Google vs Bing conversion rate analysis
Google still the top search engine, but Bing conversion rates better
Conversion rate research data on Google Vs Bing
Together with David Mackley and Stephanie Jerome I recently did a series of presentations at the Autumn Fair all about e-commerce websites and online marketing issues. This Internationally acclaimed retail trade fair was attended by retailers from all over Europe, keen to both buy in new stock ranges for their shops and to learn techniques which may help them sell more products.
The presentations were structured at a fairly basic level and were focussed at the steps needed to get online with a retail website, get found in the search engines and to then convert visits into sales in an online retail website. At the presentations I stressed the point that Google should be the main emphasis of any online marketing campaign for a retailer with a website in the UK. It's easy to understand why I said this...the simple fact is that Google currently has the UK search market sown up with, around 90% of current UK search traffic. If you're going to target a market... make sure it's a big one goes the logic. But is this the only factor that needs to be considered?
Bing, the new kid on the block
A few months ago now, Microsoft launched a completely new search engine called 'Bing'. This new search engine promises even more accurate search results and faster indexing, but it seems that Microsoft's new offering has a few more tricks up it's sleeve!
Ever since Bing was launched, I've been keeping an eye on certain aspects of the search engine's behaviour, one of which is conversion rates compared to Google results. Conversion rates for any E-commerce website are very important - it's no good getting lots of unique website users if you are then going to lose them all before you actually getting a sale... an e-commerce website is after all a virtual store front and it's there to sell you something, so bad conversion rates tell you that something is not right!
The conversions funnel
Those of you versed in online selling will know that retail website users are much more likely to purchase when they have a clear idea of a product to buy. For this reason, 'long tail' search results are much more likely to result in a sale then the more generic (no brand / product led) 'short tail' keyword terms in results. What online retailers really need are lots (and lots and lots!) of long tail keywords specific to products coming up in search results... although these longer tail phrases give less traffic, they are more focussed on the actual products and therefore much more likely to convert to a sale.
The conversions funnel therefore can be visualised as having short tail keywords at the top (with more visits per phrase) and long tail keyphrases on the bottom (with less visits but more conversions)... it's infact a 2-way matrix.
Google vs Bing conversions
I've done analysis on a range of our customers results, one of which Cozymole sells a great range of outdoor clothing. All of the data so far suggests that Google traffic is converting at around 3.5% - the industry average for an e-commerce website.
Compare this to the Bing data for the same website... you can see a MUCH higher conversion rate, which is above average for the whole range of retail websites worldwide. Things are looking good!
Google vs Bing traffic analysis
Looking at the traffic from both of the search engines, it's very evident that (as said in my presentations at the NEC) Google is certainly the top dog in providing the most search traffic... infact Google provides at the moment (for the sample of our sites I tested) around 1000% more traffic than the fledgling search engine Bing. BUT (and it's a pretty big BUT!) take a look at the results that are being served up by each of the engines.
See all of those 'short tail' terms coming up at the top of results? Google is serving up much more generic search terms in it's search results, meaning that the website's owners are much more likely to get a sale from a Bing search result than a Google one.
Now if we had the traffic of the Google search engine and the conversions of Bing that really would be something... that would need UK wide adoption of this new search engine by the buying public. Here's hoping!