Search Engine Marketing

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Small businesses benefiting from "offline conversion"

A new survey has shed some light on how search engines can drive offline purchases.

The study from Nielsen/Netratings and WebVisible found that many small businesses were benefiting from "offline conversion" – when a consumer shops online and purchases offline.

Of the almost 3,000 internet users questioned, 70 per cent said that they had used search engines such as Google or Yahoo! Search to find a local service, 46 per cent of them in the last 90 days.

When consumers had found a local service, 68 per cent of them said that they would use the phone number on the website to make contact, while 16 per cent said that they would make contact using the email address on the website. Around 35 per cent would keep the phone number to use again in the future.

The most commonly searched-for services were medical (36 per cent), automotive (22 per cent) and home or office repair (26 per cent), with half of searchers likely to click on sponsored links.

"Consumers searching Google for a local service vendor shop very differently from those in e-retail on Amazon or eBay where a transaction occurs online," said WebVisible CEO, Kirsten Mangers.

"Ultimately, it's targeted advertising driving traffic to a quality website that is the recipe for getting my phone to ring if I'm a carpet cleaner, attorney or dentist."


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