England COVID-19 Lockdown announced for whole of November

England Covid-19 Lockdown announced for whole of November

An England COVID-19 lockdown has just been announced which will start on Thursday the 5th of November and last a month. Whilst there are a few days left in order for the lockdown to be written into law, best advice would be to start living as if the England COVID-19 lockdown started today.

The local and regional approach to tackling the virus was, according to Boris Johnson, the right approach as no one wants to impose these types of measures anywhere, especially not in areas where the incidences were low. Regional restrictions have kept the reproduction rate lower than it would otherwise have been but the reality is now, as it is across much of Europe, spreading faster than is reasonable acceptable. It is clear that hospitals will run out of capacity within a couple of weeks. The reality is that if the NHS is overrun doctors will be forced to choose who gets treatment and a chance to live and who is simply left untreated to die – we don’t want doctors to have to choose between a COVID-19 patient and someone having a heart attack.

England COVID-19 Lockdown details

From Thursday the 5th of November until December the only reasons for which you should be leaving home are:

  • Work if you can’t work from home.
  • Recreation where you can meet just one person from one another household.
  • Shopping for food and essentials.
  • Providing care

You should not be meeting anyone from other households indoors (although single adults can form support bubbles with one other household and children can move between parents).

Non essential shops and entertainment will all close, as will all pubs, bars and restaurants except for takeaways.

Schools will remain open.

The furlough scheme will continue in some form from the 5th of November through to the start of December with details to follow.

Why a national England COVID-19 Lockdown and how do we get out of it?

Some areas of the country with relatively lower incidences of Coronavirus, such as the South West, will be asking why a national lockdown should be imposed on them. The answer is that it’s all about hospital beds and the South West is actually one of the areas most likely to run out of NHS capacity first. It’s too late to worry about infections, all the government can now hope is to stall the spread and allow those already infected to get a bed and either recover or sadly die before the next wave of patients arrive.

The question many businesses want answered, having spent thousands making their businesses supposedly safe with social distancing measures, is what is the way out of COVID-19 lockdown. However, the England COVID-19 lockdown is something the government have been desperate to avoid and they were still trying to figure out how to get Tier 3 areas back down to Tier 2. Now with the entire country of England going into lockdown the main aim will be to try and enable families to meet for Christmas and even that is a faint hope rather than something that realistically looks achievable.

England COVID-19 Lockdown impact for small online businesses

The realities facing the country from the England COVID-19 Lockdown are harsh and will once again be devastating for high street retail, hospitality, leisure, and a host of other industries. However this presents a real opportunity for small businesses who are still able to operate. Online sales are going to sky-rocket and people will be searching online more than ever before. If you have stock it’s time to get listed on marketplaces, get active on social media, get onto search engines such as Google Shopping and cash in like never before.

Don’t make the mistake of simply taking the orders and cashing the virtual cheques however, make sure that you use this opportunity to build your marketing lists and expand you social following. Whilst the run up to Christmas will (as is almost always the case) be funded on credit by many, it’s likely that January and the early months of 2020 will be a very tough trading period so the more you bank in the run up to Christmas the better prepared you will be for the start of 2021.



from Ecommerce – Tamebay https://ift.tt/382kTFo
via IFTTT

What’s PayPal Recurring Payments?

If you're looking for a way to create subscription plans for your products or services quickly, then it's well worth considering PayPal Recurring Payments. This is an excellent solution for developing, managing, and automatically processing subscription billing.
If you're on the fence on whether PayPal Recurring payments is the right platform for you, or if you want to know more about this solution, then continue reading to find out precisely that.
There's lots to cover, so let's dive in.

What's PayPal Recurring Payments?

PayPal Recurring Payments is an easy way for you to accept online credit and debit cards, PayPal, and e-wallet payments and manage automatic repeat billing. Most notably, via online invoicing, email, and website sales.

