So two big improvements rolled out last week for a number of our SmartCircular Grocery clients that integrate 3rd party display ads in and around their weekly ad sites.
1. For the SuperValu SmartCircular sites that ShopLocal operates, display ads have now been integrated within the HTML / low bandwidth version so as to maximize display ad revenue generation. In the words of our forefathers, “let no page view go un-monetized”.
So a single leaderboard ad unit has been added within the header area of all of the HTML versions of the SuperValu SmartCircular sites.
2. For the Ahold SmartCircular sites that ShopLocal operates, an enhancement was made that finally maximizes the amount of revenue that can be generated via display ads on the site. The prior issue that this adjustment solves is that all of the page views that occurred within the browse by page modes only got one (1) single ad impression served regardless of the number of page views generated. This was roughly a 10:1 ratio. Ten page views generated, one ad served overall. Now however, this ratio is exactly equal, in that every page view now is getting an ad impression served. 10:10 is where we are.
By tightening up the integration between the flash page turning component and the publisher ad server, many more ad impressions can be delivered per user session.
Within ShopLocal’s SmartCircular suite of solutions, there are two main options that retail advertisers pick from. A more simple SmartCircular 2.0 site or a more engaging and feature rich SmartCircular 4.1 site.
Coming soon to clients that are currently using the SmartCircular 2.0 solution for their weekly ads is a entirely rebuilt from the ground up animated page turning component. With this new Adobe Flex/Flash based animated circular page turning component (that internally here at ShopLocal is called the hybrid movie), the following are some of the key benefits that this new release delivers on (in no particular order):
- Deep integration into ShopLocal’s publisher ad server (DFP) so that those retailers that choose to deploy display ads around the content within their circular site, every possible page view generated by users can now have a banner ad served, thereby maximizing revenue generation
- Much improved web analytic integration and event queuing/firing mechanisms which will have higher accuracy in some fringe use cases
- New smart page slider bar with visual look ahead and progress bar meter. Also this page slider bar dynamically appears below really long circular pages to help with vertical page scroll usability issues
- Re-worked back end data integration so that the robust SDAPI is now powering the animated page turning experience
- Rollover impression tracking is enabled automatically and will aide wisdom of the crowds accuracy rates
- Reduced ongoing maintenance costs for both ShopLocal and the retailer
- Quicker time to market for any new features that either ShopLocal or the retailer wants to deploy
For a look at one of first clients to have this deployed to, check out Big 5 Sporting Goods SmartCircular 2.0 site
Here is the front cover of a circular being displayed within the updated animated page turning component. Notice the enhanced UI of the page turning component and the addition of a page slider bar.
Here is a spread or two page view with the page slider visual look ahead feature engaged. This will allow users to get a better idea of what is contained within an specific page without first having to actual turn there.
Constant improvement is a mantra here at ShopLocal. To that end, the team knew there was room for improvement in our popularity ranking algorithm that we call “Wisdom of the Crowds” (WoC).
The current system for determining product popularity only counted those products that a shopper specifically clicked on. There are a number of product level clicks that are counted in terms of a shopper expressing interest such as a product detail page, a buy online click or an add to a shopping list click (which are cumulatively called Expressions of Interest). Not any more. The ShopLocal team has begun collecting and counting another key piece of consumer interest data – product rollovers.
By factoring in both product rollover data AND expression of interest data, the overall Wisdom of the Crowds ranking data is all the richer and accurate. This process of collecting and using rollover data for SmartCircular sites is underway and will complete over the next month or so for all clients, SC sites and versions of SmartCircular.
At a macro level, what we have learned so far about rollover data is:
- Rollovers are on average about 5x as common as Expressions Of Interest. This means by adding them to the Wisdom of the Crowds calculation, the overall popularity ranking data should become much more accurate and more truly reflect actual consumer interest.
- Rollover usage varies significantly by retailer. No surprise given all the variation in UI/UX out there within weekly ad sites. Also some sites don’t even use rollovers. Or on other sites, the rollovers are down played. In any case, we are now tracking them all so as to extract the most useful and complete set of consumer interest data as possible.
Illustrated here is a specific product level rollover that has been triggered by a user rolling over a predefined hotspot region that is overlaid on top of the circular page view images. When talking about rollover tracking, what is actual being tracked is the number of times, for a specific product, a rollover is triggered and left open for at least 2 seconds. If it meets that criteria, it would be counted as one (1) rollover for the product.
