The third #MYCYBERSALE is coming this September and this is an opportunity not to be missed by merchants in Malaysia to boost your online presence and sales.
The third #MYCYBERSALE is coming this September and this is an opportunity not to be missed by merchants in Malaysia to boost your online presence and sales.
Previous editions of #MYCYBERSALE have delivered great results as a whole, in which you can refer to the results in 2014 and 2015 in infographic.
As online merchants, are you ready for this? We recommend to prepare in advance, even months ahead and here we share 10 practical tips for you the gain the most of #MYCYBERSALE.
Most banners above do not have a clear offer message, some even have none, and some are too crowded. This is not directed to any specific merchants but many others not shown above are having the same flaw.
It is good to learn from many existing bold promotions executed by brick & mortars, for example the common loss-leaders tactic by grocers, 'closing' down sale (you wonder whether they are really closing), and even those beer promo by bars.
Perhaps online merchants can learn a thing or two from there, for example offering RM1 deals (with limited quantities). For upcoming #MYCYBERSALE, we recommend to run different promo on daily basis.
Since this is 'free' marketing (awareness, traffic) facilitated by MDeC so should you take this opportunity to focus on customer acquisition instead of immediate profit?
Again, we have to use some examples from past #MYCYBERSALE website and inferior design shouldn't be tolerated if you are running a serious online business.
Design is arguably under-valued in this part of the world, but shouldn't online merchants invest more effort into design?
From our perspective, the banners design above are lacking due to:
• No clear message, design is too crowded
• Poor taste of font and color usage
• In short, no clue on what is being promoted
For banners to be displayed on #MYCYBERSALE website, is there a need to include #MYCYBERSALE logo within the banner? Visitors are already on #MYCYBERSALE website so this is might not be necessary.
Nevertheless, it is good to display your own brand logo and show key product or promo, just play with the limited banner space smartly.
For further web banner design tips, read our previous article on 7 tips of highly effective web banner design.
The importance of banner design cannot be neglected as the higher CTR (click-through rates) on the banner means the more visits to your website.
This is fundamental yet often overlooked, here we present 5 basic checklist for your e-commerce site, not limited to #MYCYBERSALE preparation:
• Do you offer sufficient payment options?
• Is your website content (product & policy) complete?
• Is your website mobile or responsive?
• Is your website speed good enough?
• Is your operation (fulfillment, CS) ready?
We have also shared recently via our mobile-commerce growth report as visits to website in Malaysia via mobile has just overtook desktop since early year 2016.
When users click on your banner at #MYCYBERSALE website, what is the best page for users to land at your website?
• Product page?
• Category (or search results) page?
• Home page?
• Campaign page?
For #MYCYBERSALE, we recommend developing a dedicated campaign page with the following characteristics:
• Show key offer / star products
• Limited-time only / sense of urgency
• Show discount / price before vs after
• Display as many products as possible (lazy load)
• Show products rank / quantity sold count, if feasible?
• Include 'mycybersale' in the URL (read more on #7 below)
It will be best if you acquire emails in this campaign page too, and you can send them daily exclusive promo email throughout #MYCYBERSALE campaign.
If you plan to entice the users with coupon, you might want to read more on 3 secrets of successful coupon strategy revealed.
After users land at your campaign page, you hope they will be clicking into your product pages right?
Therefore, it is important to optimize your key product pages in 3 easy steps below:
1. Choose key products
2. Make it visual
3. Make it 'long', if applicable
Well, this is easier said than done, just take a look at the effort being committed by this merchant. It takes hours to build an appealing product page, but you can be selective on which product pages of yours to optimize for a start.
If feasible, don't forget to upsell in your product page, check the smart upsell skills by a top merchant in Lelong.my below:
As you can see above, users might be tempted into this product page with the 128 GB photo only to find out RM16,99 is meant for 8GB spec, and all the storage sizes are conveniently available in this product page.
This is basic but still some merchants charge unreasonable shipping fees, so please review your shipping charges, seriously.
Anything above RM8 (to peninsular) should be re-considered, otherwise this might be your show-stopper, handbrake will be pulled while checking out the shopping cart.
Unless you have specific reasons, free shipping above certain threshold should be offered.
For example, if your AOV (average order volume) is RM80+, try offer free shipping with minimum purchase of RM100 and you can track whether your AOV will be increased too.
Just keep testing to find out the best free shipping threshold to offer.
Due to the online and offline (print, broadcast) marketing reach, users tend to search for 'mycybersale' keyword on Google.
As you can see from the chart below, 'mycybersale' searches peak once a year in 2014 and 2015.
If we go into the details via Google Keyword Planner, there are around 58,600 searches during September and October 2015.
This is an opportunity not to be missed as you can drive searches to visit your online store, via search engine marketing (SEM, or paid searches) and / or organic searches (SEO).
From our observations in previous years, the cost-per-click for this particular keyword tends to increase marginally during the #MYCYBERSALE campaign days.