This makes PayPal Recurring Payments ideal for any entrepreneur with an online business that wants to bill customers for memberships, subscriptions, or repeat products and/or services. It's also worth bearing in mind that this service offers your customers a degree of flexibility, as you can offer partial payment plans.

If you're a busy business owner who's always on the run, you may also be happy to hear that PayPal has an app you can use. As such, you can manage your subscription billing whenever, wherever.

Please note that PayPal Recurring Payments doesn't accept e-checks or ACH payments at the time of writing.

PayPal homepage

How Much Will PayPal Recurring Payments Set You Back?

There aren't any monthly fees. Instead, you pay a recurring payment processing fee of 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction.

For more info check out our full PayPal review.

The Pros and Cons of Using PayPal Recurring Payments

Let's start with the perks…

PayPal's Brand Name Carry's Some Weight  

PayPal is a widely used brand worldwide, which works wonders for instilling confidence in your shoppers. In fact, in terms of PayPal’s brand recognition, it's 72% compared to other popular payment gateways whose recognition is below 50%.

Go Global

PayPal boasts 137 million active accounts from users across 193 countries. If you're looking to reach an international audience, this could well be an excellent choice for you. In fact, PayPal Recurring Payments empowers you to accept payments across 24 international currencies.

Monitor Your Transactions

With just a click, you can keep an eye on both your inbound and outbound transactions. You can also download your entire transaction history and pass this to your accountant when tax season comes around.

PayPal Recurring Payments

The Drawbacks

Now for the disadvantages of using PayPal Recurring Payments:

There Are Strict Rules You Need to Follow

Since as long ago as September 2011, PayPal's rules have become increasingly strict to protect against fraud. Consequently, any slight change in your average transaction value can result in your account being frozen and your money locked in, so you're unable to access it. Lots of PayPal users complain that PayPal rarely provides an explanation as to why the account has been frozen, or worse yet, closed – and merchants can't appeal the decision, so they just have to lump it!

Lousy Customer Service

Having read the point above, it probably isn't a surprise that PayPal's customer service doesn't fare too well. Some users complain about having to jump through hoops to speak to a real-life customer support rep, rather than a bot, an FAQ page, or a generic email.

PayPal's Verification Process is Long

Although setting up a PayPal business account is relatively easy, having your account “verified” can struggle a hassle. Now and then, PayPal requires extra documentation to verify your account. Most notably, utility bills and government-issues.

How to Set Up PayPal Recurring Payments

First things first, you'll need to ensure that you have a PayPal business account. Once you've set this up, be sure to have your username and password to hand. You'll also need access to your website’s HTML code.
Now, follow the steps below to create your first subscription plan using PayPal Recurring Payments (this should take your roughly 15 mins per plan). 
  1. Log into your PayPal Business account.
  2. Head to the ‘Manage Subscriptions' page, and then click ‘Create Plan.'
  3. Provide a few details about the products or services included in the plan, most notably, its name, a brief description of what's included, and your product ID.
  4. You'll then need to select the product type (physical goods, digital goods, or service), and pick the industry category that best describes your business.
  5. In a separate tab, head to your subscription plan's sales page, copy, and paste this into the fields that say ‘Product Page URL.'
  6. Now, click ‘Next.'
  7. Next, pick whether you want to opt for fixed pricing or quantity pricing, then when you're ready, click ‘Next.' Please note that: Based on your customer's chosen subscription plan, ‘fixed pricing' charges the customer's the same each billing cycle. Whereas, ‘quantity pricing' charges the customer's the same each billing cycle depending on their chosen quantity.  
  8. It's now time to create a plan name (this is visible to your customers) and description (this is your own reference; your customers can't see this). When you're done, click ‘Next.' 
  9.  Next, you need to set the price of your subscription plan. This involves selecting your desired currency, price, disclosing whether you charge a one-time set-up fee (optional), and selling how you'll calculate tax for the plan. You'll then need to enter your tax rate and select ‘Next' when you're finished.
  10. This next step involves selecting your billing cycle for your subscription plan – i.e., how frequently you'll charge your subscribers – daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. You'll also have to specify the plan's length and the number of payments necessary for PayPal to stop attempting to take charge.  At this point, you can even say whether you offer a trial period (optional). Then, when you're finished, click ‘Next.' 
  11. Last but not least, you're ready to confirm your subscription plan's details and then hit ‘Save Plan' when you're happy and ensure you’re ready toTurn on Plan.'
  12. At this point, you can now add a subscription payment button to your website.

