Unfortunately, no matter how clever and well-placed an advertisement might be, more often than not, it won’t result in a sale. In fact, just two percent of consumers convert on their first trip to an online store. Because that number is so low, ad retargeting is an important step for retailers. Essentially, it is the process of keeping track of people who visit a store and targeting them again to bring them back. Giving up on the 98% of people who don’t make a purchase right away would be a huge mistake for businesses, so asking “what is retargeting?” and finding ways to bring consumers back again is a must in today’s competitive digital marketplace.

With the right software, ad retargeting is a lot easier than it might sound. All a website operator will really need to do is install a JavaScript tag that creates a list of people who visit a particular site. Then a retargeting vendor will be able to send them ads again to try to convert consumers who have checked out products into ones who have made purchases. Some consumers are able to avoid that by disabling cookies in their browser, but website retargeting should help businesses reconnect with shoppers who didn’t make a purchase.

“Window shopping” is not reserved for only Rodeo Dr. or Manhattan. Like everything else, it is now something shoppers can do online. Window shoppers can be tough for website owners to deal with because they spend a lot of time doing product research but don’t always make a purchase. To accommodate that, e-commerce marketing programs need to be tweaked to include ad retargeting. Hopefully, that will help businesses turn window shoppers into actual customers.

One thing site owners should consider is being sure to send the right ads to the right people. For instance, if someone was looking at DVDs, businesses probably don’t want to send them ads about the computers for sale in a store. Using accurate customer segmentation models will allow businesses to target the right shoppers with the proper ads, leading to more sales.

Web users might be confused, surprised, or even annoyed when they start to see ads from sites that they recently visited all over their web browser. But though most might not understand why that happens, it is far more than just a strange coincidence. Instead, it is the result of ad retargeting, which has become an important marketing tool for businesses looking to turn even window shoppers into paying customers.