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Tis officially the season! With Thanksgiving nearly upon us, to be followed immediately by Black Friday, the traditional kick-off to the holiday shopping season is here and it should be a great one for savvy shoppers and retailers alike. But it’s not about one day standing-in-line-for-deals anymore. It’s a full five-day “Black-Cyber Weekend” of shopping deals and buying sprees.

The term “Black Friday” has come to be synonymous with retail pricing deals (fun side note: the term “Black Friday” was first used in Philadelphia by police officers, as a descriptor for the intense traffic which occurred on the big shopping day after Thanksgiving) and now extends beyond the single day after Thanksgiving. Beginning on Thursday -- Thanksgiving Day -- and continuing through the following (Cyber) Monday, retailers now offer shoppers incredible pricing deals and shopping steals around the clock for five straight days. In fact, retailers have now co-opted the term “Black Friday” for Summer sales events, as witnessed by Google Search queries this past July:



Also, look at how queries stay at a peak throughout the holiday weekend -- now starting on Thanksgiving Day -- for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, coupons, shopping deals and more…



The great news for retailers this week? It’s not too late to ensure that your online campaigns are ready for the “Black Friday - Cyber Monday” rush and beyond. Here are some pointers to keep in mind:

Keep Your Budgets Open Starting On Thanksgiving Day. Google queries related to shopping are going to start increasing on Thanksgiving Day this year. Make sure your Search plans are ready to handle the volume and convert those queries to sales. All day.

Think beyond Black Friday. Make sure you’re ready for shoppers looking for deals beyond Black Friday--tout your specials and deals from Thursday through Monday. As people get back to the office on Monday and look to buy the gifts they couldn’t snag over the weekend, make sure you’re offering new incentives to drive them to purchase from you.

Remember that Mobile matters. Today’s research cycle doesn’t stop when shoppers leave their homes. People are searching, using Google Shopper and Near me Now to comparison shop and find what they are looking for while on the go. Make sure your online campaigns are opted in to show on mobile devices, and that your mobile website is ready for prime time.

Make the Online to Store connection seamless. Shoppers don’t make the same distinction between online shopping and in-store shopping that existed 10 years ago -- so make sure that you are encouraging shoppers on your website to visit your store, and shoppers in your store to visit your website. The multi-channel connection is relatively seamless and you need to be sure that your message and incentives are consistent across channels, and that shoppers can find what they’re looking for when they’re looking for it.

Buckle Up and get ready to start the Holiday Shopping season in full this week! But make sure to spend time with family and friends this holiday season. Have a Happy Thanksgiving and Super-Cyber-Black- Friday- Holiday- Monday- Weekend!

Posted by Dan Schock, Retail Industry Director, Google Retail Team
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Holiday 2010: eReader fever is sweeping the nation… again. With Kindle securing the title of “most gifted item” in Amazon’s history during holiday 2009, it’s no surprise that eReaders are topping wish lists again this year. As we head into the holiday season, eReaders are ever more appealing - whether you’re planning to give or hoping to receive. New features, lower price points and vibrant color screens are just some of the things enticing shoppers to spring for their first eReader. Or maybe even an upgrade.


While device enhancements and competitive pricing may be piquing the interest of consumers, consider consumer interest far from peaked. A look at search trends shows that searches for eReader devices are growing at an astounding rate. The combination of new device launches and holiday popularity has truly propelled the category upward. “What kind of growth are we talking?” you ask. The simple answer: nearly 150% year over year. To put that in context, eReaders searches are greater now than they were the week before Christmas 2009.



The below graph shows the scale at which eReaders queries have grown since the original Kindle launched in 2007. As the holidays approach and new models are announced, curious consumers increasingly turn to Google to research these devices.











































Exactly three years after the release of the original Kindle, the question plaguing consumers isn’t necessarily “Should I buy an eReader?” but “Which eReader should I buy?” A recent study conducted by Google and OTX reveals that 70% of eReader shoppers are uncertain about which brand of eReader they are going to purchase. Now, more than ever, consumers are turning to ratings and reviews to help guide their decisions. Looking at Google Insights for Search, we can see how the influx of new models has had an impact on shopping behavior. Search terms such as “eReader reviews” and “best eReader” are on the rise.



























New models of eReaders are creating consumer excitement, awareness and curiosity. Consumers are searching to learn more about reviews, product features and user experiences. This type of consumer engagement is what drives the “top holiday gifts” to the top. So, with so many options, which eReader will you choose this holiday season?



Posted by Becky Chilowicz, Google Retail Team
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The way we shop for fashion is different from how we buy cameras—especially online. With fashion, reviews and specs are less important; fashion shopping is about discovering something that fits your taste and feels right. The web works well for buying cameras and other hard goods but for soft goods, such as clothing and accessories, it’s not the same as shopping in a store.