Therefore, it will be great if you can prepare a campaign page (refer back to #4 above) dedicated to #MYCYBERSALE and make it permanent for SEO considerations.
You can do a search now and check out the sites who rank highly organically, and find out why they secure good rankings on Google.
Our advice is start building the campaign page early.
Besides searches, another mode of content discovery is via hashtag on social media, on Facebook and arguably even more on Instagram and Twitter.
It will be good to include the 'mycybersale' hashtag whenever you are promoting your offer via social media channels.
Just refer to some best practices below on hashtag usage:
• Don't abuse hashtag: Don't spam and don't overuse
• Promote good content: Attractive promo, use good visuals
• Start conversations: Plan for quiz, contest, rewards
• It can be #LOL stuffs: Be creative to engage with audience
You can also read our Instagram series to learn how to get the best from Instagram.
If you don't already know, #MYCYBERSALE has a LINE Official Account since 2014 and there are more than 200K followers at the time of writing.
Besides the #MYCYBERSALE website itself, LINE Official Account facilitates another source of significant traffic to merchant's website.
What you can do is to propose attractive deals to be reviewed then featured in the LINE blasts, users attention lifespan on mobile is short so best to promote no-brainer deals.
On each #MYCYBERSALE, its LINE Official Account has delivered:
• >200K visits to participating merchants' website
• >10K orders to participating merchants
• >6% conversion rates (orders / visits)
Data above is just based on reported figures, excluding those uncollected data. If you think you can offer attractive deals as per shown in visual above, don't miss the opportunity this time around.
Up to this point, we have been focusing on getting organic (free) traffic from:
• #MYCYBERSALE website
• #MYCYBERSALE LINE Official Account
• Target search terms
• Target social hashtags
Don't forget to also promote your #MYCYBERSALE campaign via below-the-line (BTL) channels like email newsletter and social media accounts to your existing subscribers and customers.
Try to send daily EDM throughout #MYCYBERSALE, avoid generic promo and entice your email subscribers with #MYCYBERSALE exclusive promo.
Besides BTL, you can also consider executing paid ads to boost traffic to your online store. On advertising, you can either do-it-yourself or engage an experienced digital marketing agency to support your campaigns.
That's it! Hope this is helpful for you and have a great #MYCYBERSALE ahead!
Previous editions of #MYCYBERSALE have delivered great results as a whole, in which you can refer to the results in 2014 and 2015 in infographic.
As online merchants, are you ready for this? We recommend to prepare in advance, even months ahead and here we share 10 practical tips for you the gain the most of #MYCYBERSALE.
#1. Offer loss-leaders promo
First, let's take a look at some of the offerings by merchants in #MYCYBERSALE 2015. Any of these promo banners below attract you at a glance?
Most banners above do not have a clear offer message, some even have none, and some are too crowded. This is not directed to any specific merchants but many others not shown above are having the same flaw.
It is good to learn from many existing bold promotions executed by brick & mortars, for example the common loss-leaders tactic by grocers, 'closing' down sale (you wonder whether they are really closing), and even those beer promo by bars.
Perhaps online merchants can learn a thing or two from there, for example offering RM1 deals (with limited quantities). For upcoming #MYCYBERSALE, we recommend to run different promo on daily basis.
Since this is 'free' marketing (awareness, traffic) facilitated by MDeC so should you take this opportunity to focus on customer acquisition instead of immediate profit?
#2. Design appealing banners
Again, we have to use some examples from past #MYCYBERSALE website and inferior design shouldn't be tolerated if you are running a serious online business.
Design is arguably under-valued in this part of the world, but shouldn't online merchants invest more effort into design?
From our perspective, the banners design above are lacking due to:
• No clear message, design is too crowded
• Poor taste of font and color usage
• In short, no clue on what is being promoted
For banners to be displayed on #MYCYBERSALE website, is there a need to include #MYCYBERSALE logo within the banner? Visitors are already on #MYCYBERSALE website so this is might not be necessary.
Nevertheless, it is good to display your own brand logo and show key product or promo, just play with the limited banner space smartly.
For further web banner design tips, read our previous article on 7 tips of highly effective web banner design.
The importance of banner design cannot be neglected as the higher CTR (click-through rates) on the banner means the more visits to your website.
#3. Make your website mobile & ready
This is fundamental yet often overlooked, here we present 5 basic checklist for your e-commerce site, not limited to #MYCYBERSALE preparation:
• Do you offer sufficient payment options?
• Is your website content (product & policy) complete?
• Is your website mobile or responsive?
• Is your website speed good enough?
• Is your operation (fulfillment, CS) ready?
It will be a crime if you don't already know how important is mobile nowadays, just take a look at last year's #MYCYBERSALE where as 58% of the website traffic was originating from mobile.
We have also shared recently via our mobile-commerce growth report as visits to website in Malaysia via mobile has just overtook desktop since early year 2016.
#4. Develop a campaign page
When users click on your banner at #MYCYBERSALE website, what is the best page for users to land at your website?
