Digital Marketing Blog

Q&A: Livebookings’ David Norris on restaurants and e-marketing

Livebookings Network is a real-time restaurant booking service whose clients include The Ritz, Gordon Ramsay Holdings, La Tasca, Planet Hollywood and Rainforest Café, as well as portals like Time Out London and lastminute.com.

It bagged £6.5m in funding in a round led by Balderton Capital earlier this year and is planning to expand its presence in the UK and Europe.

Here, we speak to COO David Norris about which types of restaurants are making the best use of online marketing and what other opportunities are out there for its aggregated reservations model.

by Richard Maven 03 June 2008 11:35am 3 comments

Royal Caribbean applies common sense to the 'conversation'

Continuing my recent discussion about 'conversational marketing', I would argue that many conversational marketing efforts are flawed because they are far too patronizing.

by Drama 2.0 03 June 2008 10:00am 2 comments

How to reduce shopping cart abandonment

A recent survey says the rate of shopping cart abandonment for US online retailers has increased slightly year on year, reaching 59.4% in Q1 2008.

So why do customers abandon their shopping carts and what can be done about it?

by Graham Charlton 03 June 2008 10:00am 3 comments

Site review: Gap.com revamp

Last week, Gap revamped its e-commerce site, bringing together all four of its brands onto one property with a single checkout function. We've taken a look to see how it measures up.

Gap.com

by Graham Charlton 03 June 2008 09:00am 1 comment

Mahalo uses GTA 4 content to boost its traffic

Grand Theft Auto IV was released recently and, predictably, there has been a spike in the number of searches related to the game.

Jason Calacanis' human edited search engine Mahalo is ranking well on Google for a number of terms related to the GTA IV, having designed a comprehensive guide to the game. It proves that a curated approach to the web can pay dividends, in Google terms...

by Graham Charlton 02 June 2008 14:55pm 0 comments

Q&A: Mia Woodford of charity auction site Buy Once Give Twice

Buy Once Give Twice is a charity auction site which sells items that have been left uncollected from charity balls and other functions.

After noticing that many items from charity auctions went unredeemed, Mia Woodford and Emma Leschallas launched Buy Once Give Twice in April this year.

We talked to co-founder Mia Woodford about the website...

by Graham Charlton 02 June 2008 13:36pm 0 comments

Domain name tools for brainstormers

Choosing a domain name these days for a new web venture or microsite is an activity filed somewhere between painful and truly horrendous. So what tools can you use to minimise headaches and the time spent on finding a domain name?

by Chris Lake 02 June 2008 13:29pm 1 comment

E-commerce delivery options - five key tips

Delivery charges and options are important factors in many customers' decisions to buy online. If delivery costs are too high, or flexible options are unavailable, then people may look elsewhere.

Here are a few tips for retailers to make their delivery charges and options more attractive to customers...