Perhaps unsurprisingly, it seems bricks and mortar retailers with an online presence are lagging far, far behind their online counterparts in executing an effective search engine marketing strategy. A recent study in the US found that 30% of search results for retail goods were online retailers, compared to just 12% for bricks and mortar retailers. This is sure to be worrying for the b’n'm retailers, who rely on their strong offline brand to drive traffic to their online presence. The study examined search results for products across many categories: digital cameras, power drills, gaming systems, MP3Players, snow blowers, strollers, treadmills, TVs, GPS systems, and watches.
So I decided to do a bit of quasi-research for myself to check on the situation in Australia. I searched Google Australia for two products – a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX37 digital camera, and a Seiko Kinetic Auto Relay watch – and analysed the first two pages of results.
Here’s what happened (number of mentions):
| Panasonic camera | Seiko watch | |
| Online retailers | 7 | 9 |
| Shopping comparison sites | 13 | 7 |
| Reviews & media | 5 | 1 |
| Manufacturer sites | 0 | 3 |
| Bricks & mortar retailers | 1 | 3 |
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It seems the situation in Australia is even more dire than in the USA. Online retailers dominate search results in Australia – and shopping comparison sites dominate even moreso than in the USA, which is interesting, considering our local versions are far less developed. Bricks and mortar retailers barely rate a mention.
In a country where retailers like Harvey Norman are still wondering whether the e-commerce is the future and most others have half-hearted online presences, this is hardly surprising. If bricks and mortar retailers are to compete online, most of them need to get the basics right – a SEO and SEM strategy is a good start. The future looks bright for savvy online retailers who’ve forged a path into our credit cards via our computers.
