July Invelity news

Summer is in full swing and, with the arrival of hot sunny days, people have split into two groups — those who are motivated and drawing energy from the sun, and those who have had their fill of the heat and are stubbornly waiting for autumn. We belong to the first group, and this month we again bring you the hottest news from the world of online marketing.

PPC

Instagram replaces the activity tab with Shop

As part of a global test, the traditional heart icon in Instagram's navigation will be replaced by a shopping bag icon. Tapping it takes you to the Instagram Shop section introduced back in May. The feature will be available to selected Instagram users worldwide; until now it was available only in the USA.

Google's 3D Swirl ad format is available in DV360

Swirl, the interactive display ad format for mobile devices that Google began testing last year, is now available worldwide to Display & Video 360 customers. In Swirl ads, users can rotate, zoom and expand 3D elements. In its announcement Google said the brands testing the ads include Purina, Nissan, Adidas and Belvedere Vodka.

A change in how responsive banners look

You may have noticed when building new banner campaigns that new display options are now available for your banners. You can use automatic improvements to your ads' layout, and also turn images and copy into an automatically generated mini video. It looks genuinely splendid; we certainly recommend using and enabling these new improvements within banner ads.

New features to raise sales from Google shopping campaigns

Shopping campaigns hold an ever more significant place in these dynamic market conditions — not least because we show, in real time as the user searches, exactly the price and product they need and are looking for. A new feature is now in testing that should help shopping campaigns distinguish better between repeat orders from existing customers and entirely new ones from new customers, through a designated value assigned to a conversion or purchase from a new customer. That will let us optimise shopping campaigns better.

Google Analytics gains new "predictions"

In the new Google Analytics App+Web it is now possible to build a new predictive audience. With it we can, for instance, build an audience of people with the highest potential to buy and then target ads at them better. When building audiences you can choose from the audiences Google suggests.

Analyse customer activity with predictive metrics

Besides building audiences, you can use predictive metrics to analyse your data. You can find out, for example, which marketing campaign brought you the users most likely to buy. The purchase probability of users from different marketing campaigns.

Social

On Instagram you can pin comments

At the start of May Instagram began testing the option of pinning comments. From July the feature is live for users globally. In practice it means you can pin several comments at the top of a post so they appear first. The main advantage is that highlighting positive comments shapes how the conversation develops.

Pinning comments is aimed primarily at control and at the ability to highlight the most suitable responses, pushing negative ones into the background. Since the feature is new, we still have to watch which direction it takes in practice.

Its success also depends on how engaged the fans are: some may be motivated to lend support by positive responses, while others will feel a disconnect between the comments. Another advantage is the option of highlighting frequently asked questions and answers about a product or brand.

Facebook has introduced GIF sharing

On Facebook you can upload GIF files the ordinary way, as images or videos in the news feed. The advantage is that you need not rely on external GIF hosting services.

Facebook was long wary of bringing GIFs to its platform, the reason being a negative user experience. So use of the option was heavily limited for a long time. Publishing an animated image was first made possible through the now well-known GIPHY service. Later it was extended to Pages and comments. At present GIF sharing is available only on desktop, not yet on mobile devices.

SEO

More than 25% of people click the first Google search result

According to a new study by Sistrix, the first organic search result has an average click-through rate of 28.5% on Google. The company analysed over 80 million keywords and a billion search results to find out how clicks work in Google search. Google's click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage showing how often people click search results.

At the second position the average click-through rate falls markedly to 15.7%, and the third position has an 11% CTR. It is no surprise that the tenth position on Google has an average click-through rate of 2.5%.

The lowest click-through rates belong to commercial searches showing Google Shopping (13.7%) or Google Ads (18.8%).

On the second page the CTR was markedly below one percent for every position. Besides which, users rarely reach the second page of results. That is why this analysis focused only on the first page. It means that if you are not on the first page, Google users will not find you.

Google is building a new way of raising traffic through image search

An update to Google Images creates a new way for site owners to raise traffic through their photographs.

The new feature in Google Images launched this week in the USA. It brings quick information about what is shown in the photographs. That information appears below the photographs once clicked.

According to Google the update is meant to help searchers explore the information they are looking for in more detail. Thanks to the added information beneath the photograph, traffic to the website showing the image should rise. That need not be the rule, though, since the information beneath the photographs can come from various sources.

Perhaps the best part of the update is that it requires no action from site owners. Google will improve your image search snippets entirely on its own.

WordPress and development

WooCommerce 4.1 with the Marketing Hub

The new WooCommerce 4.1 update arrives with a Marketing Hub right inside WordPress. It is meant to help shop owners who want to reach more customers by giving them the tools to do so. To begin with it offers only the most-used extensions, but further development is planned.

More of our articles can also be found on Marketeris.sk