MagentoLive Australia 2015: Presentations Overview

MagentoLive Australia became a milestone Magento event honored to announce the Magento 2 release. So, it gathered a lot of outstanding persons from the Magento team and community, in general.



Most of them shared their vast ecommerce experience in pithy and useful presentations. So, we made a short overview of most impressing speeches and ready to offer you our coverage.

Cracking the Algorithm Code

MARK BINNS, DIGITAL MARKETING MANAGER, ACIDGREEN

Mark has a proven track record of helping clients get the best ROI from all of their online marketing initiatives. Mark has experience both client and agency side and has been working with Magento ecommerce sites in the UK and Australia since 2011. Introduction: http://magentolive.com/au/. Presentation/Video.

Without an exceptionб all ecommerce stores depend on organic traffic, especially from Google, and need to optimize their SEO strategy to get more visits and conversions.

The first statement provided by Mark in his presentation is that store owners should not plan and anticipate any unrealistic results from SEO. You cannot have high rankings for any unrelated to your products or content key words, it’s just impossible. With this in mind we can proceed to the ranking algorithms currently used by Google for resulting pages.

Do not anticipate any unrealistic results from SEO

Unfortunately, the scope of factors influencing the results in Google is huge, and we can’t figure out the exact formula, but we can outline some rules to follow in order to stay on top. And, the first step is to understand recent updates of the Google’s ranking algorithm.

Google Panda
Actually, Panda is a filter struggling for high-quality on-page content, but not only. The algorithm also inspects the quality of code, content uniqueness, broken links and images, images without alt tags, etc.

Google Penguin
Essentially similar to Panda, Penguin tracks your external links environment and penalize web sites with unnatural and spamming links. If you paid for or optimized your links, you also have the reason for concern, and Penguin’s reaction may be really destructive.

Google makes its best to give users only most relevant results and guides you down the same path

Except for the automatic filters Google also has a regular team of supervisors for manual examinations and their penalties are possibly the most harmful since recovery is very difficult in those cases. And, you should definitely know that the most careful attention is payed to YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) pages soliciting personal information, carrying out monetary transactions, offering medical or health information or major life decisions.

Google Hummingbird
As far as Google is being constantly improved, SEO specialists have less and less room for any specific adjustments. Now, Google is able to determine the subject of texts by not only key words, but also by their synonyms or idioms. Such semantic intelligence makes keyword strategies senseless and requires you to let Google do its job and take care only about the value of content.

Other Ranking Factors
Google makes its best to give users only most relevant results and guides you down the same path. Better experience and credibility are the corner stones of the Google’s strategy. That’s why mobile-friendly, high-speed, and engaging sites win the battle.

Keeping the Connection. Automated Messages and the Multi-device Shoppers

JIM DAVIDSON, HEAD OF RESEARCH, BRONTO SOFTWARE

As an expert in email, mobile and social strategies, Jim brings over 15 years of experience in online marketing, managing email and cross-channel programs for top retail clients. Introduction: http://magentolive.com/au/. Presentation/Video.

The starting thought of the presentation is that the customers' shopping behavior is not that simple and straightforward. Our traditional perception of their incentives and mood may differ from the reality and we need to consider it from different angles. And, besides the individual customers’ differences we should take into account the shopping tools and devices they use for shopping.

Customers shopping behavior is not that simple and straightforward

If we try to shift our assumptions close to reality, we will discover that customers can enter and leave the traditional conversion funnel on any stage, and even return to it from some other devices, as well.

Post-Purchase Priorities
Anyway, a soon as we get a purchase, we have to follow our customers via emails in order to make them our regular shoppers. The good thing is that, according to the presentation, 27% of subscribers become repeat customers, while repeat customers generate over 40% of sales in each online store. So, that’s a good piece of the pie that is worth to make efforts.

The post-purchase email chain consists of several stages, which have different purposes and voices. Transactional emails include order and shipping confirmation notifications. Most customers do not usually like them, still they carry essential information, e.g. order numbers and dates. And, they can also contain some other elements (coupons or related product suggestions) valuable for customers.

Customer Service emails include welcomes, service option suggestions, satisfaction surveys, and product tips and tricks. Promotional letters comprise coupons, discounts, and other purchase incentives. Finally, customers may become a great source of feedback for merchants, so you can ask them for reviews, service and product estimations, and social sharing.

Optimize your site and all key points of the sales process

Making Mobile Connections
Mobile shopping experience is becoming more popular every day, and most ecommerce merchants feel its impact. But, in order to sell successfully on mobile devices you need to optimize your site and all key points of the sales process, including products, checkout, design, user experience, etc.

But, even though customers heavily use their smartphones and tablets for shopping, you should not overestimate their skills and intelligence to access all functionality availabilities and promoted advantages. Any call to action you create is to be obvious and all-sufficient allowing customers to understand and take advantage of the offer easily.

The True Cost of Poor Performance

JAY SMITH, FOUNDER & CTO, LAGRANGE SYSTEMS

Jay founded Lagrange Systems in 2012 and currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer of the company. Jay received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Colorado State University in 2008. Introduction: http://magentolive.com/au/. Presentation/Video.

And, the last presentation of our overview is on the Magento performance and shows that proactive standing for excellent shopping experience is able to generate much more sales.

We all know that customers always want to have only great shopping experience and start leaving your site even from the first second of delay in response. They also do not accept poor functionality and unattractive user interfaces that might increase the speed of your store. They want everything and now.

Proactive standing for excellent shopping experience is able to generate much more sales

So, where is the way out? Flexible infrastructure using a variable number of cloud servers to maintain your web site is the answer. Still, that’s the latest resort for your Magento store in those cases, when all other must-have performance improvements are already made. Great code and proper acceleration, including caching and assets optimization can make the performance of your web store much faster.

And, in order to get ready for any possible traffic spikes you need to constantly monitor your site and perform load testing in such conditions that are possibly not typical for your current audience.

Conclusion

As you see, the overview touches different sensitive points crucial for online sales. SEO, email marketing, and performance optimization are the things you can’t ignore in any circumstances, and we hope that you found this reading both amusing and useful for your further ecommerce adjustments.