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Do you still obediently place keyword ads on Google or other search engines in the hope of attracting a lot of new customers? Do your new business opportunities hinge on clicks through to your page? Search Engine Marketing is a big focus for many companies around Europe, but if you read the results of an eye-tracking study from the US, you might well start to doubt whether this strategy actually works.

Online retail would be inconceivable without customer reviews and recommendations. It is an essential part of today’s online shopping experience and one which has changed the way people think about researching what they want before they buy. A study of American and British shoppers has established the kinds of recommendation that consumers actually look for and trust.

The issue of search engine optimisation has long been dominated, among other things, by backlinks and the question of how as an online retailer, you can get hold of good ones. Google has for some time also been making use of social signals, such as Facebook Likes, Google +1 and Tweets, as a ranking factor. The effects of this may currently still be open to debate, but there can be no doubt that this factor will become more significant as time goes on.

Trusted Shops, Europe’s market leader for the accreditation of online shops, is teaming up with IMRG (Interactive Media in Retail Group) the UK’s industry association for e-retail and its ISIS (Internet Shopping is Safe) trust scheme to create a standard European trustmark and strengthen both initiatives. This alliance will promote trust in ecommerce throughout Europe as consumers can easily identify and buy from accredited retailers with complete confidence.

How do Europeans normally find their way to an online shop? Answers to this question can be found in a consumer survey carried out in five member countries of the European Union. Currently, social media hardly plays a role.

Online merchants are always trying out print advertising. Yet these campaigns often do not fulfil the expectations placed on them by the merchants. The problem is the response channel, where there is a broken link between the activation and order channels, resulting in major conversion loss. The good old QR code could present a solution.

Trust is crucial for online shopping. Retailers everywhere must recognise that customers need to trust that it’s safe to buy from certain sites. Trustmarks are the best way to do this. Recent research from infas – which surveyed more than 5,083 respondents in February 2012 – shows that more than 90 per cent of people see security as important or very important for choosing an online shop. When this security does not exist, the result is missed opportunities and lost revenues.

This month will see Trusted Shops appear at Internet World, the UK’s longest running and biggest annual event for digital marketing and online business. Internet World runs for three days from April 24 in London and attracts more than 12,000 visitors and 300 exhibitors.

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Analysing customer value plays an important role when optimising an online seller’s scheduling and returns policy. However, determining customer value is also just as important for publicity planning. Below are several methods of customer evaluation that you should know:

Retailers continually test new technologies intended to make the selection process for purchasing clothing online easier for customers. Besides fuller shopping baskets, retailers also hope that this will help reduce the number of items returned, which can sometimes be extremely high.