Don't declare the death of F-Commerce just yet

News that several major retailers have recently shut down their Facebook stores has led to a lot of predictions about the death of f-Commerce (the term used for eCommerce on the World's biggest social networking platform and therefore the most visited website).

See this article on Bloomberg for a touch of hype generation (and link baiting... dammit):

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-17/f-commerce-trips-as-gap-to-penney-shut-facebook-stores-retail.html 

One Forrester Researcher was also quoted as stating:

“There was a lot of anticipation that Facebook would turn into a new destination, a store, a place where people would shop. But it was like trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar.”

People please...... before we go around proclaiming the end of social commerce, can we please get a bit of perspective here?

Yes, it is true that some big US retailers such as Gap and Nordstrom have closed their Facebook retail channels. But it is still very early days for f-Commerce and a lot of companies are still finding their feet with this stuff. Its currently the same as web-based selling was back 10 or so years ago.

Back then customer confidence was low and the methods and tools & best-practice are still being learnt.

It is also true that users have a big security issue with using their credit cards via Social Networks:

http://mashable.com/2012/02/10/credit-card-information-social-network/ 

And even less trust Facebook stores to prevent fraud.

http://threatmetrix.com/study-reveals-only-a-quarter-of-consumers-trust-facebook-storefronts-to-prevent-fraud/

However the race hasn't been run yet. Given the speed of change in both the eCommerce and Social Networking space, I wouldn't declare the death of f-Commerce straight away. In fact Gap have stated: “We will continue to evaluate if this is something we want to bring back in the future”

My suggestion is therefore to ask yourself one simple question 

"does your Facebook store make a decent ROI without cannibalising other sales channels?". 

And if the answer is "Yes"...  then I suggest you keep it going.

Social Media - a platform for complaints

When everyone first got excited about the Social Media Goldrush back in 2008 - 2009 the same stories circled round and round. We all know them.... the Dell Hell blog, etc.
Things haven't got much better several years on. Recently, peeved about a new $5 monthly bank fee imposed by Bank of America, Molly Katchpole logged on to the Change.org website to start an online petition urging the bank to reconsider imposing monthly fees on debit card users. Quickly more than 300,000 people joined her  campaign demanding the bank drop what they saw as an monthly usage charge and the bank backed down. Many not credit Molly with eliminating debit card fees for the Bank of America and others.

Today's consumers are relentlessss with their expectations and complaints about brands - and with easy access to site like TripAdvisor (for travel users) and tools like Twitter, their words can go far. 

It seems that Social Media has now provided a platform for complains and potentially helps foster a Culture of Dissatisfaction online.

Aggregators - why they exist in specific markets

Meta search and aggregation (for the purpose of this article I'm saying these two are the same thing, although some may claim there are subtle differences) have grown over the last few years to be a dominant acquisiton force in a number of important online vertical markets.

Financial services, from credit cards through to insurance, are now subject to aggressive aggregation from a handful of major players such as: compare the market, go compare and moneysupermarket.

Utilities including: gas, electricity, mobile phone tariffs and broadband access are now compared online. In fact a lot of fuss and claims are made by the market leaders in this sector that they are championing your consumer cause (without obviously stating that your business with them helps their financial cause).

And travel has its obvious aggregation in the form of meta searches for: car hire, hotels, flights, etc.

Each aggregated vertical has its specific nuances and intricacies, plus each its own referral & commission structures, but in essence the the business model is the same:
a. Collate as many similar products or services as you can
b. Provide a single interface that qualifies the visitor's choice (usually by a series of form fields common to all parties)
c. Deliver the results in a consistent and comparable manner (usually cheapest first, but also allowing the user to filter some options)

Aggregators exist because two simple facts:
1. customers do not believe that they always get the cheapest rate for all products from one supplier
2. customers do not want to spend the time completing the same form on numerous sites

But why don't aggregators exist in other markets... such as fashion or FMCG products (e.g. washing powder and chocolate bars)?

Well, for fashion products, the usual reason is that products are exclusive to the manufacturer. Therefore because the channels to market are all protected (e.g. the manufacturer has some level of control over price and/or distribution) there is no real flexibility in the price. Then (assuming the brand site has eCommerce functionality), it is then typically just as cheap for users to shop from the brand site as it from a re-seller.

