David Moth

Will Google Tag Manager shake up the industry?

On Monday Google announced the launch of its new free tag management system, simultaneously raising the profile of analytics tags and putting the wind up suppliers who currently charge for the service.

As Google explained in a blog post, the new tool “consolidates your website tags with a single snippet of code and lets you manage everything from a web interface,” which should mean you can add new tags without bothering the IT team.

This sort of technology is nothing new, and it’s something we investigated in more detail in our report The ROI of Tag Management.

But what does Google Tag Manager (GTM) mean for other vendors, as well as marketers who already use Google Analytics?

To find out, we asked several analytics experts for their views...

by David Moth 03 October 2012 10:50am 5 comments

Shop Direct: why brands need separate strategies for mobile and tablet

When marketers talk about e-commerce and digital marketing, tablets and smartphones often get grouped together within the mobile category.

It’s a useful, catch-all way of differentiating these two devices from desktop computers, but in reality the typical browsing and buying habits of a smartphone user are quite distinct from an average tablet user.

In a talk at E-commerce Expo Shop Direct Group’s e-commerce director Jonathan Wall said that the potential value of tablet users meant that businesses need to adopt an entirely separate strategy for the device.

Wall said that roughly 30% of traffic to Shop Direct’s sites, which include Littlewoods and Very, now comes from mobile devices, with smartphones accounting for a slightly higher percentage than tablets.

However tablets users convert at a higher rate than smartphones and drive a higher AOV than desktop.

by David Moth 03 October 2012 11:16am 1 comment

Amazon's mobile shopping basket and consistent multichannel strategy

A recent study looking at which retailers offer the best multichannel customer experience found that consumers liked the fact that Amazon synchronises its shopping basket across its desktop site and mobile app.

So, if you add a DVD to your shopping basket online it immediately adds it to the app as well. This makes perfect sense, and fits with the way people research and switch between channels.

It’s a feature that is quite easy to miss, but is a great example of offering the customer a consistent experience across different channels rather than viewing desktop and mobile in isolation.

To find out whether or not it is common practice, I looked at the iPhone apps for eight other retailers to see whether they offer the same function...

by David Moth 03 October 2012 12:06pm 1 comment

Are mobile checkouts simple enough to capture repeat shoppers?

While mobile commerce is growing, one area for improvement is the checkout process. Sometimes it's just too much hassle to pay by mobile.

However, while other devices are better for browsing a range of products before making a considered purchase, a simple mobile checkout can be an effective method of capturing impulse and repeat shoppers.

To make the most of this opportunity m-commerce sites need to make the purchase journey as short as possible, and one way of doing this is by saving the customer’s credit card and delivery details so future purchase can be completed just by entering a username and password.

by David Moth 02 October 2012 10:42am 2 comments

Booking.com outperforms hotel brands on social media

E-commerce is vital to the travel industry, with almost three-quarters of travel research taking place online and around a third of hotel revenue coming from online bookings.

As such hoteliers are constantly trying to master the art of selling the right room, to the right customer, at the right time.

A new report from QuBit shows looks at the search and social performance of ten of the UK’s top hotel brands and online travel sites including Hotels.com, Booking.com, Agoda.co.uk, Hoteldirect.co.uk, Venere.com, Premier Inn, Hilton, Holiday Inn, Marriott and Travelodge.

It found that while Booking.com has the strongest social presence, Hotels.com is most visible in search.

Here’s a look at the results...

by David Moth 01 October 2012 11:36am 3 comments

M&S offers the best mobile and online customer experience: study

Marks & Spencer offers the best multichannel customer experience across three digital channels, according to a report published by eDigitalResearch.

The eChannel Benchmark evaluated 14 retail brands that have mobile optimised sites and apps as well as a desktop site to find out which offered the most consistent customer experience.

M&S came top with an average score of 86% across the three channels, followed by Amazon (85%), Topshop (84%) and House of Fraser (84%).

The report analyses several different criteria, including the homepage, on-site search, navigation, product pages, shopping basket and checkout.

Here we look in more detail at the search, product page and checkout sections...

by David Moth 01 October 2012 09:36am 4 comments

10 interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week

Here's a round up of some of the most interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week.

Stats include CompareTheMarket's dominant performance on social, the use of m-commerce in the UK, the increase in impulse buying thanks to mobile and BBC iPlayer's record-breaking month.

For more digital stats, see our comprehensive Internet Statistics Compendium.

by David Moth 28 September 2012 10:30am 4 comments

This week's top six infographics

Once again we round up six of the best infographics we've seen this week.

The topics include how to do keyword research, how the Financial Times' readers use social, what QR code usage mans for business and improving the way customers help themselves online.

by David Moth 28 September 2012 11:47am 3 comments

Smartphones and tablets drive an increase in impulse buying online

A new survey of UK smartphone and tablet owners shows that mobile is helping to drive an increase in impulse buying, particularly for clothes and music.

However the results also show that security concerns remain a key reason preventing consumers from embracing m-commerce.

The survey, commissioned by Rackspace, interviewed 2,009 smartphone and tablet owners on their attitudes towards various aspects of m-commerce.

It found that just 40% of respondents make purchases using their device, meaning that there is still a huge amount of room for m-commerce to grow even among the current audience of smartphone and tablet owners.

This figure is slightly lower than data from our Multichannel Retail Survey which found that 25% of all UK consumers had made a purchase using their mobile.

by David Moth 27 September 2012 13:25pm 9 comments

Why PRs need to get to grips with Google's Zero Moment of Truth

Last year Google published a new marketing model that added an extra step into the traditional view of the customer purchase journey.

Labelled The Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT), the model essentially states that the internet has created an additional customer touch point between the original advert and the actual purchase.

ZMOT is when consumers go online to research products, look for reviews or try to find coupons.

At a PRCA event on Tuesday Unibet’s head of search Nick Garner said that ZMOT is an area that PRs should own as it’s about influencing decisions and getting positive brand information onto trusted websites.

by David Moth 27 September 2012 11:19am 7 comments