Websites

Is your ecommerce website working hard enough for you? Is it really sweating? You know smartphones and tablets are more important than they've ever been - but is your site working on those platforms?

Today, mobility is the way to go. The explosion of smartphones and tablets means that your current and potential customers are just as likely to be accessing your ecommerce website from their mobile devices as from a traditional desktop or laptop computer.

Is your website, and more importantly your online store, meeting this growing demand for mobile accessibility?

Our buying habits have shifted - I know mine have! 64% of smartphone users are now using their mobile phones to shop online¹ , with worldwide mobile payment transactions surpassing $171 billion in 2012, up 62% from $106 million last year ².

Being without a mobile site isn't really an option any longer for online retailers.

It is time to revisit your ecommerce strategy to better support the smartphone and tablet explosion. Is your current website and online store equipped for the Responsive Revolution?

Responsive web design is aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience on a wide range of devices.  A responsive website should offer easy reading, navigation and conversion for the user with a minimum of resizing and scrolling 

This means it works for everyone on every device, from desktop and tablet to mobile phones, all on one URL.

As with anything there's a down side: it costs money…… but what is the real cost? You might be losing out by not have a responsive website as, after all:

• Consumers are 51% more likely to purchase from retailers that have a mobile specific website - we all know how frustrating it is to zoom and drag a screen around to use a site!
• 57% of consumers will not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site
• 40% of consumers will go to a competitor’s site after a poor mobile experience³. We’ve all done it!
• Google also recommends a responsive website - if you create great content and present it in the most user friendly way, it will help in your Google page rankings

Additionally you will find you're already receiving mobile visitors - they're coming to your site anyway, and probably having a terrible time using it!  

That's the real cost.

So now is the time to rethink your ecommerce website strategy with the mobile user in mind.  The goal is simple: make your website work harder (or sweat more!) by making it easy for your customers to use, no matter what device they are on. If you would like some help achieving this goal, please let SilverDisc know ...

What is the Panda update?

Why?

How To Avoid Panda Problems With Your AdSense

Don't Make The Page Useless

Place Content Before Ads

Avoid Overdoing The Ads

This article is part one of a three part series:

Part 1: Is AdSense Right For You?

Part 2: Managing The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (You Are Here!)

Part 3: Panda Problems: Laying Out Your Website To Avoid Panda Attack

Once you're set up with AdSense you'll soon want to get a firm grip on the reins of the beast. You're probably obsessively checking the ads on your site to see if they're working, and just what kind of ads Google think are appropriate to show on your site.

Before we begin we should point out the above approach isn't the most helpful way to work out just what's being shown. While we advocate a proactive stance on managing what ads appear on your site there's so many other factors (such as location and personalisation) which make this approach the least effective way to keep an eye on things. Better ways are to use the ad review centre or ask your community for their thoughts on the adverts.

Managing your ads through AdSense is easy and you're likely to want to do it for a number of reasons:

1. You want ads to fit your audience (The Good)

2. You want to avoid advertising competitors (The Bad)

3. You want to keep out low quality ads (The Ugly)

Why would you want to do any of these things? Well, you want ads which fit your audience because if the ads do fit your audience, they're more likely to click - meaning (some) cash for you!  The flip side of this is you want to keep out low quality ads to avoid reducing your CTR. You also want to keep your site free of crappy "One weird trick" or "One tip for a flat belly" ads which could bring your entire site into disrepute. Finally, and quite simply, you don't want to advertise competitors on your website.

Get Your Ads Audience Fit

To get a rough fit for ads and your audience, head over to the "Allow & Block ads" tab in Google AdSense and click "General Categories"

Here you will see a ton of categories which you can allow and block with the slider on the left hand-side.

If you already know your audience, you can make sure that only certain categories appear to your visitors - hopefully improving certain click through rates for your site. Don't underestimate the ability for a site to advertise across visitors’ interests however, it's not as simple as showing a tech ad because you run a tech site; these people drive, eat, insure and impulse purchase as much as the next person. 

If you're unsure about your audience we suggest you run all AdSense categories to begin with.

From the General Categories view you can see the % of ad impressions and earnings - by looking at these you can see what earns you the most, and what takes up the most impressions in your inventory.

