The recession had a profound impact on buyer behavior. Shoppers started doing more research, more bargain hunting and the consumer decision making process got a little longer (per our research, 12% longer.. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/technology/04drill.html).
We decided to conduct an experiment on our consumer electronics clients between October 1, 2012- Nov 30, 2012. This time overlapped with the Black Friday weekend and consumer electronics being a popular holiday item, we wanted to track the latency of conversions from paid search (by tracking the time lapse between first click and purchase). We used our technology, LXRRetail’s tracking system for this purpose since it has a flexible cookie period advantage (we can select and change the time period for which the cookie needs to remain active).
– 80% of all orders came within 4 days of the first click.
– 95% of all orders came within 23 days of first click.
– 99% of clicks came within 40 days of first click.
Marketers need to be sensitive to this shift in consumer behavior when they plan their marketing programs (not just search but all marketing campaigns).
For search this becomes important because the keyword portfolio composition can change based on this .. also the tracking mechanisms being used may need to be re-looked at.
– Udayan Bose