Are You Ready to Start Using PayPal Recurring Payments?

If, having read this review, you think PayPal Recurring Payments could be the right solution for your subscription-based business, then let us know how you get on in the comments box below. We'd love to hear from you!

The post What’s PayPal Recurring Payments? appeared first on Ecommerce Platforms.



from Ecommerce Platforms https://ift.tt/37VHHGX
via IFTTT

Quick guidelines for user-friendly eCommerce website design

Best e-commerce usability design is important for transforming website visitors into customers. Ideally, your website’s design elements should make the shopping experience and purchasing process as smooth, simple, and stress-free as possible. No matter how good your online ads are, if your online store is not designed for sales, you may be losing important customers. You can’t afford to miss a good e-commerce UX design as a designer. Below is an e-commerce usability guidance, concluded […]

The post Quick guidelines for user-friendly eCommerce website design appeared first on Ecommerce Guru.



from Ecommerce Guru https://ift.tt/2THXy3o
via IFTTT

Nestlé acquires healthy meal startup Freshly for up to $1.5B

Nestlé USA just announced that it has acquired Freshly for $1.5 billion — $950 million plus potential earnouts of up to $550 million based on future growth.

Founded in 2015, Freshly is a New York City-based startup that offers healthy meals delivered to your home in weekly orders, then prepared in a few minutes via microwave or oven,  So you get the benefit of fresh, healthy meals but — unlike signing up with a meal kit startup — you don’t have to spend a lot of time cooking them yourself.

If anything, this sounds even more appealing now, as so many of us are spending most of our time at home, doing our best to cook for ourselves. According to Nestlé’s press release, Freshly is now shipping more than 1 million meals per week across 48 states, with forecasted sales of $430 million for 2020.

The startup raised a total of $107 million from investors including Highland Capital Partners, White Star Capital, Insight Venture Partners and Nestlé itself, which led the Series C in 2017. Today’s announcement describes the earlier investment as giving the food and beverage giant a 16% stake in Freshly and serving as “a strategic move to evaluate and test the burgeoning market.”

“Consumers are embracing ecommerce and eating at home like never before,” said Nestlé USA Chairman and CEO Steve Presley in a statement. “It’s an evolution brought on by the pandemic but taking hold for the long term. Freshly is an innovative, fast-growing, food-tech startup, and adding them to the portfolio accelerates our ability to capitalize on the new realities in the U.S. food market and further positions Nestlé to win in the future.”

In a note to customers, Freshly co-founder and CEO Michael Wystrach said that as a result of the acquisition, his team has plans to triple the number of menu items offered each week. Beyond that, however, he suggested that things won’t change too dramatically:

I can assure you that your meals, pricing, and subscription will remain just as you know them. Freshly will continue to operate as a standalone business to accomplish our core mission to remove the barriers to healthy eating with convenient, nutritious and delicious meal solutions, backed by the power of Nestlé to open new doors for a fresher, faster food delivery to your door. We will continue to maintain our own strict standards and maintain complete control of our products. Our meals will not be changing, and there are no plans to change ingredients or integrate Nestlé products into Freshly meals, but we are excited about potential opportunities for the future.

 



from eCommerce – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/34HMz0l
via IFTTT

Thank You Page Optimization: How Your Thank You Page Can Earn You Sales

There's one page on your website that you're probably ignoring which could majorly boost your sales & revenue: Your Thank You page.

