Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

Japan has survived another “Golden Week” earlier this month. “Golden Week” is one of the biggest leisure travel weeks in Japan usually starts at the end of the April and lasts for about a week.

According to Overture Japan’s survey against 1000 people in 20s, 30s and 40s, 65% of them went “online” to research and to book the trip, followed by “travel magazines (17.4%) and “travel agencies (17%).  Even the ones who did book the trip at the agencies, many of them first researched the information online.

Of course, Internet doesn’t mean just the search engines. Many travel portal sites and the booking sites such as Yahoo Travel, Rakuten Travel and Arukikata play a big part in people’s research process. If you are a travel related site owner, you should check your site’s visibility in the search results at these portal sites as well as Yahoo Japan and Google Japan.

According to Dentsu’s 2007 Japanese advertising cost report, more money was spent on the Internet advertising (600 bil yen) than magazine ads (459 bil yen) for the first time in history.

The report shows that a total of 7019 bil yen was spent for advertising in 2007 in Japan, compared to 6940 bil yen in 2006. The ads spending for TV (1998 bil yen), magazine, newspapers (946 bil yen) and radio (167 bil yen) have been declined for the past 3 years. On the other hand, the ads spending for Internet has been growing rapidly for the past 4 years in Japan.

I think that the continue growth of Internet advertising market in Japan shows that the advertisers see more values in Internet advertising than other medias. Still, the total amount spent for Internet ads is less than 30% of what was spent for TV ads. I think that advertisers will shift more budget for Internet where they can measure the effectiveness of the ads. Also, I saw more TV ads that were made to point people to their website in 2007. In order to achieve the best results, it’s time to think about both off-line and on-line ads as one campaign, instead of treating them individually.

Netratings Japan’s survey against online shoppers in Japan shows that Website has the biggest impact on shoppers by far* throughout the purchasing process. It also shows that of those who visited websites during the purchasing process, the ones who took some type of actions on the site (registering for newsletters, signing up for prize, etc.) have more interests in products and/or services offered at the site, and more likely to purchase the products/services offered.

*Sample research results: Purchasing process for credit card service

1. The first exposure to the products/services

- Website (41%), TV (20%), Store (13%), Printed ads (7%), Friends/family (6%)

2. Comparing the services/products

- Website (69%), Store (6%), Friends/family (5%), Printed ads (3%)

3. Purchasing decision

- Website (59%), Store (14%), Friends/family (7%), Printed ads (5%)

I think this survey results show that even when people make the final purchasing action off-line, the information they gathered on websites has the biggest impact to the decision making process.