We reward for High Quality Traffic
Here at Shopzilla we like to place great emphasis on the quality of traffic that publishers send to our merchants. As a publisher you have a huge influence on the quality of the traffic you direct to us. By providing quality traffic, it’s also a way for you to maximise your earnings, as our CPCs are dependent on it. (For more info see Shopzilla’s smart pricing). Lately we’ve often been asked how you as a publisher can optimise your traffic quality. To help you improve your sites and ensure they always drive the highest quality of traffic possible, we have put together some tips.
1 - Good user experience: Use contextually relevant ads so that your visitors can relate to them to the content and therefore to themselves. With the Dynamic banners make sure you use keywords that are as specific as possible to ensure the best results. Maybe you can use the info you have about your visitors (demographics, interest) in order to showcase the most relevant products. Your visitors will love shopping advice that they can relate to. Not only will the traffic quality increase but potentially so will your click-through rate.
2 - Relevancy: You as a publisher can add a lot of value to assisting one of your users in their buying decision. As a good publisher you will offer all the information that is required to decide on a purchase (or get people keen to shop) before actually having to click trough to BizRate. So make sure that the products that you are promoting on your site are as relevant as possible to the content. All this will help to achieve highter click trough rates and CPCs.
3 - Indicate advertising: It’s sometimes worth letting your visitors know that they are going to BizRate. In that way your users won’t be disappointed to find themselves off your page without intending to be, but are very aware of being taken to a shopping portal if they click. People will love your shopping hints even more. Note: some of our dynamic banners mention it’s a BizRate ad, but if you choose to go for text links for a product pod this is not the case.
4 - Let the user decide to click: Don’t offer your visitors an incentive to click on an Shopzilla Publisher ad. Visitors who just click for the sake of it, don’t normally make a contribution to your traffic quality, and this conduct is, in fact, not allowed according to our Publisher Program’s T&Cs.
5 - Optimise your landing page: Try linking to BizRate rather than to merchants directly (if you are not already using this method). In that way your visitor has more products to choose from if he or she hasn’t decided what to buy yet. Of course this may vary if you are writing a blog post or product review on a very specific product, where it makes sense to link to the shops that carry your described product.
6 - Use placement ids: Give your ads a placement ID so that you can monitor the success of each one. Use your EPC data to focus on camplaigns/ads that are performing well and optimise those that are of lower quality. When testing new approaches, it is advisable to set up a new campaign starting with a small volume of traffic, so you can check that the traffic quality is meeting both your and our expectations.
7 - Utilise reports: We have different reports available that show your performance in slightly different ways. Look at your daily EPCs. We also recommend looking at your data over a longer period of time before making any conclusions of the changes you may need to make. The reason for this is that if you are a small volume publisher your results may vary a lot from day to day. This may also be the case if you are a new publisher. The Shopzilla Publisher team is also always willing to help you to look more into your quality traffic. Just give them a shout.
8 - Right mix of advertising: build consumer trust by not over-implementing ads. Too many can make your site look too commercial and it’s hard for people to choose where to click in addition to getting distracted from the great content you actually have on your site. To find the right number of ads is not always easy, but again, it’s worth trying out different positions, different formats and styles. Placement IDs may help you to find the right mix.
9 - Ensure quality for traffic sources: The source of traffic to your website should be high quality no matter if you are getting most your visitors through organic search, paid listings or have a loyal audience. If you buy traffic to your site, make sure that it is well targeted, which is also applicable for any SEO optimisations. Our Publisher Program works best for publishers who wish to ad a shopping element to their site as their visitors are interested in buying and tend to be more product-oriented.
10 - Dialogue with the publisher team: Whether you are not finding the right advertising for your site, or struggling with another issue please don’t hesitate to reach out to Emma or Diana. We are here for you, so that the Shopzilla Publisher Program works for you as much as it works for us. We are always more then happy to give you a helping hand and look into ways of what can be done in particular cases, as all our publishers are unique. Check out our blog regularly or follow us on twitter (@shopzillaUK) for useful advice that may help you to get the most out of the program.