To improve this in the future you could block underperforming categories - categories which serve a large number of ad impressions, but don't provide you with at least an equal percentage of your clicks. It's usually best to investigate any of these categories by looking at the sub categories and working out where the "drop" is. 

Ideally, by blocking (sub)categories which under-perform you will populate your site with more ads from better performing categories. Keep track month-to-month and see what improvements come from you actions. It's also worth noting that there is a limit of 50 blocked categories and sub-categories, so choose what you block wisely.

One Tip For Super Sensitive Categories 

In addition to the general categories you'll want to take a look at the "sensitive" categories. This includes sections which are more likely to produce offensive and, to be honest, crap, ads. The sensitive ads categories include things like Dating, Drugs & Supplements, Get Rich Quick, Sex, Religion, Weight Loss and even Black Magic - i.e. the kind of thing you wouldn't necessarily talk about at the dinner table with your grandmother.

These are all set to "blocked" by default, but it's worth checking if you can unblock any of them if they fit with your target market. Once you've done this, you're set up, right? No more rubbish ads?

Not quite. The content network which AdSense runs from is simply gigantic.

There's no way Google is going to manage this for you, so you (and they) have to trust that advertisers are honest about what their ads are about.

And, while you may block the Dating category on your website, if a wiley advertiser wants to pretend that in fact their advert for "Local Ladies Of Unsure Virtue In Your Area" is indeed about investment, gardening or any of your un-blocked categories there's really nothing stopping them.

That is, there's nothing stopping them except you (and the deterrent of being penalised by Google if they get caught).

Ad Blocking In Google AdSense

The main ways to stop poor advertisers, or a competitor, from advertising on your site are by: 

1. Blocking URLS

2. Blocking AdWords Accounts

3. Blocking Networks

All of these require vigilance and keeping an eye on the AdSense on your site. You can do this by hanging around on your site enough to see AdSense (fairly ineffective, but can catch the big problems) or using the ads review centre (good for catching the smaller issues).

Blocking URLS

Blocking URLs is the best way of dealing with competitors. You know their URLs so you can simply add the URLs to the URL block list to stop any ads showing. Bear in mind however that they may use separate domains for landing pages - so you'll still have to keep an eye out!

If you want to block everything from the domain “example.com” this is all you need to put in the URL field - this will catch:

example.com

www.example.com

example.com/page

www.example.com/page

subdomain.example.com

If you'd like to just on a more specific level, you merely need to be more specific. Full details here can be found here.

If you're running your own advertising on the content network, you may want to block your own website from appearing on the page - after all, you needn't advertise your own site to those already on it.

Blocking Accounts

One of the best ways to keep an eye on the ads which AdSense serves  to your site is to use the Ads Review Centre. This shows you a selection of the advertisers and the ads they are showing. You can scroll through the lists to see ads displaying and, most importantly, block individual ads and individual AdWords accounts.

To block individual ads, just click the red block symbol.

To block whole AdWords accounts, use the cog which appears when you hover over the questionable ad.

If you've made a mistake, or you want to review blocked AdWords accounts you need to view the "settings" page (which allows you to unblock advertisers) and to review individual blocked ads you should look at the "blocked" page.

By default AdSense accounts are set to display all ads without review. You can, if you have time, set ads to "hold" until you've reviewed them. This can be a time consuming and expensive - although you are guaranteed agreeable ads on your site. For the most part we recommend letting AdSense do its thing.

Blocking networks

Networks are the partners which Google has joined up with to provide ads. These are usually large ad buying agencies (many of which you'll recognise). Most of the time you'll find that networks play along nicely, however there are occasions that you'll want to turn ad networks off these could be:

1. Serving Incorrect Region/Language Specific Ads: While many networks are quite clever with their location targeting you will occasionally find a network making a mistake - for example, serving German language ads on your UK site. Many networks are broken into regions (for example: AOL: Advertising.com (JP), AOL: Advertising.com (UK) and AOL: Advertising.com (US)) and turning off ads from certain regions can fix this problem.

2. Consistently Poor Ads: It is fairly rare, but it does happen. We know that even massive companies aren't infallible. If you find a network constantly providing poor quality ads, your best bet is to just switch them off - this tends to be less of a headache than hunting down individual ads they may be serving. 

