Before buying, we used to research the “big stuff”, like cars and washing machines.  Now we’re looking for information about absolutely everything– right down to the ingredients in our cereal, what those tiny green dots are in your toothpaste, and what your mice think about your mouse traps.  Everyone is officially researching everything before they buy it.

It’s so important to see how your consumers are finding you, what they are looking for, who your target audience really is and where they are coming from.   Check out this Emarketer article to see how your online shopping cart can influence your customer’s real life shopping carts.

Here are a couple main points from the study:

– “During the year-long study, nonbranded search terms averaged about 73% of all queries referring shoppers to retail sites.”

– “In-store buyers who searched using nonbranded terms clicked on organic links 2.6 times more than the average shopper.”

– “More than 5% of clicks—one of the leading activities—went to store locator pages, indicating a propensity for cross-channel shopping.”

– “Nearly three-fourths of these cross-channel shoppers expected to be able to check product availability before heading into a store.”