I have a dilemma with a site that is a product review site in the mold of Jay's Ear Force X41 site. My site is for an ice cream maker. The site has reached the first page of Google's search for many variations of the main keyword (the product's model number and the word review). This has all been great, as the site has been for the most part a case study for me to learn from since I am new to IM. My dilemma comes from the fact that a large part of the organic traffic that is coming in from Google searches seems to be from mobile devices (mostly mobile phones, as the screen resolution sizes tell me), which I don't think are good opportunities for me to convert into sales for two reasons.

1. My guess is that these visits are coming from people at the store standing in front of the product and pondering whether or not it is a good product to buy. They do a quick search on their phone, check out my review then walk to the cash register with the product in hand and purchase it to take home right then and there.

2. Mobile purchases on a phone haven't yet become secure / easy enough for most people to whip out there credit card and purchase on the spot. Most would rather wait until they've gotten home and can jump on their laptop, tablet, or home PC. Since my site is sending people to Amazon, they are likely to just go straight to Amazon to search for the product when they get on their other device at home and make the purchase. In this situation I made the sale, but I don't get credit since they hadn't gone through my link on the device they purchased from.


This has me pondering a couple of ideas....

Are there good ways to convert this traffic?

1. Would adding a current "lowest price" to the site help entice clicks through to the Amazon site since it would likely be lower than the price at the store that the person is standing in? Some of these might convert, but I still think it would be a small portion due to the use of a mobile phone.

2. Are there ways to make it more enticing for someone to purchase right then and there on their mobile phone without waiting to get home? Or are there ways to make sure that when they come home they come back through my site to get to Amazon? Beyond having some sort of "exclusive" deal or begging for them to come back and give me the commission, I can't see a way to get the traffic to choose to come back my way instead of going directly to Amazon.


Is there any way to be able to predict this kind of traffic pattern in the future?

I did my research on keywords with Jaaxy, and it looked like a good solid keyword with under 400 QSR, and over 500 monthly searches. What I didn't know was what percentage of those searches were done from mobile devices. I wouldn't have known to be wary of this if I hadn't watched this happening and wondered what caused such low conversion rates, including not watching the video review portion of the site (something people probably aren't likely to click on in the store). I can now see that it would be really nice to know if the search traffic for a keyword is coming from a mobile device or not. In some instances such as an iTunes product you would probably love to have mobile traffic since it is very easy to purchase right from your phone. For other products that may not be the case though. I would now likely have chosen a different keyword for my site to be optimized for.


My conclusion is...

This is by no means a lost cause website. It is full of valuable information, and will convert well with the right visitors, but I'm going to have to attract those visitors through article marketing that redirects readers back to my site. I'm certainly interested in hearing any ideas or suggestions that others might have though, because this has already been a great learning device and would be even better if I learned of another solution.