Salmat Pre-Shop® News | August 2008

Welcome to the August issue of Salmat Digital's Pre-Shop® News.

July was another record month for us and for retailers online in general. We received over 1.2 million visits to Lasoo in July, each visitor staying for an average of nine minutes to browse product offers from participating retailers. The Lasoo pre-shopper is now the largest, most targeted and relevant audience for Australian retailers. They are there for one reason only - to see your offers.

Dynamic Catalogue, our feature-rich and search engine-optimised catalogue viewing solution for your own site, also had a record month. In July Dynamic Catalogue was hosting and serving approximately half of all national retailer catalogues viewed online. More importantly, more people were finding retailers’ sites from their product-level searches. This capability, along with our searching, product alerts, wish lists and more, is unique to Dynamic Catalogue.

Please enjoy the rest of the newsletter.


Kind regards

Paul Marshall
Executive Director
Salmat Digital

Using search for strategic planning

The most successful online marketers today will tell you that search is a key factor in setting strategy. It can be used to understand the market, customers and competitors.

Comprehensive analysis of keywords as they relate to your business and its overall place in the market is crucial for success.

It is important to have a grasp of which keywords are the most popular and relevant for your brand in order to identify opportunities. You can then use tracking within your site to identify the visitors who are interacting with these keywords (their demographics). It’s also a good idea to have a firm idea of the demographics of referring sites. This information will play a major part in developing future marketing campaigns.

The five key rules of a retailer's online strategy

Ask any successful marketer and they will tell you that the Internet has never been more important in developing and implementing a successful marketing campaign. Although the fine points will vary from brand to brand, there are five key rules that will hold true for most businesses when developing an online strategy.

1. Have an online presence... and make sure it can be discovered through relevant search. Some marketers are still taking a "wait and see" approach with the Internet and unfortunately they are missing out. A recent report by Nielsen Online found that almost 60% of shoppers research potential purchases online before visiting stores. More importantly, you are not learning the skills required to effectively communicate via this medium. Having an online site that can be found by people who are searching on Google, for example, does not help you attract more customers. Make sure your site can be found at a granular level (that is, the products you sell) because this is what people are searching for.

2. Make it meaningful. Make sure your website presents up-to-date, correct information such as current offers, available stock, store locations, telephone numbers and trading hours. If a potential customer has one frustrating experience with your website, there is no guarantee they will ever be back.

3. Your site is not enough. Regardless of the strength of your brand or the marketing spend you put into it, only a small number of consumers are going to come directly to your website. Shoppers today start in search engines or pre-shop sites such as Lasoo. 87% of them are looking for products (eg nappies) or brands (eg Huggies). They are not looking for your retailer brand. If your offers are discoverable in these environments then you will see a much greater audience share, who will them come into your store. Studies have found that multi-channel shoppers spend up to 10 times more and have greater brand loyalty than those who use a single channel to shop.

4. Maintain a database. An electronic database of your customers is one of the most effective yet inexpensive tools in your arsenal. At the very least you need to capture email addresses, however the more information they are willing to share with you the more targeted you can make your electronic communications. Electronic direct mails (EDMs) and brand newsletters are a key way of maintaining a relationship with your customer base and finding out what changes and improvements they would like to see with your brand. But keep it relevant to them.

5. Keep track. To make the most of your online activity you need to keep track of it. Luckily, online tracking is very precise and highly customisable. Good tracking software will show you everything from the very general (the number of unique visitors to your website) right through to the very specific (how your visitors navigated through the site, how they found it and so on). All of this will help you to understand your customers, their wants and their needs like never before.

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Sound bites…


58% of respondents to a recent survey in the US said that if they had to choose just one method of researching their purchases, it would be the Internet.

- Nielsen Online