Here is a quick snapshot of some early returns from a 6 day sample set of data across 20 retailers:
- # of total product level exposures: 1,006,078,269
- # of total product rollovers: 25,620,887
- # of total product specific indicators of interests expressed: 4,532,430
- Overall ratio of interest divided by rollovers: 18%
- Rollover trigger rate (of overall total product exposure) : 2.55%
- Interest trigger rate (of overall total product exposure): 0.45%
- Total CTR (rollovers + interest): 3.00%
UPDATE 1/21: The ShopLocal analyst team just today cranked out a nice little additional stat on this topic that is worth sharing. The correlation of interest/exposure ranks compared to the rollover/exposure ranks, on average overall is 0.6636 Meaning that rollovers are for most sites a good measure of interest. Maybe think of it this way. This correlation helps prove that the items a user rolls over are likely the very ones that they end up taking other subsequent action at a later point in their site visit.
A classic question that retailers often ask ShopLocal employees recently re-surfaced. “What’s the value to upgrading to ShopLocal’s latest and greatest circular platform (called SmartCircular 4.1)?”
The answer is simple. Across the board lifts on nearly every success metric such as on average page views went up 15% and 45% increase in the direct interaction of shoppers with the content.
For four (4) recent real retailers (their names have been removed to protect their identity, but are super big name retailers that everyone would recognize) that have choose to make this upgrade, here are the actual percentage % lifts that this site upgrade delivered:
Click the image to view the full size version of the table.
NOTE: User interest equates to detail views + adds to shopping lists + buy online clicks
For each retailer, here are the most noteworthy results that shown in the above table:
- Retailer A: Helping get their shoppers to go deeper with specific products and view an item detail page (+459%) and overall getting those same shoppers to be more engaged with the advertising content overall (+39%)
- Retailer B: Making the in-store printable shopping list a more useful and easy-to-use pre-shopping tool (+206%) and overall getting those same shoppers to be more engaged with the advertising content overall (+68%)
- Retailer C: Providing a better way for their shoppers to browse the weekly ad in circular page modes (+17%) and bringing to the center and increasing the usage of the most powerful ROBO shopper indicator of intent – the shopping list (+33%)
- Retailer D: Getting their users to stay and engage with more of the overall weekly ad site (+80%) and bringing to the center and increasing the usage of the most powerful ROBO shopper indicator of intent – the shopping list (+38%)
As of June 1st 2009, all of ShopLocal (on a global product basis) is 100% off of the internal (eg ShopLocal) hosted AOL MapQuest mapping and geocoding solutions and fully reliant upon Google Maps for mapping & driving direction capabilities and Pitney Bowes for geocoding. This has been one of the easiest ways to save on some needless IT expense AND at the same time offer my designers and developers a richer, more intuitive set of tools and mapping capabilities AND offer the site end users a more interactive, feature rich on-site mapping experience. That is a win – win – win all the way around. The team can’t be more happy with the new providers and how the integration has gone.
ShopLocal uses Google Maps in a few ways including:
- Store Finder / Store Locator (sort of a legacy product line for ShopLocal)
- Store Maps
- Maps & Driving Directions (typically within a SmartCircular 2.0 site)
Here is an example of a store finder that ShopLocal has hosted for years for the Indianapolis based Marsh Supermarkets.
This is the starting point of the store locator where a user must enter either their ZIP code or City, State pair to begin the store location search process
Once a user enters a ZIP code or City, State pair the store locator brings back a list of nearby store locations that are plotted on the Google map, along with a handy link to the right version of the weekly ad for that specific store location
If a user wants driving directions, it is very easy to generate the start - to - end point style directions
Here is one other example of what a Google Maps driven store maps implementation looks like within the SmartCircular 2.0 platform:
Typical SmartCircular 2.0 site with Google Maps integrated in a native manner. This interface provides the maps & driving direction "feature"
One final note. For retailer store location geo-coding, the ShopLocal team has opted NOT to use Google Maps but instead has created a new relationship with the Pitney Bowes owned MapInfo to use one of their geo-coding technologies. The reasons for doing so were pretty simple:
- Google Maps API limits a user to pretty small number of geocoding requests per day
- Google Maps terms of use prohibit the re-syndication / re-distribution of any geocode information that the Google Maps API returns
With Pitney Bowes, both of these are non-issues which is really key when your business is all about data syndication and distribution.
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