For FMCG the lack of aggregation is a different one, that of convenience. Most shoppers, when looking to source FMCG products go to a grocery store or supermarket. They also assume that the shop has done some sort of price comparison with the competition, so they don't have to (although prices may only be matched for the core 'basket' of goods and other less common items are still priced to maximize profits). Although sites such as http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk have sprung up to allow web users to compare grocery and health & beauty products from the leading retailers, people still either only visit one store or use one online supermarket at a time.

The question I have is... are there any remaining markets where aggregation is possible but has yet to take off?

The Physics of Social Media finances

Following my recent post on The Physics of Social Media, it has been pointed out to me that there's the distinct possibility that the finances of Social Media and social platforms are also subject to Newton's Third Law. This is the one that states "To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction"

What does this mean?

Well, how many people these days use social networks and expect them to be free? Everyone, right?
But there's a problem with this.... The cost of developing, improving and running these sites isn't free. There's no such thing as a free lunch where website hosting is concerned. The cost of just hosting a social website like Facebook, with its approximate 700,000 - 800,000 users and billions of page views per day, is huge! (Annually estimated at $50 million in September 2010)
But someone has to pay for all this infrastructure.

Sites such as Facebook make a lot of their money by selling advertising space, in much the same way as Google or another search engine does. In the attention economy companies want to be where the eyeballs are and the more targetted they can make their advertising... the more they are prepared to pay.

So by giving more details about yourself, you are therefore allowing social networks to sell more specific advertising inventory to companies. They in-turn can pin=point your needs more.... or in other words, you're paying for their lunch (AKA the incredibly high valuations of these companies) by sharing your personal information with them. And somewhere within me that stirs a physical reaction.....

Social Business - the evolution of Social Media

Back in 2011, I did a presentation at the iShopKent 2011 event on the topic of Social Media. However rather than cover the usual stuff you see all the time (transparency, engagement, build a Facebook page, etc.) I triumphantly proclaimed the death of Social Media.Here's the presentation I gave that day and would welcome any feedback on the content (or your questions, if its not clear what I was talking about from the set of slides below)

View more PowerPoint from Hayden Sutherland

The cyclical nature of online marketing

One of my more typical observations is just how 'inter-connected' all
things digital have become. In other words.. when you affect one
thing, you stand a good chance of creating a knock-on effect with
something else.
Take this cyclical set as an example:
PR affects SEO
SEO affects Content
Content affects Pay-per-click (PPC)
Pay-per-click affects Conversion
Conversion affects Analytics
Analytics affects email
Email affects social media
Social Media affects PR
Have you seen any other similar cycles?

The future is responsive

PC's, tablets, mobiles and TV interfaces.... The list of devices used
to browse the Internet changes and increases all the time.

When designing and developing a new website, the common accepted
practice is that you start your user experience (UX) work first, based
upon how users with a PC and sometimes large tablets (e.g. the iPad),
might see things. Then depending upon the other popular devices used
to access your site, you then consider building an alternative
version.... say mobile.

But turn this concept on its head for a moment and consider the following:
1. Nobody fully knows what the future devices will be (up until 2
years ago the tablet market was virtually non-existent).
2. It is safe to predict that mobile devices will continue to grow in
use and that the available range will expand over time, as
manufacturers experiment and try to invent new form factors (in the
hope of finding a previously in-tapped customer need).
3. Bolting a mobile interface onto your existing site is hard work.
Some do fancy things with style sheets, while others just 'make the
buttons bigger' (yes this is a cheap and quick change, but not all
sites look good with chunky submit buttons, etc.).
4. Building a separate mobile-specific site is usually more work than
spending a little longer on your main one.
It is therefore unsurprising that I predict a future where a
significant number of company websites will no longer be developed
with a version for each specific device.... but a single one that
automatically adapts to the size and orientation of the devices used.
Note: I'm not talking about interfaces such as the Microsoft Metro
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(design_language) design
language, which the software giant is successfully using across most
of its devices.