The post Thank You Page Optimization: How Your Thank You Page Can Earn You Sales appeared first on Bootstrapping Ecommerce.



from Bootstrapping Ecommerce https://ift.tt/31WtINf
via IFTTT

6 Best Shopify Alternatives for Your Online Store

Shopify has almost become synonymous with ecommerce. For good reason. It’s one of the most popular ecommerce platforms on the…

from The BigCommerce Blog https://ift.tt/31ZWk8h
via IFTTT

How to Get Started with Sensory Marketing for Ecommerce

With an estimation of 12 million to 24 million ecommerce sites across the entire globe, the ecommerce world is more competitive than ever.

These days, it's getting harder to capture people's attention, and it's not helping that consumers are constantly bombarded with all sorts of ads wherever they go online. Hence, personalization has become a leading trend in ecommerce.



from 3dcart eCommerce Blog https://ift.tt/382OwGu
via IFTTT

Amazon pegs COVID-19 costs at an estimated $4 billion next quarter

Amazon expects to incur $4 billion in COVID-related costs next quarter, an estimate that provides a bellwether for other businesses, large and small, trying to stay operational and control expenses amid the pandemic.

The upshot: Amazon is planning for COVID to remain an unwelcome companion through the end of the year with costs higher than the previous quarter.

The company said Thursday in its third-quarter earnings call that it logged $7.5 billion in COVID-related costs since the disease took root earlier this year. Amazon previously said its COVID costs were about $600 million in the first quarter and more than $4 billion in the second. The company’s COVID costs in the third quarter were about $2.5 billion, CFO Brian Olsavsky told an analyst during an earnings call. While Amazon was able to lower its costs in the third quarter due to efficiencies, that number is on rise for next quarter.

Olsavsky said the majority of the increase in costs is due to the expansion of its operations. Amazon has hired 100,000 new workers in October.

COVID-19, along with other uncertainties related to the economy, holiday sales and even weather patterns, weighed on its guidance for operating income in the fourth quarter. Amazon provided a wide-ranging guidance of between $1 billion and $4.5 billion in operating income in the fourth quarter compared with $3.9 billion in the same period last year. This guidance assumes about $4 billion in costs related to COVID-19.

But what is most telling is that even after providing a lengthy list of possible uncertainties in the fourth quarter, Olsavsky noted that COVID still trumps them all.

“So there’s a whole host of issues that generally come to bear in Q4,” Olsavsky said. “I think the fact that COVID is dwarfing all of those is causing us a lot of uncertainty on our top line range.”

Olsavsky said costs were related to productivity losses caused by changing how it operates as well as expenses related to personal protective equipment and other upfront costs.

“The largest portion of these costs relate to continuing productivity headwinds in our facilities, including process revisions to allow for social distancing and incremental costs to ramp up new facilities, and the large influx of new employees hired to support strong customer demand also includes investments in PPE for employees and enhanced cleaning of our facilities,” Olsavsky said during Thursday’s earnings call.

Amazon said Thursday it also continues to ramp up its in-house COVID-19 testing program with capacity reaching 50,000 tests a day across 650 sites by November.



from eCommerce – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/34CPsPZ
via IFTTT

How Survival Brand Judy Uses Google Ads

blog-banner-google-ads-aces-judy

Today, we’re breaking down the Google Ads strategy of Judy, a business that sells emergency kits.

With plenty of emergencies hitting the USA in 2020, COVID, forest fires or hurricanes, this is a product category that’s pretty top of mind for a lot of people.

The survival and emergency preparedness niche is pretty popular in the US, so there are plenty of established players. Judy attempts to stand out from the crowd by focusing heavily on the design.

We’ll start with a quick intro, but then get into the juicy details. As with other teardowns, we’ll look at how much Judy spends on Google Ads, how they spend it and what kind of returns they are hitting!

What is Judy?

