Useful e-commerce trends: the promo strip
This post highlights a simple, useful feature that's crept onto most of the UK's largest e-commerce sites over the last couple of years, with no real coverage.
"The promo strip" is not new, but has slowly caught on to the point it's almost standard for high street retailers, yet still fairly rare on smaller sites.
It's a very useful addition from both the customer perspective (quickly informative without being overbearing) and from the brand perspective (conversion orientated without being overbearing!).
There are 12 examples below, including variations on the central idea.
Walgreens launches new Foursquare and Twitter campaign
Walgreens recently started a new social media campaign with New York-based startup, LocalResponse.
When someone checks into Foursquare and tweets about it, Walgreens tweets some of them back with an offer from Halls that can be redeemed in store if they like them on Facebook.
But is this automated campaign the right approach?
The Four Seasons site is beautiful, but not for disabled users
The press release announcing Four Season’s new site states that it was "thoughtfully designed...to deliver an immersive and effortless experience tailored to every user".
But shouldn't that include disabled users?
The Four Seasons site review focusing on web usability highlighted some important shortcomings in terms of the booking process and other areas, and briefly mentioned some of the accessibility issues.
Here we take a closer look at some of these and the actions that should have been taken to truly make the site available and usable to every user.
Experience an augmented Valentine's Day with Starbucks
Yesterday Starbucks launched their new Valentine's augmented reality (AR) cups. It's quite a clever way to get customers to not only drink their morning coffee but to buy one for a loved one.
All you need to do is download the app from Starbucks and you can "experience your valentine" as the heart on the side of the cup comes to life.
Blackberry's impressive app stats avoid the bigger picture
Blackberry’s App World generates 43% more daily downloads per app than Apple’s App Store, according to RIM’s VP for developer relations Alec Saunders.
During his speech at Blackberry DevCon Europe today, Saunders also stated that App World has more paid downloads than the Android Market and clocks up 6m daily downloads, which equates to 30 apps per Blackberry user each year.
Overall, App World is second only to iOS in terms of profitability, generating 40% more revenue for developers than the Android Market.
The Digital Ocean: how to market to fishers and swimmers
More B2C and B2B marketers are shifting their focus towards increased digital in their tactical mix.
Understanding the digital locations of their target audiences is becoming a standard step in the creation of a digital plan, but many are overlooking the intentions of their online audiences, and adapting their tactics accordingly.
This blog introduces the concept of the digital ocean and the need to locate and market to both fishers (those actively researching products/services) and swimmers (those not looking and just ‘hanging out’ online).
Three steps to keeping email marketing simple but effective
The online space has opened up creative avenues marketers could only have dreamt about.
While you’re thinking up the latest bells and whistles to make your emails stand out, consider a few simple steps that should form the building blocks of any successful campaign.
Quick wins can be gained from analysing the time you send your communications; finessing the sender address and subject line; and, most importantly, testing your messages.
Recommendations help drive 27.9% holiday sales growth at John Lewis
John Lewis says the new personalised recommendation tool on its website was a key factor in driving a 27.9% increase in sales over Christmas.
The tool, created by RichRelevance, provides customers with recommendations on fashion items by analysing shopping behaviour alongside the relationships between products and product categories.
StumbleUpon brings the iFrame back
You thought they were gone. Those pesky, annoying, experience-destroying things. Yes, I'm talking about iFrames.
Popular a decade ago, they've made a few appearances in the past several years. The once-popular Digg, for instance, turned to them to implement its DiggBar.
But now they're back.
QuBit launches real time customer feedback for website owners
Customer data specialist QuBit has launched a new tool that captures, categorises and analyses feedback from website users in real time.
Called Exit Feedback, this targets people when they’re leaving a site and invites them to provide feedback on their experience in free text. It’s already in place on the websites of Arcadia Group, the BBC, Blackberry and Duchamp.
