It's time for Coffee with Catalyst!
Here's your host, Rich Ezzo.
Welcome everyone, to another addition of Coffee with Catalyst. Today we're speaking with Angela Davis.
 
Angela works here at Catalyst as a digital analyst,
and she's also one of the
contributing authors to
our most recent ebook, which is
"E-Commerce SEO Strategies:
Mastering the Art of Online Retail."
So Angela, tell us, what are some of the most
recent trends happening in the
e-commerce space right now.
I'd say that some the most recent
trends are that
the consumer path to purchase has gotten a lot more complex over the past several years.
Consumers are now able to research
products online,
comparison shop, they can read reviews
watch demo videos...
The buzzword you hear a lot now is "omni channel" consumer experiences.
Marketers tend to think of consumer experiences
siloed within their channels- very specific.
So if it's a web experience, or in-store
experience, or
whether they're talking to a brand
manager via social media.
And consumers don't think like marketers
do.
Consumers don't think in those silos.
They just think of your brand versus the
other brand and whether
they had a good experience with your
brand or not.
And more often than not, consumers are
expecting a consistent experience
across all those channels, and the ability
to shop anywhere anytime.
What about in the social sphere? What advice do you have there?
I think that marketers really need to
take a step back, and kinda' "put their
consumer hat on" for a minute.
And think about the
consumers' journey across all these
various platforms,
and make sure that they're connecting with those consumers in a meaningful way,
across all those various touch-points. I don't
think that a lot of brands understand
the value of
just kinda' owning their brand presence
and owning their brand name on
across all these platforms, you know? There's millions of users on all these
[social] platforms every day, and they're looking for your brand! And if you're not there
with an official brand presence, someone else might step in and create a fan page
or a slanderous page
imitating your brand. You need to be there
to make sure that you're owning
your brand messaging and
connecting with your consumers where
they are.
Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, etc.,
these sites are all really great for
showing off products especially;
various images of them, videos of them being used
in creative, cool ways... and these [social] assets can actually
rank in the search engine results. So not only would be dominating your branded search results [with optimized assets],
but you're also able to dominate the
non-branded searcher results, and connecting
with consumers before they have
necessarily made their brand decision.
Ok. And it's finally the year
of mobile! We've been waiting and talking, but it's finally here, isn't it?
so mobile has become very real, very big.
The usage is increasing constantly... What
about in e-commerce?  What do you see there?
Again, I think it's about that
consistent experience
across whatever channel
your consumers are on. So,
whether they're on a desktop or their mobile
device, they need to find
the information on your site. I can't tell
you how frustrating it is for me as a
user, I go on to mobile site,
it's supposed to be "mobile friendly", but it's
completely lacking the content from the
desktop site that I saw earlier,
or, you know, I can't access the things that
I saved in my shopping cart
because it's an inconsistent
experience across the two platforms.
So, I think that that's something a lot of
e-commerce sites still need to work on.
Google even stands by that consistency. Google now officially recommends
responsive design for websites.
Which I know is really intimidating to
people. They don't want to do whatever
Google says at the drop of a hat. But really, it
does make sense to plan
for the future of your website to maybe look
at responsive design because
it's going to save you money on website
edits and maintenance,
it's going to help save you time and frustration
with your analytics and tracking.
And I think it's just going to help solidify
that consistent user experience.
And, just,
make the job easier. (laughs)
Excellent. For our last piece, e-Retail. 
So obviously we're covering some ground here.
We've got social, mobile, what about the e-Retail space? What
should marketers be doing there? 
Well, I think especially with consumer packaged goods brands
there's a lot of brands that
it's not worth it for them to sell [their products directly]  on their own website,
the cost of the goods is just too low of a price
point. So, a lot of them will have
a nice website that has all the product
information, but then when you actually
go to make the purchase they're
driving traffic toward
these e-Retailers, like Amazon or CVS...
I think it's important to note that
Amazon had, I think over $61 billon
in sales 2012, so they are
basically like the Google of e-Retailers!
And so it's important for you to
own your brand presence on Amazon as well. 
You know, a lot of people aren't
starting [their search] on your brand website - no matter how nice you make it.
They're starting their search on Amazon.com
because they have the Prime Membership with free shipping
and whatever perks. So, they're already on Amazon. So you have to make sure that you're
owning your presence on Amazon. 
I see a lot of product pages [on Amazon] with
lousy pictures,
really thin, bad [product] descriptions, as and a result
you're not ranking for your own
products!  These third-party resellers
that you don't control are making more
money off of your products than you are
on these 3rd party e-Retailer sites.
Alright. So, are you ready to make us laugh?
(laughing) It's time for - Coffee with Catalyst
Comedy Corner!
Alright, Angela! So, it's joke time.
Did you come prepared? 
Yes, actually I did!
I knew you were gonna' do this to me, so I actually went on my Facebook page
and I asked my friends for some suggestions
for a joke for you.
Really? Wow!
Yes, crowd-sourcing at its finest. 
There you go!
Social media works!
Practice what you preach.
Yes! (Laughs) So,
the joke I chose was actually from
a coworker of ours, Kate Curtis.
Thanks, Kate! It's an industry-specific joke
so I thought it would be really great
to share with you.
That is impressive.
Yes. Are you ready?
"What do you call the number times an SEO
specialist
can jump on a trampoline?" 
It's really an SEO joke, I'm impressed.
umm. I haven't any idea.
"Their BOUNCE RATE!"
(laughter)
Well, the fact that it's an SEO joke,
I give you thumbs-up for that, at least.
Thank you.
Not bad. Not bad at all. Thanks, Angela.
I really appreciate you being here today. And thank you everyone. We hope to see you next time.
Join us next time for another edition of
Coffee with Catalyst.
Right here CatalystSearchMarketing.com.