You can turn any individual network on or off in the "Ad networks" tab under "Allow & block ads" with the slider. Because these advertisers compete for the inventory of your site it's better to have as many networks activated as possible - the more competition there is, the higher the price will be pushed.

What Now?

You're probably pretty set up for the time being - but it's a good idea to keep your eye on the ads and look for small ways in which you can improve the quality and relevance of ads served. Finding a little time each day to have a look at the ad review centre, or responding to community requests to get rid of certain types of ad can improve the overall quality of your ads and in turn the first impression your site gives.

Next: Panda Problems!

When the World Wide Web first started out websites were generally only viewed on huge desktop PCs with heavy CRT monitors. At the time these monitors had comparably low resolutions to what we have today. The most common resolutions were 640x480 and 800x600, and eventually this worked its way up to 1024x768 which became the standard size considered when designing websites.

But it's just not that simple any more:

 “By the end of 2013, it is anticipated there will be 44 million smartphone connections in the UK, up from 36 million in 2012. This means that over 50% of adults in the UK will own a smartphone” (Portio Research, January 2013).

With the evolution of smart phones and tablet devices the way people access the internet has changed. We should no longer cater solely for desktop (i.e. keyboard, mouse and a big screen) web browsing. A website designed for a 1024 x 768 screen means people viewing the site on a mobile have to constantly pinch, zoom and scroll around to get what they need from the site.

An Early Solution – Separate Domains

An early solution to the problem was to build separate websites for mobile devices, usually under the 'm' or 'mobile' sub domains of the main site. This normally means double the development and double the maintenance time needed to keep both sites up to date. With the rapid growth of the tablet market, questions arise whether tablet users should see a ‘full’ website or the mobile version.

A Better Way – Mobile First Responsive Websites

An alternative solution is to create a responsive website using the ‘Mobile First’ approach. With this approach you design and create one website to display all content on a mobile device with limited resolutions and reduced capabilities, like no Flash or JavaScript, then through the use of progressive enhancement techniques, such as using CSS3 media queries, change how the content is displayed to be more appropriate to the device viewing the website. Media queries allow the loading of different CSS files based on device resolutions, giving you the opportunity to change the sizes of different elements on your website. 

Mobile phones are generally subject to slower connection speeds than ADSL or cable and can also be restricted by a data contract limiting monthly bandwidth usage. There are two problems when it comes to designing a website for desktops and mobiles – load times and pictures! Mobile visitors will not appreciate your site if it's slow and uses up a lot of a data allowance on big pictures. But, if you only have small images then people visiting your website on a desktop are going to be disappointed. So what’s a developer to do? A great idea is to use mobile first responsive website images.

Using JavaScript and multiple copies of an image in different sizes means you can display the smallest image to all devices; if a bigger screen is detected the image can be replaced with its larger counterpart. Using JavaScript image tags means images can be changed after the page has loaded and people probably won’t even notice you slotting it in. For example here is our original image. It’s 51KB:

And here are the images resized for all devices:

Image Displayed on Desktop – files/styles/list_desktop/image1.jpg (26KB)

Image Displayed on Tablets – files/styles/list_tablet/image1.jpg (16KB)

Image Displayed on Mobiles - files/styles/list_mobile/image1.jpg (14KB)

Remember, it’s not unusual for a web page to contain 50 or more images. If the original files were used the mobile would have to download around two and a half megabytes of information! Displaying the images created for desktop means the download would be over one megabyte, but with the images optimized for mobile saving it’s only 700KB. Over half a megabyte of someone’s precious data limit is saved and the speed of loading increases by doing this. You can see the benefits of progressively enhancing images on your site - but this is just one of the tools in our toolbox for providing the best possible user experience!

What The Future May Bring

Over the next few years it’s likely that we’ll see devices getting both smaller and bigger. We might see head mounted computers, like Google's "Project Glass", or something like an “iGlass/iPatch” from Apple! Then the other extreme is TV with its sizes, screen resolutions and capabilities ever-expanding - and of course these will be connected to the web. How are we going to optimize for screens of vast resolutions designed to be viewed from a distance? Consideration of how content is presented to the viewer across multiple devices will become an essential requirement - responsive web design is one possible solution for us to overcome these challenges.

