Fully half of all searches on search engines today no longer result in a click on an organic search result let alone a paid advert. Google is in the midst of disrupting its advertising business and it is going to make it increasingly more difficult to reach consumers online only. Companies need to be aware of how this zero-click phenomenon affects organic search and what can be done to maintain healthy streams of traffic to their websites to keep sales flowing.
What is a Zero-Click Search?
No click or zero Click searches are search engine results pages (SERP) when consumers query Google and find the answer they are seeking but do not actually click on any results as the answer is presented on the search result page itself. See example below:
For many content producers, this can be extremely frustrating, but Google is designing enhanced search results with users’ best interests at heart (which is also keeping users using their platform). According to Search Engine Journal, 34.4% of all desktop searches result in no click while 62.5% of users never click search result links on mobile.
What This Means for Your Retail Brand
Google will continue making changes to improve the user experience for SERPs, especially with mobile and voice search overtaking desktop results. Think about making a search on voice, you only want one result returned. This is the future Google is preparing for which makes anything else on page one of search results irrelevant and harder for you to reach your desired audience with a rich content strategy. Not only are online acquisition costs rising, but now you have even less space available on Google to be found.
This is forcing brands to look at alternate ways to get discovered by new consumers as opposed to online only. Alternate channels including wholesale for consumers to discover your products IRL (in real life) must now be implemented to improve your chances of reaching scale. But an aggressive direct or D2C strategy is at odds with growing your wholesale channel and creates channel conflict. You must find new ways to conduct business that can scale both your online and wholesale business simultaneously to get the channels working better together.
This means partnering closer with your best customers both online and offline to work in omni-channel harmony. This is where as Online to Offline Commerce strategy comes into play. Want to learn more about online to offline commerce and how you can get your brand moving in the right direction to sustain your growth over the long-term? Schedule an informative session where we can learn about your business goals, explain how the strategy can be applied to your brand, and see if we can help.
