This is a guest post written by Akin Tosyali, president of Clix Marketing, a PPC-exclusive company. Special thanks to David Szetela, who you should follow on Twitter.

I read an article a while back in Wall Street Journal that quoted Best Buy COO Brian Dunn saying that “Best Buy executives are “working day and night” on the retailer’s holiday plans..” and “that they are “winning in a tough environment, and I don’t see anything that’s going to change that”.
The statement raised my curiosity and I wanted to see if I would get the same level of satisfaction from Best Buy’s online marketing efforts that I do from visiting one of their retail locations. I first performed searchest using a number of popular technology-related product terms without much luck – but then I found a good one: “Toshiba LCD TV”. I found an ad from BestBuy (in top position) as well as a few of their competitors bidding for this highly competitive term. ($1.13-$1.37 CPC per Google Traffic Estimator).
After I clicked on the ad and looked at the landing page, I realized that their online user experience could use some improvement. For the record, I like Best Buy – they are a good company, with good employees and great products.
Here is the Best Buy ad and the other 2 ads right under theirs:

Let’s look at the headlines. Very surprising to see that both Amazon and Best Buy incorrectly capitalizing LCD and TV. It’s likely they took the easy way out and used dynamic keyword insertion, which by default capitalize just the first letter of each of the words in the target keyword. TigerDirect took the trouble make sure the words were capitalized correctly, and they actually give me one more reason to continue to read their ad – the carrot “Bargains”. Just the fact that Tiger Direct spent the time and effort to differentiate themselves is commendable.
Now, let’s look at the rest of the ad copy: Best Buy is doing two things very well here: they talk about the benefits of shopping with them (by talking about the pain of not shopping there) – “No Shipping. No Waiting” – and they have not one, but two calls to action “Buy Online & Pickup In A Best Buy Store”. But I can suggest some improvements: Talk about the product. Tell me that you have 30 models in stock. Tell me how unbelievably great it will be to watch a football game on a Toshiba. The fact that they do not say anything about the product I searched for makes me realize that they probably have the same ad copy for a large number of their keywords. It is certainly easiest to generate generic ad copy that will work for many products, but take it from the data we see as an agency: they could easily double or triple their visits (and CTR) if they used the search term in the body of the ad, and thereby make it more relevant to the needs of the user.
Let’s look at the ad’s landing page:

This is very typical of the landing page designs we see for online retailers. While adequate, it can be easily improved to drive more conversions. Let’s give them some important advice on what they should do to possibly double their conversion rates in 30 days:
Best Buy is suffering from CHIBISO: “customers have identical behaviors in stores and onlineius.” When I am in a retail store, I grab a cart and start walking toward the product I came to buy. During the walk, I get interested in other products in the store thanks to the great merchandising techniques they use, and by the time I get to my product I already have 2-3 other items in my cart. Walking back to the checkout counter, I see more products that I get interested in and I put more in my basket. I end up buying the product I came for plus six other things that Best Buy made me realize I needed, since I am such an impulse buyer.
This is not how search-driven online buying really works. First, the customer does not grab a shopping cart the moment they get to your web store. They need to be convinced that they have the right product before reaching out for the shopping cart. Second, online shoppers who use a term specific enough to include a brand name and a product already have a good idea of what they are looking for, so any other link or merchandise displayed on the landing page becomes a distraction for the online buyer to jump out of the “buying” mind set. An online buyer who uses a term specific enough to note a brand +product, brand+ model, or model name alone should be ONLY shown such products. Any up-selling should be done once the visitor finds what he is looking for – not before.
So, if I were in charge of the Best Buy PPC Account performance, I would remove the top and the left navigation options, and only display links that will get me closer to a purchase, like product attributes (screen sizes, prices, resolution, color, etc) and other nice marketing messages like “on sale! / in store”, etc. I would also direct the user to the category that I know they should be in (Flat Panel TVs in this case). The only links needed at the bottom are a privacy policy and an about us link.
So here is my version of the most appropriate PPC landing page:

The content is clean, and all the links are relevant to the keyword I had used. Simple changes should be easy to implement and will make a big difference in conversion rates. Another tip: Best Buy should also remove the top navigation options during the checkout process. They do, however, get a high score for allowing the customer to buy without forcing them to “sign up” for anything.
I want the retailers to do better this school season, so consider this analysis to be my own contribution to helping the retail industry get through the recession!