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A swoop through Swoon, a boon for Monsoon

Monsoon has launched Swoon, a shoppable monthly magazine for tablets (but also working well on desktop). It’s full of products and rich content and was built by Rockabox Studios on the Ceros design platform.

With the prices of Monsoon apparel comparable with Cos – middle to upper high street pricing – and the more artisan pieces pricier still, at more than £300, this feels like a good move.

The image of Monsoon has perhaps slipped in recent years and lost some of its chic or urbanity. I can see this campaign of shoppable magazines as a step towards bringing this firmly back to the brand, which needs to highlight the quality of its clothing, including its hand-embellished pieces.

The launch of a shoppable magazine is in line with many other brands seeking to bring more editorial and clustering to their offerings. Net-A-Porter has launched a mag, M&S has mixed up its website with plenty of content and trailblazers ASOS and TopShop have been doing this for a while.

Let’s take a more detailed look at Swoon.

What does real-time marketing mean for B2B?

Real-time marketing works.

Let me make an addition to that rather bold affirmation. Real-time marketing works for B2C companies. Really well.

But what of B2B companies? Is real-time just a pipe-dream? A strategy only successful if left to the trendier agile brands that have an ever-growing and content hungry audience of Twitter followers?

In our brand new B2B Real-Time Marketing Report, in association with Monetate, we reveal the current state of play for B2B real-time marketing, uncovering insights that perhaps challenge our preconceptions of the importance of real-time for B2B. 

For instance, the fact that 65% of B2B companies are carrying out some form of real-time marketing, and that 87% agree that ‘real-time marketing is essential as behaviour, device, place and time come together’.

In our full report you will find research highlighting how business buyers define their needs in an always-on world. As well as the benefits to real-time marketing and the challenges. 

Mobile Asia: Growth in Hong Kong, India and Taiwan

Asia is a fascinatingly diverse continent when it comes to digital trends.

Along with a wealth of data from all corners of the online world, the latest update to our Internet Statistics Compendium has seen some great mobile data from three key markets in the region: Hong Kong, India and Taiwan.

I thought I’d share some quick Asian mobile growth numbers here. But for more information, our ISC collects freely available stats from a comprehensive range of secondary sources, as well as choice cuts from Econsultancy’s own reports and guides.

How 11 ecommerce sites use stock levels to create buyer urgency

In the same way that exclusive offers and flash sales cause shoppers to throw rational thought out of the window, dwindling stock levels create a fear of loss and a sense of urgency that nudges consumers ever closer to making a purchase.

Ecommerce retailers are obviously wise to this as a sales tactic and it’s common to see stock information displayed prominently on product pages.

With this in mind I’ve been scouring apparel ecommerce sites to see how different retailers present stock levels as part of their product page design.

Here’s a selection of what I found…

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Five retailers using NFC and RFID to enhance shopping: but do they work?

Let’s take a look at who is using this technology in retail.

I’m not looking at payment here, which NFC has been mired in, merely how the shopping experience can be enhanced.

I’ll get a few things off my chest about what works and what doesn’t. First, a super quick differentiation between the two technologies.

Near field communication (NFC) is capable of two way communication, so payment (a debit and credit) for example, or even in medicine (a tag in your skin could send vital signs to your smartphone), and it works only at short distances. NFC can be used more basically, to simply transmit set information to a phone or tablet.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) has been around for yonks, the tags only transmit information, to an RFID reader (an NFC enabled phone or tablet such as an Android can be used as a reader, but for an iPhone a separate reader is required). These tags have been traditionally used in stock control.

There’s bluetooth low energy (e.g. iBeacons) in the mix, too. However, many of the uses of beacons have been for push messaging to customers.

In this piece I’m not going to be talking about geofencing which can be done with RFID, GPS or low energy bluetooth (iBeacons). I’ll be focusing on active rather than passive engagement, though I’ll discuss iBeacons in my conclusion (as they’re rapidly taking hold in many of the same scenarios).

Right, now that’s taken care of, let’s dive in…

Smartphones, tablets or TV: How do we consume media in 2014?

How do we consume media in 2014? And what media? And on which devices?

Ofcom released The Communications Market Report in August 2014 and it’s chock full of interesting data and charts on the UK market.

I’ve previously looked at mobile and tablet usage. Now I’m turning by attention to the broader topic of media uptake, in its various forms.

For more statistical goodness, download our Internet Statistics Compendium…

Google confirms HTTPS as a new ranking signal: What are the implications?

On August 6 2014, Google announced that it is starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal within the search results.

While on the face of it, this might not seem like big news, it’s another instance of Google using its influence to put pressure on websites to conform to what it considers best practice.

Google has said that right now HTTPS is a very lightweight signal which will affect less than 1% of search queries globally, but it has stated that this may change over time as Google encourages all site owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS.

As a result of this, we anticipate that secure and encrypted connections will become the norm for all websites in the future.

WeChat: the difference between Subscription and Service brand accounts

While researching a previous article on how Western brands are using Chinese messaging app WeChat I was made aware of the fact that there are several different account options open to marketers.

As this was news to me I thought it might also be news to some of our readers, hence the reason for this post.

Brands striking out on WeChat for the first time have the choice of two account options – service accounts and subscription accounts.

Here’s a quick look at the difference between the two…

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TV goes social: How brand marketers can learn from the best

Most brands tend to focus on their products and services when they use social media.

People, on the other hand, use social media to build and maintain connections – to chat to friends, family and to other people. 

They might visit a branded Facebook page to discover more about that company, or enter a competition occasionally, but if you want them to stick around, there has to be a bigger motivation than seeing how the brand is going to link its product to the latest sporting event.

People want to connect with people, and with stories. This is where the entertainment industry comes into its element.

While it’s true that most brands aren’t going to have the frenzy of interest around them that a major TV show does, there are things that businesses can learn from entertainment brands on social media.

How do we use the internet and mobile devices in 2014?

Ofcom today published The Communications Market Report 2014 in the UK.

There are lots of interesting stats within, across telecoms, audio-visual industries, post and of course the internet.

No doubt we’ll be covering the report fairly heavily, but I thought I’d start by rounding up the bits that caught my eye.

How is device use changing? How are people accessing media? How much are advertisers spending and on what?

What the ‘new mobile display ecosystem’ means for publishers

The New Mobile Display Ecosystem report, published by Econsultancy in association with OpenX, explores the latest trends in mobile advertising and looks at what the future might hold.

The report, which includes insights from more than 20 industry leaders, explores the impact of increasingly mobile-centric consumer behaviour on different stakeholders within the marketplace.

This article is focused on how publishers need to adapt to the rise of mobile.

For many traditional publishers, moving from print to desktop was a challenge. Migrating to an ever more complex landscape is equally challenging, but can be as richly rewarding for the companies that do it right.

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