But this isn't a pipe dream for the far-off future, this is all
possible now using responsive site design & development techniques.
And soon it will be clients asking for this technology that will drive
its adoption, as they realise they don't need to spend a lot more
money building separate versions just for specific device profiles....
For examples, take a look at:
http://mediaqueri.es/
http://designmodo.com/responsive-design-examples/

RNIB serves bmibaby for inaccessible website

According to its website,the RNIB has served travel website bmibaby with legal proceedings. Apparently this is because it has a website that remains inaccessible to those using screen readers or those who can't use a mouse.
Yup, that's correct. After over a year of informing the company that has failed to make vital changes to its website to allow customers with sight loss to use their online services, the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has decided to take the legal route.
It would seem from the online press release found on its own website that despite "receiving expert advice, recommendations and a full audit report from RNIB", bmibaby still hasn't made any real progress in this area. So RNIB has now served the company with legal proceedings.
The implications of this action are potentially huge. To date in the UK (that I'm aware of) there has been no public airing of the accessibility legislation all now wrapped up in the Equalities Act of 2010.
If this action does proceed, it could have far-reaching consequences for other high profile websites who continue to flout the legislation.
I think I can safely state that the eyes of the industry are now firmly focused on this case....
http://www.rnib.org.uk/aboutus/mediacentre/mediareleases/mediareleases2012/Pages/pressrelease27Jan2012.aspx

Sponsoring the Ealing Tweetup

For about a year now I've been running the Ealing Tweetup. An informal social media networking event in West London that brings together a diverse range of (mainly) local business people, politicians, bloggers & journos, digital industry types and other interesting folks from many walks of life…  With live music - and sometimes even free pizza courtesy of the host, Tom at the Rose & Crown, the events are proving a great success with anything from thirty to over 200 attendees joining to meet fellow twitter users and expand their networks!  

What is becoming increasingly hard, however, is to find corporate sponsorship for the event. Even in these tough financial times, we have had companies willing to sponsor/donate money to provide a first drink at the bar or to pay for the band. But we cannot always go knocking at the same doors, so with the next Ealing tweetup now less than 5 weeks away and taking place on Thursday 1st March... I thought I would explain what any potential sponsor might get in return:

1. Association

The Ealing Tweetup is one of the most well-known and successful London Social Media events. Linking with the night automatically boosts an organisation's ‘social currency’ and builds awareness of their brand online via event Tweets and subsequent press releases. Previous sponsors have associated themselves with the event to improve their visibility in Ealing and with the wider community....and not just in Greater London, but also further afield (we've had attendees from East Anglia, Scotland and even Sau Paulo, Brazil).

With Social Media constantly growing in popularity and increasingly integrated with corporate marketing, PR and commercial targets, this is the ideal time to partner with Tweetup events.

2. Knowledge

Understanding and participating in Social Media can be quite daunting to the inexperienced. The Ealing Tweetup provides the ideal opportunity for a company marketers and managers to meet with a variety of practitioners, from in-house Social Media mangers to PR agency directors .... or even just normal average people who now follow, post and ‘retweet’ as part of their daily lives. From finding information on the latest blogging platform through to ways legitimate of building up your followers, attendees of all experience can learn something new.

3. Marketing visibility

Previous tweetups have been attended by journalists, bloggers, BBC presenters and senior political figures including the Deputy Mayor of London. Consequently it provides a fantastic vehicle for any marketer to promote their company. The sponsor has the opportunity to place banners alongside the band which are usually captured in photos and videos throughout the night; and then in the nature of Twitter, will be constantly posted online. The sponsor will get numerous mentions in blogs, online press postings and even local & regional newspapers.

4. Search Engine Optimisation assistance

Links are the currency of the World Wide Web, with search engines such as Google using them as the key indicator of your site's online gravitas. This means that when someone mentions your company in a post and link back to your website….. you can gain a better foothold on search engines. Therefore one of the many benefits of being a sponsor is the number of online mentions your company will receive in association with the Tweetup. 

What's better than Twitter being free? Being reliable!

Connecting to Twitter tonight, I saw the attached screen indicating
that Twitter was down for maintenance. Sure, it wasn't the 'Fail
Whale' more usually seen a year or so ago:
http://press20.blogspot.com/2010/06/twitter-fail-whale.html
But this wasn't the expected user experience.
Now does anyone else find it strange that one of the largest Social
Media platforms actually has to stop its service for some users to
carry out changes, etc?
Surely Twitter by now has worked out how to provide a 100% available
service to its users? You don't find Google or Facebook putting up
holding pages claiming they are unavailable....

The end of QR Codes?

It is not often I see a new technology and am genuinely surprised by it. However has Augmented Reality finally found its killer app?