What’s more, the market for soft goods online is growing tremendously. A year and half ago, our team (which at the time was part of Like.com) started to wonder if we could create a better experience for people to shop online. Our team consists of PhDs in computer science with an emphasis on machine learning and computer vision, along with fashion designers and stylists—we jokingly called ourselves the computer nerds and fashion nerds (and a few of us were both). So, we set out to create a new way to browse, discover and shop for soft goods online.



Today, we’re excited to share with you our first step towards realizing this goal. It’s called Boutiques.com: a personalized shopping experience that lets you find and discover fashion goods, by creating your own curated boutique or through a collection of boutiques curated by taste-makers—celebrities, stylists, designers and fashion bloggers. Boutiques uses computer vision and machine learning technology to visually analyze your taste and match it to items you would like.

































In fashion, there are lots of choices. If there are, say, 500,000 items in a store, that means there are literally billions of different combinations of outfits you can make with those items. How do you sort through all of this? This site had to be a collaboration.



First we partnered with taste-makers of all types. We asked them not just to curate 10-50 great items they loved, but also to teach our site their style and taste. They did this by telling us what colors, patterns, brands and silhouettes they loved and they hated. They took a visual quiz that taught the site to understand their style genre: Classic, Boho, Edgy, etc. Our machine learning algorithms use this information to enable you to shop all of the inventory in the style of that taste-maker, on top of the 50 items they’ve hand-curated.



These days, bloggers, stylists and everyday fashionistas are expressing their sense of style online. We invited them to create boutiques so people could shop their diverse styles. But you have a unique and independent style too, so Boutiques also lets you build your own personalized boutique and get recommendations of products that match your taste.



In addition to all this, Boutiques offers a variety of features to search and discover merchandise including:



Advanced search filters - Filter by genre, silhouette, pattern, color families and sizes.






















































Inspiration photos - Try a search for [yellow pumps] and you’ll see matching outfit ideas to the right of the search results. We feature images from streetstyle sites, and collage and styling sites to provide you with the online equivalent of styled mannequins to give you inspiration.



Complete the Look - Ever wonder what to pair with that dress? Our fashion designers wrote hundreds of style rules—like “heavily patterned handbags don’t tend to go with heavily patterned dresses”—that we used to develop a tool to suggest items that match.



Visual search - Sometimes you love an item but not in a particular color. We analyze the photograph of an item for its color, shape and pattern and try to help you find visually similar items.



Boutiques on your tablet - Download our iPad application, lean back and move through inventory as if you were flipping through clothes on a rack at the store.



You can start shopping now at Boutiques.com. At this time, Boutiques is only available in the U.S. and only for women’s fashion, but we plan to expand in the future. Tell us what you think on our feedback form. And if you’re a designer, stylist, celebrity or retailer and want to participate on Boutiques.com, drop us a line.



Cross-posted from Official Google Blog: Munjal Shah, Product Management Director



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In recent years, shoppers have been conditioned to look for deals when shopping. We've asked consumers three years in a row about what promotions and offers they want for holiday, and it hasn’t changed much over time. Consumers are focused on sales, discounts and free shipping. And as consumers are more focused on immediate gratification rebates have decreased in importance.



















Source: Google/Ipsos OTX Consumer Holiday Shopping Intentions Study, September 2010

This is reinforced by what we see people searching for. Searches for 'printable coupons' are currently up by 20% over last year, Searches for ‘bogo’ (short for ‘buy one get one free’) are currently up by 10% over last year.

Offering consumers some sort of value or discount is expected. Make sure to message your offers, free shipping and other value to your consumers through your advertising and your websites. Let the consumer know they are getting a good deal!

Posted by Heidi Spector, Google Retail Team

Check out Google's Holiday Marketing Central, www.google.com/thinkholiday, where you’ll be privy to a wealth of exclusive information on consumer shopping behavior, hot products and the latest holiday insights from Google!
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When we announced Google’s local shopping mobile alpha this past March, we started with a simple goal of making it as easy to search for products in nearby stores as it is to shop online. Our vision was simple: partner with retailers to organize all of the world’s local product information. The mobile alpha began with a small group of innovative retail partners. Over the past six months, we have been excited with the reception of local availability on mobile and in product extension ads.

Today, we are pleased to announce the launch of local availability results in Google Product Search on desktop. Search for a product and click on the “nearby stores” label, and you can easily find a list of stores to call to check availability, and in many cases, information about whether the product is in stock nearby.



We have partnered with over 70 retail brands and launched over 35, including Williams-Sonoma, Guitar Center, and Office Depot. Through these partnerships, shoppers can now easily and quickly check on the local availability of 4 billion items in local stores. John Koryl, Senior Vice-President of eCommerce Marketing & Analytics at Williams-Sonoma, Inc., describes the value of this partnership to their customers:

"We want our customers to be able to shop whenever and wherever they choose. As a large multi-channel retailer, Williams-Sonoma, Inc., partnered with Google to show our customers the breadth and depth of our in-store product assortment in addition to the online inventory we have been sharing with Google for years. Local availability provides exceptional, local-level product inventory data, store directions and phone numbers. The key is providing our customers with options and Google local availability does exactly that.”

