Virgin America’s new website manages to turn booking a flight into a joyous process.
That tells you all you need to know about how good this website is.
Here I’ve picked out 30 good bits. I urge you, of course, to read this post, but go and check out the website yourself for some great design inspiration.
From the experiential (read as ‘gimmicky’) to the practical (read as ‘will become standard practice’) there are many ways that retailers can integrate their offline stores on the high street with their online ecommerce businesses.
There’s lots of information on the blog already about digital technology in retail and a lot of it really should be thought of as the norm by now.
Unfortunately that’s not necessarily true. In a perfectly digitally integrated world the lack of services like Wi-Fi, contactless payment and click & collect would be the exception to the rule.
However there are still many trailblazers out there, not just offering the digital basics, but going above and beyond the duty of its bricks and mortar stores and offering a new world of interactivity and online integration.
Sure some of them will fail. Sure some of them you’ll barely hear about outside of a few speculative/curious articles like this (“huh, remember a few years ago when Google developed a self-driving car? What happened to that?”)
Some won’t though. Some will go on to become exactly what’s expected from every consumer who visits your high street store.
A recent trip to Japan got me thinking about the disadvantages of being an ‘early adopter’ of new products and technology, and how brands should encourage and reward those of us who get in ahead of the crowds.
Japanese technology shops are particularly fun, with blaring advertisements and garish coloured banners everywhere.
In one, I found ‘easy to drink from’ vacuum mugs in a wide range of colours with a variety of sophisticated caps and drinking spouts.
The humble black screw top I had bought in the UK was completely upstaged by these colourful, feature packed newcomers.
Last week we published our Top 100 Digital Agencies Report, detailing the who’s who of those in the digital marketing industry.
While many of the names are similar, the emergence of new players and the shifting of rankings indicates that the market is still undergoing continuous change.
There is also some discussion about the changing nature of the agency model.
To explore some of these issues, we asked Sitecore’s marketing director Shawn Cabral for his opinion on the opportunities and challenges for agencies in the coming year. His answers are below…
Given the sheer size of China’s economy and the all-encompassing power of its communist government, it’s easy to think of it as a place where speed and innovation might be stifled.
However the very opposite is true according to Ogilvy & Mather’s head of digital in APAC Barney Loehnis, who gave one of the keynote talks at Econsultancy’s Future of Digital Marketing event.
Loehnis who has been working in Asia for eight years, describes the working environment as “brutal”.
‘The Creator, if He exists, has an inordinate fondness for beetles.’ But will we, the consumers, fall in love with the Firefly?
Firefly is a feature of, and button on the side of, Amazon’s new Fire smartphone.
Simply put, the feature turns the phone’s camera into a visual recognition tool (barcodes, products and the like) and the Fire microphone into an audio recognition tool (think Shazam).
Let’s mull over what this might mean.
Budgets for digital analytics technology and consultancy services are rising, but the pace of change has led to a skills gap in many companies.
According to Econsultancy’s Measurement and Analytics Report, produced in partnership with Lynchpin, 61% of companies are increasing budgets for analytics technology, up from 35% in 2013.
Based on a survey of 1,000 professionals, this report looks at how companies are using analytics to drive revenue, the technology used, and the challenges faced.
2014’s Top 100 Digital Agencies report has revealed some changes in the agency landscape.
I’ve been looking at changes to the agency model. In part one I looked at PepsiCo’s Galaxy model, the trend for marketers and agencies influencing the wider business, and how clients are increasingly embedding agencies or in-housing skills.
In this final part, it’s time to discuss the demand for speed and agility, data’s influence and changing pricing models.
Michael Nutley’s report for 2013’s Top 100 Digital Agencies began with the assertion that “now, more than ever, the only generalisation that you can make about the way marketers and agencies are working together is that there are no generalisations to be made”.
I’d go further in 2014 (see the latest Top 100 agencies report) and say that in many areas of marketing, client methodology is as varied as it has ever been, media volume is higher than ever and technology is eliciting tension in traditional agency models.
At the same time, customer expectation is soaring and transparency, or at least value, is increasingly the elephant in the room.
The aim for agencies is, of course, to provide value, but the continued digital transformation of clients is also making it harder for the agency to provide the right support.
Maturing marketing channels are increasingly integrated, dictating a converged media strategy. This is often better served by in-house expertise or by the embedding of specialist agencies. Project work, too, is on the increase.
“Change is constant” is one favoured aphorism of the marketing analyst. For agencies, if anything, the rate of change is constant, too.
It’s not all just gob-smacking pictures of intergalactic phenomena and breathtaking rocket launches, you know.
Well alright, a lot of it is, but the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (apologies for the condescension pub-quiz fans) goes far beyond mere image re-appropriation from its vast archives.
How far beyond you ask? Where no one has boldly gone before? You ask again, straining to keep a straight face.
Well to that I say “your cheap and easy reference demeans us both, and you know it.”
Here are some social media goodies from NASA.
When it comes to looking for hints on where mobile commerce is heading, marketers should look towards South Korea.
Not only is the country home to Samsung, the world’s largest supplier of smartphones, but Koreans have shown themselves to be rapid adopters of mobile technology.
Seoul is the eleventh biggest city on the planet with more than 25m people in the greater metropolitan area, most of whom have a smart device. Increasingly they look to use those devices to shop.
In 2013 62.6% of Koreans used their smartphone to shop, up from just 11.9% two years previously.
Fast adoption of 4G and in-store WiFi opportunities are driving this new approach to retail and offer businesses the chance to engage with shoppers in different and really exciting ways.
Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has captured the West’s attention recently thanks to its upcoming IPO and the launch of a new US marketplace called 11 Main.
However we’d be foolish to overlook its main rival in China, Tencent, which is equally capable of branching out for world domination.
The listed company has a market cap of more than $150bn and a portfolio of products that includes QQ instant messenger (818m monthly active users), Tencent Mail (274m), and Tencent Weibo (22m).
However most people will probably be more familiar with Tencent’s WeChat messenger app, which is seen as a rival to Facebook’s WhatsApp.
However unlike Facebook, Tencent makes most of its money from video games and sales of digital goods, with only 9% coming from ads.
To shed more light on the size of Tencent’s business empire, I’ve rounded up a whole load of stats on its user numbers and revenues.
And for more of the same, read my posts looking at 30+ amazing stats on Alibaba and discussing whether innovation by Chinese social networks gives a glimpse of Facebook’s future…