For the last month or so I've been using Blippar, an application that sits on my smartphone and allows me to 'Blip' the front of packages, newspaper adverts, etc. This then puts a virtual layer over the front or top of the object that then let's you read, play or engage with the product. Some products are providing games and others are providing information (e.g. recipes)
This had led several industry commentators to suggest the imminent demise of QR Codes.

Although this may be a little presumptuous, there’s no doubt that the boundary between the real world and the digital one has narrowed to the point where Augmented Reality and 2D barcode scanning are realistic communication and marketing tools.

Chief Digital Officer - why your company needs one

There's a nasty jibe in some senior technology circles that the title CIO stands for "career is over". However I disagree and have my own thoughts on this.

The title and role of Chief Information Officer (CIO) is now getting quite long in the tooth, but more importantly the reliance on the word 'Information' here is the issue. These days, the competitive edge within a lot of companies doesn't come from their use of information (processed data), it comes from the migration of systems, processes and roles to an online way of working. The web has not only taken over our personal lives, it has also taken over (or taking over) our business ones too. Software as a service (Saas), Platform as a service (Paas) and Infrastructure as a service (Iaas) ... plus others, are all cloud-based approaches to online computing and each has its benefits and challenges. Now these are all typical subjects that typically would come under the remit of the CIO.

But when you then factor in the need to provide connected digital marketing services (e.g. an email or CRM system), eCommerce transacting functionality (along with the associated online merchandising and sales optimisation expertise) and the complex communication and customer services requirements that the online world needs, the experience and skills of pure technologist start to look less than comprehensive.

But who is actually hiring Chief Digital Officers right now? Nobody that I'm aware of, but maybe in the future we will see this role come to some prominence.

SEO, paying for links, bloggers and Google

There is sometimes a fine line between ethical and non-ethic online promotion, particularly when it comes to search engine optimisation. The rules can often be confusing and even possibly counter-productive to your needs.

As an example, let's look at the efforts any diligent, modern and professional PR company these days might look at bloggers as a way to promote their client's new product or service. They might send out information in the form of a press release and possibly a product sample if there was one.... and maybe the blogger might charge for writing this piece and linking to the client's site.

However, according to Google's rules, this is a paid for link and must include the "no follow" code. If it doesn't it could fall foul of Google's rules and be degraded in its search results.

Bu that would never happen to a big company right?
Wrong!

But that wouldn't happen to an SEO-aware company right?
Wrong

But this couldn't possibly happen to savvy Internet companies like Google could it?

Wrong!

You see a story has come out that Google has demoted itself in Google search for (indirectly via an online marketing network) paying for bloggers to write & link stuff about its own Chrome browser.

"So, if Google can make a mistake like this, what chance have the rest of us got?" I hear you cry.

Well potentially this means that any online marketing campaign could have a negative effect on the profile, traffic and revenue of a client's website.

Food for thought.....

QR Codes - 5 handy tips to help you

f you are a trendy urban dweller (or even if you just have access to
regular news or magazines), you will have seen the huge growth in the
use of QR Codes recently.

If you haven't used one yet, or if you're unsure of how they can help,
then its probably worth me mentioning a few things that I've found
out:

1. Creating one is easy
You don't need specialist software, there are several sites that let
you create one for free. Personally I use http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
Don't worry, the QR code is not dependent on the site you use to create it.

2. Each QR Codes is unique to a piece of text (typically a URL).
As no 2 QR Codes are the same, there's no real chance of you getting
the wrong web address when scanning one.

3. QR Code scanners typically store the address.
This means that despite hearsay, you CAN put them on adverts destined
for the underground (e.g. In the free papers & magazine), but you are
relying on your user reopening their scanner app at a later stage when
they have a data connection.

4. The shorter the URL, the better
The more text a QR Code has to store, the more complex it becomes.
This may be an issue if the QR code is then badly printed, scanned
from a distance or snapped through think / dirty glass. If you have a
particularly long URL (including any sub-directories, file names,
analytics tracking references, etc) then you can get around this issue
by using a URL shortening service such as tinyurl.com or bitly.com

5. Track as much as possible
In coordination with your website analytics package,make sure you can
identify when visitors to your site come via a QR code (e.g. if you
are using Google Analytics, they you will probably give the Campaign
Source as 'qrcode' in the Google Analytics URL Creator).
Tip: If you have several locations where your QR Code is shown, then
it is possible to identify each unique location. However be careful
that you are not creating codes just for the sake of it.