Judy sells emergency kits that contain emergency supplies like batteries, flashlights, blankets, gloves, water, etc.

judy-go-bag
A Judy emergency kit, ready to go

The business launched early 2020, just in time for COVID.

With people stockpiling toilet paper and supermarket shelves being emptied, they got pretty lucky with the timing!

Judy The Business

The most distinct part of this company and products is its design. The bold orange color and minimalist approach to the packaging and its contents help it to stand out from competitors.

Let me show you the difference between the top emergency kit, and Judy:

seventy2-system
Contents of The Seventy2 Survival System
judy-kit-design
Contents of the Judy Mover Max
Their minimalist aesthetic helps Judy to stand out.

Red Antler, a top Silicon Valley branding agency is responsible for the design. Having worked for other DTC darlings like Casper and Birchbox, they know what’s needed when it comes to branding and design at the highest level.

That expertise doesn’t come cheap. That’s why they often take equity instead of charging for their work.

Judy also tries to tap into the current culture.

When Netflix launched popular show called Tiger King, Judy released a special edition “to protect against tigers”.

judy-tiger-safe
Special edition to tap into the popularity of the Netflix show “Tiger King”

They donated the proceeds to charity, but I don’t doubt that it helped them to pick up some additional press.

When COVID-19 hit shortly after they launched, they launched a product called The Safety with masks, gloves and hand sanitiser.

Judy Site Analysis

The business has only been around since the beginning of 2020 and they have changed domains in June 2020. (They used to be as readyjudy.com)

judy.co-homepage
Judy.co Homepage

Because the domain is so young it’s hard to estimate traffic numbers etc. (Many of my usual tools and tricks don’t work 😅)

So instead of sharing raw numbers (in this section), I want to share some interesting things I discovered about this brand.

Nik Sharma, an ecommerce expert that was involved in the Judy launch, actually laid out the whole launch strategy in a presentation.

Here is for example what they’re doing on Facebook and Instagram:

judy-facebook-instagram-ads-strategy
Source: DTC101 presentation by Nik Sharma

Fascinating stuff! Be sure to check the full DTC101 presentation, including details on their other channels.

Now let’s explore the reason why you started reading this article, we’ll take a look at what Judy spends on Google Ads and what they make from it.

Judy Google Ads Campaigns

The approach Judy takes to Google Ads is a pretty straightforward one:

  • Capture branded searches generated by other efforts (PR, influencers, Facebook Ads, etc.)
  • Capture highly relevant non-branded searches

This shows in the analysis below, where a big part of the budget is put toward branded campaigns.

This is what Judy has spent in October 2020:

Ad Spend Clicks CPC
Search Ads $14,000 11,666 $1.2
Shopping Ads $20,000 30,769 $0.65
TOTAL $34,000 42,435 $0.8

Note: I had to do a lot of guesswork to pull these numbers together and I’m not very confident about their accuracy. But I do believe the direction of the analysis is correct!

Source for these numbers: Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, and my benchmarks collection.

Google Search Ads

In the presentation I mentioned above, they also outlined their approach to Search Ads.

They are focusing on three buckets:

  1. Branded: keywords like “judy” or “judy kit”
  2. Non-Branded: product related keywords like “emergency kit” or “survival supplies”
  3. Contesting: keywords that include competitor brand like “seventy2” or “red cross emergency kit”

So let’s see how they perform in each of those groups.

1 – Branded paid search 

Branded clicks account for 80% of the Search Ads budget.

Top 3 branded keywords:

  • judy
  • judy emergency kit
  • judy kit

Nothing surprising here.

Search Ads

Let’s take a closer look at their advertisements.

Ad #1:

judy-google-search-ad-example-1
Desktop ad when searching for “judy kit”

What is interesting to this ad are the different offers. The ad text sells the kit, while the sitelinks push people to one of the three main products.

There also is a promotion extension, showing $100 off.

