…they’ve done their website a world of favours and given it a much needed fresh makeover as I suggested they needed to if they really wanted to give it a good go.  Happily I can say the new website is a breath of fresh[er] air for the company and it now comes complete with a search engine friendly url structure for optimum search engine exposure.  But theyr’e still not doing it right.

You have to pay to be in the high street

As with all prime placement positions in retail, the internet is no different.  I’m going to use the same search examples that I used in my original post for this new look at the Adams website and throw some light on what else they need to do if they truly want to succeed where the last owners failed.

There are two aspects of the internet promotional mix they’re missing.

1. PPC – Pay Per Click Advertising – Get it right!
2. Affiliate Marketing – The process through which website owners get paid for sending traffic to Adams.co.uk website as long as the traffic they send buys something.

Where’s the sponsored ads, People?

A quick search on google for ‘baby clothes’ throws up this page:

Can you see adams on there?  No, me neither.  This is what we call above the fold – that section of the page that the user sees first.  Given the fact that most users make up their mind in less than 3 seconds when they first log onto a site about how they want to interact with that site, it’s vital that companies have a presence at this point or else they risk losing the customer.

But they have made some improvements

If you remember back to my last case study on this subject and this company, when I did the same search, they were absolutely nowhere to be found.  They basically stood no chance of being visited by a user searching for ‘baby clothes’ on google prior to their takeover.  Now, however, it does seem they listened and they have made a good leap forward.  If we now take a look below the fold – those results that appear on the page where the user has to ’scroll’ down the page to view, things look more encouraging…

You can see here that now they DO have some presence on that first page, albeit hanging in there by the skin of their teeth….they could use some a bit more PPC research and a few committed affiliates, which brings me nicely onto the next thing I failed to see on their all new site.

Affiliates – Your army of salesmen!

Because the internet is the place to sell, and because its such a big place, any pro-active, new, post highstreet company with any focus on the future should have an affiliate marketing program.  An affiliate marketing program is a commission based reward system where companies pay website owners for sending traffic to their websites (normally as long as that traffic turns into a sale).  There are programs out there that PPC (pay per click), paying affiliates a set amount per click they drive to their site but the most common form of affiliate programs are CPA programs (cost per action).  These programs are winners for everyone involved because the merchant (Adams) only pays the affiliate (a website owner who sends traffic to the merchant’s site) when an ‘action’ occurs.  This is usually a sale.

Now there are lots (and we’re talking thousands) of hungry affiliates out there who are looking to promote products for merchants.  For example, someone may be running a ‘name my baby’ website and for that person, having banners to adams.co.uk baby clothes would be a very relevant method of generating revenue for that website owner but also bringing more traffic to the adams.co.uk website.  In return for this traffic, adams would pay a % of the sale to the affiliate and everyone is happy.  If you then multiply this effect by potentially hundreds of affiliates, you can see the possible benefits from such a marketing strategy.

Having looked at the adams website, I can’t see any links to an affiliate program!!  Now if you compare this to one of adams’ cheif competitors in this market segment, Boden, have a look at this page on the Boden website.  Yep, they’re paying their affiliates 5% of sales.

So take a step back and just think about all those affiliates and website owners out there looking to make money from their sites who have baby-related websites…

Final Thoughts

Don’t be disheartened adams, you’ve improved but you can do better!