AdSense, Google's display advertising platform, has a lot going for it, from the vast pool of advertisers it attracts to its excellent tracking and ease of set-up. 

You may have some concerns though. What about all those blogs with the terrible "one tip for a flat belly" ads running on them? Will your site immediately come to resemble one of those? Or worse, what if you get it right, but you've set up your ad templates in a way which sees you penalised by Google's recent Panda updates? Your hard-fought rankings could be savaged.

Never fear though, we're on hand to offer advice and guidance as to what you need to consider before belly-flopping into the world of AdSense! 

This article is part one of a three part series:

Part 1: Is AdSense Right For You? (You Are Here!)

Part 2: Managing The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Part 3: Panda Problems: Laying Out Your Website To Avoid Panda Attack

How Does AdSense Work?

Google AdSense works by you, the ‘publisher’, placing a small snippet of code on your website to display any ads which AdSense wishes to deliver to your page. A pool of advertisers bid for these ad spaces on your, and others’, website. This collection of websites is known as the Google Display Network. The higher the quality of the publisher's website, and the tougher the competition for placement on that website, the higher the cost is to the advertiser and the more profit to be shared between the publisher and Google. Ads are placed on a publisher’s site based on page content and general site affinity - as well as things like the visitor's search history.

When a visitor to your site clicks on an ad you get paid, Google gets paid and hopefully the advertiser gets a customer. Sounds like winners all round surely? Yes, most of the time but there are some drawbacks  - we'll deal with these in the Limitations of AdSense section below.

Is AdSense Right For You?

Before you begin you need to know whether AdSense is an advertising solution that works for your website. There are two main types of websites out there – ‘ecommerce’ sites which directly sell services and goods, and ‘content’ websites such as blogs, forums and social sites.

If you run a content website you should feel confident that AdSense is for you. Why? Because you don't have another revenue stream to interrupt. AdSense is good for websites which don't have a direct way of making money through a product or service on offer.

In that case your consideration should not be so much whether display advertising is best for your website, but more whether AdSense display advertising is the best option for you: in most cases it will be at the very least a happy medium. Because of the sheer size of the AdSense network there's almost no limit to the kinds of niches which AdSense can find relevant ads for. Even if your direct ad sales pay better and are more directly relevant to your visitors, AdSense is a handy tool to fall back on for remnant or backfill campaigns (i.e. the impressions that remain once your premium advertisers have had their share).

However, if you do have a product to sell, or some other means of converting visitors into cash, then AdSense probably isn't for you.

Why You Shouldn't Use AdSense (Or Any Advertising) On Your Ecommerce Site

With an ecommerce site you're likely to have built your site as a funnel from the first landing page (e.g. via PPC, organic or direct traffic) through to your checkout/conversion page. You have probably spent a great deal of time working out what's the smoothest, quickest way to turn a fresh visitor into a customer. Sticking an ad on the page is like putting a "diversion" sign on the 100m track.

Every AdSense placement is an attempt to distract visitors from your website to their product page and into their funnel - and you certainly don't want that.

There's even a fair chance that your competitors are running AdSense campaigns which, as you're in the same industry, will have a great deal of relevancy to your site and your customers. You wouldn't want to advertise your competitors' products next to your own would you?

If that hasn't dissuaded you from running AdSense on an ecommerce site (or you have a hybrid site containing a mixture of content and ecommerce elements) here are a few quick rules to keep in mind:

1. Keep your competitors off the page: You can do this fairly easily within AdSense using the allow and block ads facility. We'll cover this in a later AdSense blog entry.

2. Don't advertise at key conversion points: This should be a no-brainer, but it's something that can slip through when defining advertising areas of a website template. Advertising on the checkout or shopping basket pages is the same as suggesting that the customer really must shop around first!

3. Don't place ads in better positions than products: Ad placement is a tricky proposition in the post-Google Panda world, but as a general rule of thumb they should be a secondary source of income and be treated as such.

AdSense - What You Need To Know

Once you've decided that AdSense is for you there are a few things you need to keep in mind regarding the rules and applications of AdSense.

