Ben Davis

Ben Davis is Operations Manager at Econsultancy. He deals with LAN cables, office politics and the occasional blog. You can contact him at ben.davis@econsultancy.com

Five reasons why QR and AR won’t take off on the London Underground

This is Sartre.

This is me scratching an itch.

Although there are plenty of statistics that suggest people have scanned QR codes out and about, used Blippar watching television and Aurasma whilst reading their sportsday match programmes, I’m a bit of a sceptic.

Virgin’s provision of free WiFi on the London Underground, the service notably being free to use on Vodafone and EE, has led many to ponder how this will impact on marketing and advertising in the subterranean rat race.

Some have claimed augmented reality (AR) will start to take off as the technology matures along with marketers, and there’s a signal to enable web content for QR codes/ RFID and the like.

However, unless scanning is heavily incentivised, I’m of the opinion there are at least five reasons why this isn’t going to be heavily adopted, and you can agree or disagree in our comments section below.

by Ben Davis 05 February 2013 11:17am 10 comments

Whoopsy daisy log-ins: a further look at good and bad micro-copywriting

I wrote a piece about micro-copywriting earlier this year, and in my ignorance thought this was a new concept, and that I may even have coined the term.

Shows you what I know. It’s a term that’s been used for a number of years, and great examples have been collected already, e.g. this Flickr Microcopy Group (thanks to Doug Kessler for pointing to this).

As the last post was popular I thought I’d bring together some more examples. So here’s a look at some micro-copy from the log-in error messages of four big players in the tech world.

These were easy to collect as I didn’t have to remember my passwords. In the end I found that although this could be an area where it’s not worth trifling with a user’s frustration, there’s still a lot to be improved upon.

And although looking at some of these fine-grained areas could be seen as the pedantry of a dilettante, I like to think of these little things as a microcosm of brand identity.

by Ben Davis 04 February 2013 10:52am 2 comments

Site review: the new RoyalMail.com delivers on customer experience

E.M. Forster, great Victorian-born champion of the internet, sorry, humanism, once wrote this:

"Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient".

The Royal Mail's revamped website is the latest in a string of big organisations meeting new and improved standards in customer experience.

The aesthetic of the site accounts largely for its improvements, and the site as it stands can be seen, excuse me Edward, to express more of the Royal Mail's personality as well as those of its various audiences.

First, I'll look at some interesting little here's and there's from around the site before panning out.

by Ben Davis 31 January 2013 10:11am 11 comments

Why I like the new Timeout.com: a high watermark for listings

Over the past decade, it’s plain to see the change in what users term ‘good’ websites. Often, websites of the past were not intuitive; a certain nous or understanding of their flaws was needed to extract information swiftly.

Now good websites are built with our gentlest sensibilities in mind. The beauty of a listings site like Timeout is that getting the architecture right, and the aesthetics, and every fillip of design, is directly linked to monetisation.

Here are a few of what I deem to be Timeout’s objectives, with some little snapshots of how they’ve been achieved.

by Ben Davis 21 January 2013 11:11am 3 comments

Q&A: Minter Dial on the sales organization of the future

Minter Dial is co-author of a new report published by Econsultancy entitled The Sales Organization of the Future.

The report, which is free to registered Econsultancy users, explores how product-oriented companies need to evolve into value-added services organizations to meet the changing expectations of customers in a business environment which is fundamentally changing.

I asked Minter some questions about the report and the imperative for business change.

by Ben Davis 22 January 2013 10:56am 0 comments

Micro-copywriting: the good, the bad and the cheesy pictures

Words are the most important tool marketers and ad men have. To prove it, I’ll show you a picture.

The chart beneath the Bee Gees shows that 60% of people prefer a ‘print experience’ to something ‘whizzy’, on a tablet app.

Obviously, 'print-like' doesn't just mean words, it also refers to typography and, to some extent, pictures. However, in this post I'll be focusing on copywriting, on an achingly small scale.

I'll be highlighting titbits of copy that are done well, in keeping with a company's brand, and make a web experience enjoyable, as well as some that aren't so good.

In the spirit of new media, I’m calling this ‘micro-copy’. And, to the dismay of the A/B testers, I’ll posit that some of my examples are qualitatively ‘better’ than others.

by Ben Davis 07 January 2013 10:28am 31 comments

Q&A: Chris Ramsbottom, Mobile Product Manager at BSkyB

Mobile, Product Managers, and the changing ‘landscape’ for journalism and broadcasting are all ‘so hot right now’, and topics we discuss a fair bit at Econ towers.

Chris Ramsbottom is a Mobile Product Manager at BSkyB, so I thought I’d ask him some questions, and get some views straight from the horse’s mouth.

by Ben Davis 13 December 2012 10:57am 0 comments

Content and curation are changing integrated digital marketing

This is a quick post with some key takeaways from one of Econsultancy’s smaller conferences, Digital Shorts.

The theme of the day was content marketing, a hot topic and a phrase that ‘isn’t as well defined in the U.K. as it is in the U.S.’ according to Econsultancy guest blogger Kevin Gibbons, UK MD of BlueGlass.

by Ben Davis 03 December 2012 12:20pm 0 comments

10 things you can do to make me love your emails

To all keyholders of the company spam cannon, before causing immense collateral damage by firing off emails that don't fit with the lovely idea of your brand, follow these ten pointers and, with me at least, you'll be guaranteed a pair of eyes.

by Ben Davis 14 November 2012 11:17am 16 comments

Social media fast food fight: McDonalds vs KFC

Writing his memoir, ‘Goodbye To All That’, Robert Graves reminded himself that ‘people like reading about food and drink’; so I’ve decided to write about burgers and fried chicken, alongside social media (always adds flavour).

I want to investigate the idea that most people see BIG corporate Twitter accounts as some kind of barefaced shill, only followed by the devout.

I looked at KFC and McDonald’s tweets from October 2012, to see how they do it. This is by no means an exhaustive audit, nor is it scientific. I also add that I’m a pescetarian of six weeks, and following these feeds has been somewhat of a coping mechanism.

by Ben Davis 12 November 2012 11:26am 5 comments