David Moth

How The Met Office used analytics to improve its content marketing strategy

Content marketing has definitely become something of a digital marketing buzzword, but the basic principle of creating interesting content to attract customers and improve search rankings is still valid.

A good example of this comes from The Met Office, which recently implemented a new content strategy as part of its plan to boost ad revenues by attracting more visitors.

As a recognised weather service the site was already pulling in an average of 4.5m unique monthly users, peaking at 6m in busy periods, but the digital teams felt that it could improve on this number by producing more targeted content.

To achieve this The Met Office began working with a new analytics platform to gain a better understanding of visitor behaviour and improve its content plan.

by David Moth 10 June 2013 11:11am 2 comments

Twitter's five tips for agile marketing in the moment

The beauty of Twitter for marketers is that it allows you to be agile in coming up with marketing messages and responding to your customers, which can in turn increase brand loyalty.

However this requires a certain level of creativity and planning from brands if they wish to set the right tone and avoid an epic fail.

In a talk at our Future of Digital Marketing conference Twitter’s Bruce Daisley gave his tips for how brands can set themselves up to respond effectively to current events and make the most of marketing in the moment.

The full video is available at the bottom of this post, however I thought it would be useful to pick out some of the highlights.

Daisley pointed out at the beginning of his talk that he sees Twitter as an interest network rather than a social network. This is heavily influenced by the fact that 80% of Twitter’s 10 million UK users access the service through mobile.

by David Moth 12 June 2013 10:17am 0 comments

10 interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week

Here are some of the most interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week.

Stats include connected TVs, online customer satisfaction, mobile news publishers, Amazon's ad revenues and the boom in tablet use.

For more digital marketing stats, check out our Internet Statistics Compendium.

by David Moth 07 June 2013 13:18pm 6 comments

This week's finest digital marketing infographic

It’s everyone’s favourite time of the week – the big reveal of the finest digital marketing infographic we’ve seen in the past few days.

This time it’s a beginner's guide to content marketing from Demand Metric.

It shows that 90% of organisations currently undertake content marketing and on average they spend more than 25% of their budget on this channel.

Furthermore, 80% of marketers believe custom content should be central to marketing work and almost two-thirds (62%) of companies outsource their content marketing.

by David Moth 07 June 2013 11:31am 5 comments

12 usability flaws that are spoiling the mobile web

The mobile web is still a relatively new and rapidly developing medium, but that doesn’t excuse some of the awful user experience issues we’re exposed to on a daily basis.

My job requires me to spend a lot of time browsing mobile sites so I am probably exposed to these problems more than the average consumer. That doesn’t make them any less annoying though.

So to try and raise awareness of these UX crimes and I’ve compiled a list of 12 problems that I’d love to see the back of.

Let me know of any I've missed off in the comments section.

by David Moth 06 June 2013 11:14am 25 comments

Nine tips to help improve your product filtering options

Only a small proportion of shoppers will arrive at an ecommerce site knowing the exact product they’re looking for, while most will prefer to browse and consider different options.

As such sites need to give shoppers tools to search their product range and strip out the items they’re not interested in.

An effective site search function is obviously a key element, but product filters are also necessary if you want to deliver a decent user experience.

In fact kilt retailer buyakilt.com saw a 26% increase in conversions and a whopping 76.1% boost in revenue after implementing a product filter which gave visitors an option to shop by kilt type and kilt pattern.

by David Moth 05 June 2013 11:49am 10 comments

Mobile checkouts: which of the top 20 retailers have upgraded in the past year?

This time last year I looked at the mobile sites for the UK’s top 20 retailers to see which offered the best checkout process.

I found that there were a number of common flaws, such as forced registration, but in general the standard was quite high.

However I was also surprised to see that eight of the retailers were still relying on desktop sites.

As 12 months has now passed I thought it would be interesting to see whether the situation had changed at all and find out which retailers have made an effort to upgrade their sites.

by David Moth 05 June 2013 10:42am 4 comments

How do you build a great ecommerce team?

Launching an ecommerce channel is a no-brainer for many companies as it’s undoubtedly one of the most effective ways of building your business for the future.

But while the decision to launch an online store is a relatively easy one, knowing how and when to develop to ecommerce team is far more difficult.

To make the process easier we’ve just published our new report, Building an Ecommerce Team: A Best Practice Guide, which focuses on the challenges facing ecommerce managers as the digital channel grows and diversifies.

The guide is aimed at client-side ecommerce practitioners and includes recommendations from seasoned professionals on how to build and manage your team; how to create a framework for understanding the key challenges; and details on how changing market conditions are impacting the demands on ecommerce teams.

by David Moth 04 June 2013 11:44am 0 comments

How to optimise your order confirmation screen for extra sales and sharing

For most retailers the moment a customer makes a purchase is the time to relax and reflect on a job well done, however this is potentially missing one last opportunity for promoting repeat purchases and social sharing.

A new report from Owned It looks at the steps brands are taking to optimise their order confirmation pages, with Amazon and M&S apparently making the most of the opportunity to encourage further sales and engagement.

But what are these retailers doing right and what steps can businesses take to optimise their order confirmation pages?

Amazon achieved a high score thanks to its social sharing buttons, a discount voucher incentivising a repeat purchase, and the brevity of its confirmation page.

by David Moth 04 June 2013 10:57am 0 comments

Seven user shortcuts that will help reduce checkout abandonment

Checkout abandonment is inevitable on ecommerce sites as the plain truth is that some people simply aren’t ready to make a purchase.

However there are certain steps that sites can implement to limit the number of customers that dropout during the checkout phase.

The basic aim is to make it as simple as possible for your customers to hand over their cash, which means limiting the amount of form filling and offering shortcuts wherever possible.

by David Moth 03 June 2013 13:26pm 5 comments