6. Measure the impact
Although its pretty obvious to mention, ensure you understand the
value you get from creating & promoting QR Codes.

Happy eCommerce Christmas from North Korea

Here's a little bit of online shopping silliness using TV news footage from North Korea:


I hope this isn't your eCommerce experience this Christmas.

Is your brand your domain?

In June there was an announcement by iCann, the global domain name registration authority. And if you are a branding strategist, corporate identity manager or brand positioning and design consultant, then there's something you need to know. Along with .car .sports and .bank there's a new Top Level Domain:

.brand

Applications for new these new TLD's will be accepted from 12 January 2012 to 12 April 2012. However the approval of the .brand (dot brand) top TLD creates both opportunities and issues for brand owners.

ICANN apparently plans to allocate only a maximum of 500 .brand extensions each year, however it is expecting to receive thousands of applications (estimates are anywhere between 1000 and 4000 requests). However expect a bun fight for those names that are used in more than one context. Brands who share names are going to have to to resolve some pretty fundamental differences.

Polo anyone?

Ealing Tweetup gets political backing

As regular readers will know, I run the Ealing Tweetup. This is a Social Media networking and fun night run in a local pub (hit tip to The Rose & Crown). Back in September we had our biggest event yet, where there were over 200 people in attendance, 2 bands playing (thanks Brace Yourself & The Bible Code Sundays) and we raised a bit of money for the riot fund.

However also supporting the event this time were local politicians, including Ealing Central and Acton MP Angie Bray and even Deputy Mayor of London Richard Barnes .

However since then a couple of months and another smaller but successful Ealing Tweetup has passed. So I was nicely suprised to see this article on the front on the Ealing Conservative newsletter come through my door:

New Site Conversion - a presentation

Earlier this year I posted an article or two on why your new website will not be converting as expected (or promised).

Well..... last Thursday I gave a presentation to attendees at the ECMOD event in Islington, London on this very subject. Below is (a slightly edited, to make it more understandable without my voice-over) version of this presentation:

Website Conversion

View more presentations from Hayden Sutherland

The physics of Social Media

Newton's laws of motion are three basic rules of physics that govern how forces and things behave when you start to involve movement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_laws_of_motion

And strangley, as I observe Social Media being used by a growing number of organisations I meet, this has made me think back to my old physics lessons I had as a boy. I've therefore asked myself if there is any similarity between the laws that Sir Isaac Newton came up with and certain behaviour around the adoption & use of Social Media.

First law:
The velocity of a body remains constant unless the body is acted upon by an external force.
(Or to translate that... you carry on at the same rate unless something pushes you in a different direction)
Now you've probably heard loads of examples where social media allowed disparate individuals to communicate and act, however their velocity is anything but constant. Some trends go as quickly as they come, whilst others linger and develop..... often with no logical reason.
But like Newton's apple, everything in the real world (e.g. not in outer space) is subject to gravity, including some Social Media ideas that quickly bring users down to Earth with a bump.
E.g. the recent "Qantas Luxury" hashtag campaign that spectacularly backfired on them.

Second law:
The acceleration of a body is parallel and directly proportional to the net force and inversely proportional to the mass.
For this I initially thought you could substitute the word "body" for the word "rumour" and the law still stands. A single person can post an opinion on a blog and it is instantly put out into the digital ecosystem (albeit with very little impact or velocity). But get a few people agreeing with this opinion and it becomes amplified and accelerated across the social web.
However mass (aka substance or Klout) does play a role in determining the proportion of the effect Social Media has. For example a 'retweet' of a charitable cause on Twitter by a popular person such as a celebrity will have far more effect that someone with very few followers doing the same.

Third law:
Newton stated in his third law of motion that "To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction" and this is never more true than when new technologies and processes are involved. You see, for every person who is an adopter and user of social media, there's a person who is only too happy to highlight the risks and negative side.

Regardless of the rules, its clear that Social Media (like my old Physics classmates and I) still has a lot of learning ahead.

Conversion Optimisation makes a difference

I was lucky enough today to quickly get into a seminar at the
Conversion Conference. Thanks to both Paul Rouke
(http://www.paulrouke.co.uk/) and a friendly organiser, I managed to
listen to Paul Francis from Dominoes Pizza give a case study on how
the company improved an already great website.
Note: from the response of those attending on Twitter and what I saw
myself, this event should be a fixture in the diary of all serious
ecommerce managers.