Ad #2:

judy-google-search-ad-example-2

This second ad is a lot less product focused. In the ad text, the focus on their main selling point, being digitally connected and having SMS notifications.

They also mention their charity initiative: donating a kit to people in need with every purchase.

This is probably a Responsive Search Ad, giving room to more content that can be pushed, but the character limit is cutting the message off.

Ad #3:

judy-google-search-ad-example-3

This third example shows the price extensions for the different products, including the bundle.

Landing page

Most brands that we’ve covered in this series send traffic to their homepage, category, or product pages.

Judy also does that, but they take more of a landing page approach to every page they send traffic to. (Can’t imagine this is any different with their Facebook ads)

The collections page is normally a simple category page that shows the products. But here is what theirs looks like:

judy-collections-page
Category page on judy.co

The first thing that stands out is how the different products are laid out. This layout resembles a pricing grid that you would see when you’re buying software.

Notice how they also use a psychological trick called price anchoring, where they first show the most expensive product for $250, and then show the cheaper options after.

A normal category page stops there, but this landing page stacks a couple of additional sections below.

A section on what’s inside:

contents-judy-kit

A section with testimonials:

judy-social-proof-landing-page
Notice how the headline talks about “families” getting prepared

For the branded campaigns, these pages help to reinforce what the brand is about.

I also discovered that they are still experimenting to find the best landing page to send their paid traffic to. Here is an example where they are testing their homepage next to page or to a special landing page (which I’ll cover below in more detail):

landing-page-testing-search-ads

They are able to test this by using two ads in the same ad group, each with a different destination URL.

But the real edge of these pages shows in their effectiveness with people that don’t know the brand yet.

2 – Non-branded paid search 

Let’s take a look at the most popular non branded keywords.

Top 10 unbranded keywords

  1. emergency kit
  2. survival kit
  3. emergency preparedness kit
  4. emergency supplies
  5. earthquake emergency kit
  6. preparedness kit
  7. earthquake emergency kit
  8. earthquake help
  9. emergency kit for typhoon philippines
  10. fire evacuation bag

In the overview, I mentioned that Judy splits its non branded keywords into two groups: product related and competitor related, their “contesting terms”.

This whole top 10 is all about broad keywords that describe their products, along with a couple of more specific ones around earthquakes, fires and typhoons.

For the competitor terms, we have to dig a bit deeper.

In the past, I can see that they have run ads on a direct competitor like “seventy2 survival kit” and even “costco emergency preparedness kit”.

Today they seem to have dialed back spend on those keywords, I only see “red cross emergency kit”.

This isn’t that surprising. I’ve got many clients where we trial this approach (Search Ads on competitor brands) and have to conclude that these searches don’t bring enough return.

When it comes to Shopping Ads, Judy is showing for almost all competitor searches, more on that later in this article!

But first, let’s look at their ads for non branded search.

Search Ads

Like with the branded Search Ads, they make pretty good use of all the available ad extensions.

In the ad below you can see callouts, sitelinks and price extensions.

judy-ad-extensions

One improvement could be to use structured snippets to display some of the contents of their kit.

One interesting approach they use in some of their ads is to push their payment plans:

google-search-ads-payment-plans
Pushing the payment plan

Then on their site, you can see the payment plan in action (it’s actually $16/mo now).

affirm-judy

Clicking that small link shows the possible payment plans from Affirm:

affirm-installments-example

Being in the $200 range, their products aren’t impulse buys. Advertising small monthly payments makes the product seem more affordable, which might convince more people to purchase.

A simple tactic to make your Search Ads more relevant is to repeat the search query in your ad. You usually add that to your Headlines and Descriptions, but you can add it to the Path, the URL part.

In the ad below, Judy re-uses a slight variation of “emergency preparedness” in Path 1 and Path 2 fields:

judy-search-ads-path-url

Landing pages

We already saw that Judy takes a unique approach with their landing pages.

They don’t just play around with the design to make it more effective, they also actively test different offers.