Getting Set Up

Getting set up with AdSense is simple. Head over here and sign up with your Google account.  Once set up you can start creating ads on the "My Ads" page. Here you choose your ad type (text, image & rich media, or both), ad size, and if you're using text - the way that appears.

What's Best?

When it comes to AdSense ad units there's a desire to just put "the best" out there - whatever that is. It used to be that image/display advertising would bring better returns than text ads, but this isn't as clear cut any more. 

The position pushed by Google is that a mix of image and text ads is the best option as it makes the advertising pool massive - more advertisers means more bids for positions,  means the better rate you (and Google) get. While this may be the case it really does depend on your site. 

We suggest tracking performance over time and testing to see what combination of text and image advertising works for you. For example, you may want to test whether having text ads in one location improves the CPC of other ad units across the page or if visitors are more likely to be drawn to image ads when they're placed within text blocks.

Regarding ad sizes, this usually depends on the layout of your site, but a variety is encouraged. We've found that large MPUs (366x280) tend to earn a higher CPC than ads of other shapes and sizes - but this again may be due to their prominent positioning on most of the pages they're present on. Generally speaking however you want to tend towards larger, newer ad unit sizes as older sizes (such as 468x60 and 120x600) are no longer as widely supported by advertisers.

If you currently have an old template for your site which contains smaller, less popular ad-types, updating this to allow new ad formats can be a very quick way to improve AdSense revenues.

Limits of AdSense

There are a few limits to AdSense - and falling foul of Google's policies can see you booted out of the AdSense club pretty fast.

There is a maximum of 3 content ad units per page and only one of Google’s new, and frankly giant, 300x600px ad units per page. Google put limits on the number of units per page to avoid publishers putting dense collections of AdSense on a page making it impossible to avoid clicking ads (this is against the rules) or, alternatively, providing millions of unseen impression.

Other limits include not making your ads look like content (and vice versa), aligning images with ads so the images look like they're part of the ad, placing other websites displaying AdSense ads in frames on your site, placing ads on sites with pop-ups, reloading ads on a cycle or encouraging accidental clicks in any way. In short, if there is an obvious way to game Google AdSense, it's been tried already and you're not going to last long if you try it!

What Now?

If you intend to run AdSense on your site you should get started by designing or updating your ad template and have a good read of the Google AdSense Ad Placement Policies document. Once you've got AdSense running you should begin to test different combinations of ad type across your pages and optimize what works best for you.

Next: Managing The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Of Google AdSense

Last month Lorna provided twelve easy steps to get the most from your PPC campaigns this Christmas. Step three of her post was to make sure your website and landing pages are updated for Christmas, so following on from this we have decided to look at some of the ways the big retailers are tackling Christmas on their websites. 

HMV has a new look for the festive season with a winter wonderland backdrop and wintery colour theme. Their best selling products are displayed clearly on the homepage like The Dark Knight Rises DVD and if you’re stuck for gift ideas, they even have an online gift guide.

Product pages on the John Lewis website have everything from images, descriptions, delivery options and returns information to online reviews and even stock updates. They also show products viewed by other customers - ideal for busy mums buying stocking fillers. 

Toys R Us are using their homepage to drive visitors directly to their best deals by cramming it full of promotions and money off deals. Delivery and collect options have also been clearly displayed on the right hand side of the homepage so they can’t be missed. 

Buyagift have given their logo a festive makeover and their best selling products and special offers dominate the homepage giving people the option to browse through them directly.

Asos have dedicated an entire page to Christmas delivery to make sure all their customers know when to place their last orders if they want their order delivered in time for Christmas – they have even included international delivery too.

Tesco have focused their homepage around the last order date for what will be one of their most popular and sought after products this Christmas – the fresh turkey! There is also a call-to-action to buy online. Store opening hours are also listed on the homepage so that nobody gets caught out over Christmas and New Year – essential for any retailers adjusting their opening hours over the festive period.

H. Samuel’s website has a pop up fairy godmother online chat feature – perfect for helping people who are struggling to buy those extra special gifts this Christmas. 

We hope you found some of these examples inspirational if your website isn’t performing as well as you had hoped so far this Christmas.