Online shopping can be an experience fraught with confusions, there are, now so many merchants vying for your trade and so many ways in which they fight for your attention that there are many paths to the online basket and checkout. The first place many people start is with their search engine of choice. Recent figures suggest a usage statistics of just over fifty percent for Google, followed by Yahoo Search at 20 percent and MSN Live Search at around 15 percent. The remaining 15 percent is shared by AOL (5 percent) , Ask.com (2 percent ) and others who, at this time, can not be seen to have a major influence on web shopping.
So, as we have said, it is highly likely that the first thing a prospective client will do is to type in a search term and click "go", using their favourite/ usual search engine. The search results will then provide two listings, natural search results and paid search results. I will use Google as my example as it has the highest traffic and, to an extent the other search engines have replicated the functionality.
On Google the sponsored search results will commonly be the first 3 results at the top of the screen with further paid for inclusions down the right hand side. The natural search results are based upon site's fulfilling Google's algorithm which is based upon a huge amount of criteria ( too many to go into here ) to justify a merchant's site in relevance to the customer's search terms. The sponsored search terms are a completely different matter. For example if you wanted to be on page one for a competitive search term like bad credit mortgages it may take you several years to get to be considered a premium resource by Google for bad credit mortgages, and hence worthy of page 1 inclusion. Using pay per click advertising you can have your site on page one within a matter of minutes. You need only set up a Google Advertisers account, create an ad and fill in a list of which search terms/ keywords you wish the ad to appear for. The position which your ad appears is governed by the amount you are willing to bid for a click through to your site, so you are in a bidding war with your competitors; but you immediately have a chance of going head to head with established Mortgage Lenders, who may have had an online presence for many years, almost guaranteeing them a higher ranking in Google's natural search results.
So once you have a clickthrough it is important note to waste the money you have spent in getting the customer to visit your shop, so it is vital that the customer lands upon a page with just what they are looking for and all the details necessary to either purchase or avail themselves of the sought after service.
Going back to my previous example of a UK mortgage lender. The company will target a search term such as the phrase bad credit mortgages and make sure that any clickthrough from a Google ( or for that matter Yahoo or MSN ) paid for advert will land upon a page which contains resources and an application form for a bad credit mortgage.
So if you are an online merchant or you are considering taking the step to selling your goods or services online, take a look at the paid for advertising and seek professional advice from a company specialising in Pay Per Click Management who will be able to advise you on maximising return on investment for such online advertising.