Their main experiment puts a bundle next to the individual products. The goal here is obvious, to drive up the AOV. Because if a customer spends more on average, Judy can spend more on acquiring more customers.

You can see that this is a pretty important experiment, because every page of their site literally has a button to this kit:

judy-site-banner-call-to-action

Let’s explore how this plays out on one of their landing pages:

judy-bundle-offer

First of all, notice how this page is actually a subdomain:

judy-subdomain-unbounce
Notice the subdomain: get.judy.co vs judy.co

This is actually a subdomain that’s hosted by Unbounce. That’s a landing page building tool that allows you to quickly spin up, and test different pages. A lot easier compared to doing that on your main marketing site.

This particular page is very well written and designed.

It starts out with all the benefits people will get, and then clearly states the offer: $390 plus free shipping offer, a $100 discount. (Again available in monthly payments)

But that’s only the start. The rest of the page works pretty hard to overcome all objections and convince people to buy.

They’re also using Hotjar. This is a tool that takes visitor screen recordings and generates heat maps to figure out how visitors are interacting with the page. Because it is such a long page, it can show where people are trailing off, and give ideas on how to overcome these problems.

I want to highlight one part that I really liked, a comparison table:

judy-ecommerce-comparison-table-landing-page

This biased comparison doesn’t tell you anything new, but it shows that Judy is great at everything.

Your homemade kit probably can’t compete with features like “Hand-Picked by Disaster Experts” or “Digitally-Connected & Emergency SMS Alerts”.

And that’s why it costs $390.

I suggest you have a look at all the things that are happening on that page, it can definitely help you improve your own landing pages.

To finish the section, I wanted to share another slide from the presentation I mentioned earlier. It goes more into detail on how these ecommerce landers are structured:

ecommerce-landing-page-structure
Source: DTC101 presentation by Nik Sharma

Google Shopping Ads

This section is a little lighter than I would have liked to. Because the domain is so new, none of my usual tools have been able to pick up information on their Product Listing Ads.

So instead of an in-depth rundown of the search queries, I want to highlight a couple of things that stand out.

Shopping search queries

Judy is a lot less restrictive for what kind of search queries they’re appearing for.

Besides the brand, they are showing product ads for a lot of non-branded search queries, including a lot of competitors.

Like this search for “costco emergency kit”:

competitor-search-shopping

While Judy is not advertising on “the seventy2 system”, one of their main competitors on Search, they are showing up in the Shopping Ads:

judy-direct-competitors

This makes a lot of sense. With Shopping Ads, all the products are presented next to each other, making it easy to compare based on the design and price. With Search Ads, you first need to get people to click before they can start comparing.

That’s why I often see Shopping ads for competitors do ok, while the Search Ads are a lot less effective.

Product Title Optimization

I already talked about the unique design that Judy uses.

They also do this when it comes to their products naming:

judy-product-title-optimization-shopping-feed

The product page on their site is short and sweet: The Safe.

That’s a good title if you can add the other copy (like the subtitle) to it.

But when it needs to stand on its own, that title falls short.

That’s why they’ve adapted their SEO product title to be a bit more descriptive. Here is what that looks like if you saw this page in the Google search results:

“The Safe | 4 Person Emergency Preparedness Kit | Ready Set Judy”

But when it comes to the product titles in their product feed, they’re taking it a step further:

“Family Emergency Preparedness Kit | 72 Hour Safety, First Aid, Food, Water, Warmth, & Tools | The Safe from JUDY”

This long title adds a couple of keywords that really increase the visibility of this product.

This will help generate more impressions and more clicks vs the “pure” product title.

But this isn’t the only product that Judy sells. So let’s see how they use this same approach to differentiate the other products in their line up:

google-product-title-optimization-example
Example of effective product title optimization

All of their products are emergency kits, but with the product title optimization, they push each product forward for a specific set of search queries:

  • emergency preparedness kit – 5,400 searches/mo
  • emergency preparedness backpack – 100 searches/mo
  • go bag – 12,100 searches/mo
  • 4 person go bag – 90 searches/mo
  • survival essentials – 1,000 searches/mo
  • emergency first aid kit – 880 searches/mo
  • etc.