In addition to partnering directly with retailers, we’re also excited to announce that we have partnered with several leading retail software vendors – including JDA, Epicor, and Oracle – to create special adapters that make it even easier for interested retailers to participate. Wayne Usie, Senior Vice-President for Retail at JDA, describes the impact of this feature for retailers:

“JDA is pleased to be among the first companies to implement a tool that allows our customers to share with Google their individual store, product and inventory availability as a part of Google’s ‘local availability’ feature. When shoppers can quickly identify specific product information by store location, it not only leads to a simpler, more productive shopping experience, but can also deliver increased foot traffic and sales for retailers.”

If you’re interested in learning more, please visit our information page. If you use retail software from JDA, Epicor, or Oracle, you can work directly with your company representative to easily and securely submit your local product data to Google. For smaller retailers, watch this space; we’re exploring simple, easy-to-use solutions and look forward to updating you soon.

Posted by Paul Lee, Senior Product Manager, Google Product Search Team
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Event Date: November 16, 2010 at 02:00 PM East/12:00PM Central/11AM Pacific.

Register here.

How do you use online video to market your products online? If you’re Orabrush, a company founded by a dentist to sell a bad-breath fighting tongue brush, you might hire Jeffrey Harmon to build a campaign around a YouTube video. Orabrush’s first video cost $500 and has since earned the company over 13 million views, setting it on the path as an innovator in online video marketing. In addition to its online store, the company now has retail presence in bricks-and-mortar stores and recently hired a chief executive from P&G.

Join this live Webcast with AdAge to hear Jeffrey Harmon and Abe Neiderhauser share their thoughts about what works and what doesn’t with online video advertising.

Posted by Heidi Spector, Google Retail Team
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If you talk to most search engine marketers about how to most effectively control performance, they are likely to talk about 4 main levers of control. These levers most likely are (in no particular order of importance):
  • Keywords
  • Cost per Click (CPC)
  • Ad Text
  • Landing Pages
Marketers can evaluate each of these variables over time (using data) to figure out the most effective combination that will provide the most efficient (and scalable) results. Some sophisticated marketers also tinker with “day-parting” but I wouldn’t put this in the mainstream of variables as this often limits scale in the goal for effiicency.

It’s also true that a number of retailers use geo-targeting in Adwords - but largely for “Online to Store” testing, in-store promotions, new store openings, or something similar. And while I’m probably most passionate about Retailers under-valuing their SEM efforts from the lack of inclusion of brick-and-mortar store benefit -- I also think that traditional retail SEM can be enhanced through the use of geo-targeting.

It’s for these two reasons that I think a key trend in 2011 Retail SEM is going to be geo-targeting. Why not get a head start on this and begin implementing some levers during your Holiday 2010 initiatives?

Recently, we’ve worked with retailers who are looking to grow top-line e-commerce sales but keep marketing efficiency constant. We recommended taking a more local approach (City or State) to SEM rather than their traditional “nation-wide” view. While this definitely takes a bit more elbow-grease to execute, we’ve seen great results.

As an example, when analyzing conversion rate and average order value, we saw that one particular retailer was perfoming 40% better in one city (say, Washington DC) over the national average, yet their MAX CPC’s were set at the same value nationwide. While the actual CPC may vary in each city - the max CPC set by the advertiser, theoretically should be 40% higher than the national average. By bidding more aggressively in areas where we knew conversion rates (or average order values) were higher - we could meet the objective of growing volume but keeping ROI the same.

After seeing this data, we picked a small group of markets (5-10) to test the theory out. We created separate bids and budgets for these high-performing areas and ran campaigns for two weeks to see if the increased bids did in fact grow volume while keeping ROI the same. We were not surprised when our hypothesis came true as we grew revenue a similar ROI. We could simultaneously lower MAX CPCs in poor converting areas (or low AOV) - but decided to wait to do this for the next round of testing.

A few tips on this type of testing based on our experience:
  • Identify good geographic areas of testing: look at Conversion Tracking and/or sales data broken out by state of city and identify top performing areas; cross reference that with Google Insights for Search to see which states or cities index high for specific categories or keywords and look at front-end metrics such as clicks or CTR to see which categories or important products resonate best with consumers.
  • Choose a category / top volume keywords that historically convert well - and be sure to break this out with it’s own budget and bids.
  • Make sure to compare similar products/keywords nationally vs market, rather than looking at the account in aggregate.
  • Be sure to mirror settings from the national campaigns in your newly formed campaigns (e.g. include site-links, product extensions etc. in your geo-targeted campaigns)
  • Be aware of any budget caps that may limit the potential of the test.
  • Start small (5-10 markets) - Iterate, test, and expand.
  • Try testing call-outs of city names in the ad copy to see how CTR is effected.
  • In our experience it’s probably better not to exclude test markets from the national campaign - especially if you are increasing max CPC of the locally targeted ones.
  • Try expanding local reach by geo-targeting with Display to add in another layer/medium for relevant presence.

Posted by Brett Goffin, Google Retail Team
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