• Product page?
• Category (or search results) page?
• Home page?
• Campaign page?
For #MYCYBERSALE, we recommend developing a dedicated campaign page with the following characteristics:
• Show key offer / star products
• Limited-time only / sense of urgency
• Show discount / price before vs after
• Display as many products as possible (lazy load)
• Show products rank / quantity sold count, if feasible?
• Include 'mycybersale' in the URL (read more on #7 below)
It will be best if you acquire emails in this campaign page too, and you can send them daily exclusive promo email throughout #MYCYBERSALE campaign.
If you plan to entice the users with coupon, you might want to read more on 3 secrets of successful coupon strategy revealed.
#5. Optimize key product pages
After users land at your campaign page, you hope they will be clicking into your product pages right?
Therefore, it is important to optimize your key product pages in 3 easy steps below:
1. Choose key products
2. Make it visual
3. Make it 'long', if applicable
Well, this is easier said than done, just take a look at the effort being committed by this merchant. It takes hours to build an appealing product page, but you can be selective on which product pages of yours to optimize for a start.
If feasible, don't forget to upsell in your product page, check the smart upsell skills by a top merchant in Lelong.my below:
As you can see above, users might be tempted into this product page with the 128 GB photo only to find out RM16,99 is meant for 8GB spec, and all the storage sizes are conveniently available in this product page.
#6. Review your shipping fees
This is basic but still some merchants charge unreasonable shipping fees, so please review your shipping charges, seriously.
Anything above RM8 (to peninsular) should be re-considered, otherwise this might be your show-stopper, handbrake will be pulled while checking out the shopping cart.
Unless you have specific reasons, free shipping above certain threshold should be offered.
For example, if your AOV (average order volume) is RM80+, try offer free shipping with minimum purchase of RM100 and you can track whether your AOV will be increased too.
Just keep testing to find out the best free shipping threshold to offer.
#7. Target search keywords
Due to the online and offline (print, broadcast) marketing reach, users tend to search for 'mycybersale' keyword on Google.
As you can see from the chart below, 'mycybersale' searches peak once a year in 2014 and 2015.
 |
| Source: Google Trends |
If we go into the details via Google Keyword Planner, there are around 58,600 searches during September and October 2015.
 |
| Source: Google Keyword Planner |
This is an opportunity not to be missed as you can drive searches to visit your online store, via search engine marketing (SEM, or paid searches) and / or organic searches (SEO).
From our observations in previous years, the cost-per-click for this particular keyword tends to increase marginally during the #MYCYBERSALE campaign days.
Therefore, it will be great if you can prepare a campaign page (refer back to #4 above) dedicated to #MYCYBERSALE and make it permanent for SEO considerations.
You can do a search now and check out the sites who rank highly organically, and find out why they secure good rankings on Google.
Our advice is start building the campaign page early.
#8. Use hashtag on social media
Besides searches, another mode of content discovery is via hashtag on social media, on Facebook and arguably even more on Instagram and Twitter.
It will be good to include the 'mycybersale' hashtag whenever you are promoting your offer via social media channels.
Just refer to some best practices below on hashtag usage:
• Don't abuse hashtag: Don't spam and don't overuse
• Promote good content: Attractive promo, use good visuals
• Start conversations: Plan for quiz, contest, rewards
• It can be #LOL stuffs: Be creative to engage with audience
You can also read our Instagram series to learn how to get the best from Instagram.
#9. Participate in LINE campaign
If you don't already know, #MYCYBERSALE has a LINE Official Account since 2014 and there are more than 200K followers at the time of writing.
Besides the #MYCYBERSALE website itself, LINE Official Account facilitates another source of significant traffic to merchant's website.
What you can do is to propose attractive deals to be reviewed then featured in the LINE blasts, users attention lifespan on mobile is short so best to promote no-brainer deals.
On each #MYCYBERSALE, its LINE Official Account has delivered:
• >200K visits to participating merchants' website
• >10K orders to participating merchants
• >6% conversion rates (orders / visits)
Data above is just based on reported figures, excluding those uncollected data. If you think you can offer attractive deals as per shown in visual above, don't miss the opportunity this time around.
#10. Send EDM and consider paid ads
Up to this point, we have been focusing on getting organic (free) traffic from:
• #MYCYBERSALE website
• #MYCYBERSALE LINE Official Account
• Target search terms
• Target social hashtags
Don't forget to also promote your #MYCYBERSALE campaign via below-the-line (BTL) channels like email newsletter and social media accounts to your existing subscribers and customers.
Try to send daily EDM throughout #MYCYBERSALE, avoid generic promo and entice your email subscribers with #MYCYBERSALE exclusive promo.
Besides BTL, you can also consider executing paid ads to boost traffic to your online store. On advertising, you can either do-it-yourself or engage an experienced digital marketing agency to support your campaigns.
That's it! Hope this is helpful for you and have a great #MYCYBERSALE ahead!
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