Geographic targeting

While Judy is running Search Ads in Canada, I couldn’t find any Canadian Shopping Ads. Part of that might be due to any tax and currency conversion issues that might limit their visibility.

Adding a feed in Canadian dollar can help them to make sure they also show up as part of the free product listings.

Google Display Ads

I couldn’t find any display campaigns that are currently running.

But I did find a couple of ads that they ran in the past:

judy-display-ads-example1

This is probably a Responsive Display Ads. I also tracked down a text version:

judy-display-ads-example2

Both ads were pushing a 20% offer, probably something that was part of a prior campaign.

Because they are driving a ton of traffic to the site from other places, I think there is an opportunity to also run Dynamic Remarketing Ads on the Google Display Network.

Hitting the same user cross-channel (they find your site via Facebook and then see your banner again on another site) is usually is very effective.

Since they have a very limited amount of products, and a clear offer (the kit to push), I think that approach would work quite well for them.

The Judy Scoreboard

Money time!

The Scoreboard is the part where we pull everything together to find out how much money Judy is making (or losing) with their Google Ads campaigns.

Gross margin

There isn’t much to find about the average margins in the emergency kit or survival space. But I did find this post where someone compared the products available on AliExpress to the sales price.

Margins quoted were in the 80-90% range.

I don’t think a comparison of the Judy products with AliExpress is fair, but I do feel like they are able to charge a high premium because of their brand. So a 70% gross margin is a pretty conservative estimate.

Average order value 

Their product range varies from $45 for their first aid kit to $390 for the bundle offer that they are pushing.

With the bestselling Shopify trick (add “?sort_by=best-selling” on the collections page), we can see that the most popular product is The Mover Max, at $180.

judy-besteselling-products

The second most sold product is The Safe, at $250.

So I think it’s safe to assume a $200 Average order value.

Judy Customer Acquisition Cost

So if we put all of this together, what is the customer acquisition cost for Judy?

As usual, we start out by looking at what it would mean if the team over at Judy plows all its profits back into customer acquisition.

judy-customer-acquisition-cost

Because of the high margins, they would break even at a CAC of $140. Which would result in a revenue of $48,571.43.

Now let’s look at what happens at lower CACs:

judy-advertising-roas-margin

To hit a CAC of $84, they would need 1% of people to convert, which isn’t too far fetched considering the high AOV.

So in what follows, I’ll use those values in my model.

Judy Life Time Value

How many emergency kits can you sell to a single customer?

I think most people will buy only one, but some might buy an extra one for their car or in their weekend home. I could be wrong about since they are pushing their bundle of three products pretty hard.

But I have no doubt that their new product development is crucial to keep selling to existing customers.

One obvious product are add-ons or replacement parts.

In the model, let’s keep it conservative and say they’re able to generate an extra $20 from each customer, a 10% repurchase rate, that would result in and extra $5700 in profit per month:

judy-life-time-value

So if we add everything together, Judy spend a total of $34,000 a month on Google Ads. For that spend, they generate $89,100 in revenue. 31% of that, or $28,370 of that is gross profit.

That’s it for our teardown of the Judy Google Ads campaigns!

What did you find most surprising in this analysis? Let us know in the comments!

Bonus: Get The Scoreboard worksheet to get smarter about your own campaigns, or those of your competitors. Grab it here!

The post How Survival Brand Judy Uses Google Ads appeared first on Store Growers.



from Google Ads Tips & Tricks That Actually Make Money – Store Growers https://ift.tt/382jPkK
via IFTTT

New Government – Labour Small Business Agenda

We’ve are all waking up to a new Government today, with the Labour party about to take control of the country and what should be top of your...