One time a shipping app failed to work and only offered Express shipping prices at a higher rate.
MARKETING
YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]
Introduction
With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.
Types of YouTube Ads
Video Ads
- Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
- Types:
- In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
- Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.
Display Ads
- Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
- Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).
Companion Banners
- Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
- Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.
In-feed Ads
- Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.
Masthead Ads
- Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.
YouTube Ad Specs by Type
Skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Action: 15-20 seconds
Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
- Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
Bumper Ads
- Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
- File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 640 x 360px
- Vertical: 480 x 360px
In-feed Ads
- Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Headline/Description:
- Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
- Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line
Display Ads
- Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
- Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
- File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
- File Size: Max 150KB.
- Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
- Logo Specs:
- Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
- File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
- Max Size: 200KB.
Masthead Ads
- Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
- Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
- File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).
Conclusion
YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!
MARKETING
Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists
Amazon pillows.
MARKETING
A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots
Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.
To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.
Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots
Salesforce’s evolving architecture
It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?
“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”
Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”
That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.
“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.
Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”
Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot
“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.
For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”
Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”
It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”
What’s new about Einstein Personalization
Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?
“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”
Finally, trust
One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.
“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”
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