I spent the weekend at my parents house this weekend and had the opportunity to watch my dad use the internet. Now, my dad uses a computer at work, knows excel, uses Skype and has a Hotmail account but what the weekend really showed me was how the mind of a 62 year old Technophobe really works and whilst this is by no means the general consensus for everyone it made me think how Search campaigns should be tailored to cater for them.
To set the scene. He was looking for a new leather cover for his brand new Samsung Galaxy S2 (I won’t even go into the length of time it’ll take me to teach him to use it!). He asked me where he could get one so I suggested he went to eBay. Here’s the path he took.
- Type eBay into the URL bar on Firefox
- He’s presented with a paid search ad for eBay, an organic search listing for eBay, and a eBay motors organic search listing
- Realising that eBay has a motor section, rather than click directly on any of the listings he then starts to type “eBay mobile phone cover” into the search box.
- Presented with the results. He then reads all of the listings and chooses the listing which makes sense.
Now, looking at the above I’ve learnt a few things.
- He assumes that the URL bar is a search bar – this shows that destination PPC is still very important. Make sure you bid on your brand. It also shows that if Google continues to own Chrome and Firefox default search, Bing may have an issue.
- Despite knowing what a search engine is and using it, he was influenced by the results and felt that his original search wasn’t detailed enough based on the results he was presented. The long tail is extremely important, be visible for all variations of products you have as well and brand+product, it matters.
- He reads through every single ad copy, a lot, and only clicks when he finds exactly what he are looking for. If you are using long tail keywords make sure the copy is as tailored as possible.
