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10 brands hijacking your Twitter feed with creative preview images

Last month Twitter added an image preview feature that causes pictures and Vines to automatically appear in users’ timelines.

Prior to the update users had to manually expand the media or click through to view the full tweet, but we’re now shown a small preview window whether we like it or not..

As with all alterations to the Twitter interface, the update was met with outrage from users who always seem surprised when agile and innovative tech companies seek to evolve their product.

The new image previews can occasionally cause problems, like this morning when my colleague Ben Davis caught a glimpse of a very NSFW picture that someone I follow had tweeted, but in general I find they add some much needed variety to my Twitter timeline.

Fashion retailers are still failing to optimise email marketing for mobile

A few months I signed up to newsletters from a number of different fashion retailers in order to evaluate their welcome emails.

This means I now have an inbox full of marketing messages, which feature a surprisingly high proportion of deals and special offers.

What’s even more surprising is the lack of mobile optimisation among these brands.

The full list includes some of the world’s top online retailers, such as Macy’s, H&M, ASOS, Boohoo, Rue La La, House of Fraser, Schuh, Nordstrom, Mr Porter, American Apparel, Reiss and Office.

Yet of all of these, only four brands had any success in rendering emails properly on my Android phone.

Fading Facebook app icon

Sharing is caring: Facebook updates Like and Share buttons

Last week Facebook announced on the Developer blog that it would be rolling out new designs for the infamous Like and Share buttons.

According to Facebook, these buttons are “viewed over 22bn times daily across more than 7.5m websites”. 

Having active social sharing buttons on your website is most definitely a simple, yet effective way of allowing users to share your content, which in turn can result in sometimes significant amounts of traffic returning to those pages from people within their networks.

And it’s highly likely for most website owners that it will be the Like or Share button that is getting the most shares and driving the most traffic back. A recent study by Shareaholic of 200,000 publishers revealed that referral traffic from Facebook has grown by 58.81% from September 2012 to 2013.

So it’s not much of a surprise that Facebook has looked to change them, but what are the differences and how can they used?

How Harrods, Macy’s and other retailers are inspiring Christmas shoppers

Over the past few weeks online retailers have begun unveiling tools aimed at inspiring shoppers as they search for Christmas gift ideas.

I’m unconvinced as to whether these features have any impact on sales as they often appear a bit gimmicky, but judging by their popularity among retailers they presumably achieve some kind of ROI.

I’ve already reviewed Argos’ rather quirky Gift Finder which offers a unique browsing experience at the expense of usability, so in the interest of fairness thought it would be interesting to take a look at how other brands are catering to Christmas shoppers.

Here’s what I came up with…

Just 71% of companies test their websites: stats

Companies whose conversion rates have improved carry out 50% more tests on their websites than companies whose conversion didn’t improve. However, 7% are testing nothing at all. 

This difference is even more apparent when looking at sales. Companies with a large increase in sales carried out over two times as many tests as the average. 

Of the companies that carry out testing, 60% carry out one or two A/B multivariate tests a month and only 6% perform more than 10 tests a month.

These findings come from the fifth annual Conversion Rate Optimisation Report, carried out in partnership with RedEye, and based on a survey of almost 1,000 client-side and agency digital marketers.

Let’s take a look at what areas & elements our respondents are testing and what they find to be the most challenging stages.

John Lewis’ Christmas ad set to break its own records for social buzz

Last week saw the unveiling of the now traditional John Lewis Christmas ad, which this year comes with an added helping of cheese and schmaltz.

Despite the fact it stars a cartoon bear and a hare, it would appear the ad is set to break previous John Lewis ad records, at least in social media terms.

In the 24 hours after it was launched the ad was mentioned in 49,152 tweets, of which only 16% were negative. This is more than double the 21,027 mentions that last year’s ad picked up in the same time frame.

steps

17 steps small retailers can take to adapt to the internet

Let’s face it: the internet is never going away. However, for some small retailers, the disruption caused by the internet has been a painful experience.

It’s also undeniably a major contributing factor to the reduction in the number of retail outlets that are open and doing business.

So what can small retailers do? Starting with planning, I’ve outlined some steps you can take to use the internet and other digital technologies to their advantage (most of which comes straight from our How The Internet Can Save The High Street report and follow on from a speaking event I did with Royal Canin). 

This is a bit of a long post, so you may wish to bookmark it to return to later. Or take a nosey at our Fast Track Digital Marketing training to get a further deep-dive into what I describe.

Read below to find out how to start moving!

Start Me Up! A profile of Twitter client Tame

As Twitter grows, it’s more difficult to digest your own activity, to search for trends and content, and to find the right people to engage with.

To the already swollen ranks of Twitter clients comes Tame. Tame claims to provide further context for the user.

I asked a few questions of their team, to find out more about the service.

YouTube updates its comments system: the community’s predictable reaction

The YouTube comments section, I think I can say without hyperbole, shows humanity at its very worst.

This trolling, homophobic, misogynistic, spam-filled netherworld where most ‘conversations’ end with one commenter comparing the other commenter to Hitler, is the most poorly managed outpost of intolerance and ignorance.

However, YouTube has unveiled new changes to clean up this town; changes that will bring prohibition style peace to a violent gangland. The new comments system is Elliot Ness, Mary Whitehouse and The Father from The Road all rolled into one.

So what are these changes, and how have the YouTube community reacted?

I think we all know how this will play out…

The 10 most common mistakes of blogger outreach

The practise of blogger or influencer “engagement” is one of the most widely-used tactics in marketing these days, done by almost everyone, from PR agencies to SEOs, social marketers to spammers.

It’s also one of the most commonly derided amongst the recipients and much-debated amongst bloggers and professionals – but rarely addressed by marketers themselves.

If you’re doing it well, why share the secrets with your competitors? Sadly, a lot of marketers are doing it very badly indeed, and something needs to be done about it…

Fight Club! Quitting Netflix, LOVEFiLM and NOW TV

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article entitled Fight Club! Netflix, LOVEFiLM and NOW TV: a UX comparison. For this I had to sign up to their respective VoD services. You know, for the greater good of journalism.

Now the time has come to quit these VoD services because it seems there really is such thing as too much choice… plus I’m not made of money… and there’s only so many hours in a day. I do have a job you know!

Based on recent research that suggests 72% of customers expect complaints on Twitter to be answered in one hour, I’ll be taking a look at each company’s Twitter customer service channel compared to their site’s own customer service, then finally I’ll see how easy it is to quit and how easily they let me go.

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