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New Delhi, Sep 7: A whopping 40% of Internet users who researched products online in 2006 bought them offline from a neighborhood store or some other offline channel, according to a study by Kapston, online technology mall GadgetsGuru and web-to-store major OffersForShoppers.
The study also notes that around 85% of Indian Internet shoppers use general search engines for researching products while around 66% Indian Internet advertisers only consider Google PPC (Pay per Click) for search marketing. Also, only 12% of Indian Internet consumers use shopping specific search engines for researching products. “If nearly half of Internet users who research products online end-up buying those products offline, merchants need to realise how important it is to understand customer’s vocabulary, usage of language and the search trends,” Ranjith Pavithran, India director, Kapston, said.
“If a majority of Indian Internet users are performing their shopping research using general search engines like Google and Yahoo, it is very critical for Indian merchants to ensure that their websites and products are easily found on amateur and expert searches in the major search engines,” Arun Kapur, chief executive officer (CEO), GadgetsGuru, said.
“This also indicates that internationally, many merchants have got excellent results by advertising their products in the shopping-specific search engines, but in India these engines are still playing a minimal role as compared to general search engines. Most average Indian users do not know about these vertical search engines, though we have noticed some slight increment in the usage of these search engines,” Kumar Setu, CEO, OffersForShoppers.com, said.
“A holistic 360-degree Internet promotion is the only way to target a wide array of keywords and hence reach out to the most well-profiled as well as not-so-savvy customers. Unfortunately, very few online merchants know how to utilise this new advertising medium to its full potential. They rely heavily on PPC; with PPC, the traffic stops the moment you stop the campaign. To target a wider set of customer queries using PPC, you will have to spend a fortune. Very few Indian companies consider the searcher when they actually outsource their
Internet marketing. Most of the merchants don’t even look at their users’ keyword activities and browsing pattern. Too often, this results in a misallocation of future marketing budget to those channels through which the sale is conceived, initiated and transacted. In fact, the budget should be allocated to the channel that actually produces the sale,” Pavithran added.
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