Complete Web Monitoring

Transactional Sites

Sergio Zyman, Coca-Cola’s first chief marketing officer, describes marketing success as “selling more stuff to more people more often for more money more efficiently.”

This is a great summary of what transactional companies care about: completing transactions, increasing visitors, maximizing shopping cart size, and encouraging repeat business. BestBuy.com, ThinkGeek.com, Expedia.com, and Zappos.com fall within this category.

Business Model

Figure 2-2 illustrates the basic elements of a transactional site’s business model.

Figure 2-2. Elements of a transactional site’s business model

1. A visitor learns about the transactional site through organic (unpaid) search, advertising campaigns, word of mouth, social networks, or paid advertising.

2. The visitor visits the transactional site.

3. The transactional site makes some sort of offer.

4. If the visitor accepts the offer, the site may try to upsell the visitor by suggesting additional merchandise.

5. The visitor then moves through the various purchase steps, hopefully without abandoning the process, until payment.

6. The site tries to enroll the visitor, particularly since it now has the visitor’s contact information as part of the purchase process.

7. This allows the site to contact the visitor as a part of ongoing campaigns.

8. The visitor may act on the new offers, increasing her lifetime value to the transactional site.

9. The visitor may also disengage ...