This fascinating 45 minute presentation explained how both moderated
and un-moderated (remote) usability sessions not only proved that a
complete redevelopment of their ecommerce platform was not necessary,
but gave powerful insight that led to a suite of smaller changes. This
in-turn led to a significant financial improvement of the site. For
example just changing a button colour from red to green on their
checkout had a £2.6million uplift!

So next time the boss says there is no value in usability testing or
that once a site is built it is complete..... Tell them this little
story. This is further proof that an ecommerce site is never perfect
and you should always look to improve it by testing with real users
over and over.

Organising a Tweetup

At the beginning of 2011 I was handed the organisation of the Ealing Tweetup by Mark Hillary http://twitter.com/markhillary as he left for Sao Paulo in Brazil.

It wasn’t something I was planning to take on, as I had enough responsibilities already (running a digital consulting business as well as being a husband & father) and to be honest I was enjoying being a participant in London’s biggest ‘social’ Social Media based event….. rather than the person who had to sort it out.

However 10 months on and several Tweetups later, I’m writing this post on the eve of another Ealing Tweetup. According to the site used to pull the attendees together, almost 40 people are likely to turn up at the Rose & Crown in South Ealing tomorrow night (http://twtvite.com/ealingtu11).

So what have I learnt from the experience?
Well…. I’ve met some great people, increased my musical knowledge (a little) and help keep going an event that brings virtual friends together. Its not been easy at times… but I now know that (with the help of some very generous sponsors) this social networking thing can be fun!

Surviving a peak eCommerce Christmas - part 4

For the last few days I've been posting useful things to do on the run-up to peak Christmas online trading and ensuring your website can cope with the demands of your visitors . Here's my final post on the subject (for now):

Speak to the business
Understand the marketing activity planned over the festive period and the dates that they are aiming for most impact. What are their targets compared to last year? Rather than add to your load, they may be able to stagger their campaigns and flatten out demand over a more sustained period.

Have a plan for failure
You may see this as a little defeatist, but I always recommend having something up your sleeve in case the worst does actually happen. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to put an alternative site in-place within minutes and it may even be the case that you actually turn your site off when it comes under unprecedented demand. However the worst experience to give to your users is a very plain “site offline” message. Nothing says ‘go away and don’t come back’ like a server error page. At the very least make sure this page (probably a customer 500 error page) has some useful information such as your telephone customer service number and a list of your stores.

In summary…. There are still a number of actions you can take to try and de-risk the situation. Keeping your site stable over the peak period will then allow you to focus on the functionality and performance improvements in the new year, so that you’re more prepared for future peaks in demand.

Previous postings are here:
Part 3
Part 2
Part 1

Surviving a peak eCommerce Christmas - part 3

To help your company get through what is expected to be the businest online Christmas yet, I'm put together some helpful tips.

Set up your own monitoring
Some hosting companies provide a website monitoring service and others may even report on availability as part of a service level agreement. However I would personally have an alternative monitor that is within my control to provide an agnostic perspective. Although it is possible to build your own, there are a number of services out there that can go beyond a simple ‘ping’ of your homepage to confirm it is there and working. Some of the more developed monitoring services can also: check the availability of specific stock, confirm the whole transaction process is working, as well as checking & recording the response time of key pages. Often it is possible to predict problems before they happen. Websites tend to go slow before they break, so getting an email or SMS alert one evening that things are taking a longer than average time to respond… may be an indication that you’re about to lose your site completely.

Try to stress test before the peak comes
I know it is not always possible at the 11th hour to test an eCommerce site to the peak levels expected of the coming Christmas trade. But actually knowing how your site responds under high volumes has huge benefits regardless of the outcome…If it fails, you know when (and hopefully how it fails)… and knowing is always better than not. It may also give you a good indication of other remedial action you need to take. But if it passes and actually stands up to your anticipated load, you have the confidence to keep trading.

Previous posts on this subject are here:
Surviving Christmas Part 2
Surviving Christmas Part 1

Surviving a peak eCommerce Christmas - part 2

To help you get through peak Christmas trading this year, I'm posting as series of helpful tips.
Here's a couple more:

Optimise your images
eCommerce websites are not just made up of code, they typically include a lot of visual assets as well. Users downloading pages including high quality images and possibly video from your servers at busy times can cripple your hardware and bandwidth, degrading everyone’s experience. Ask yourself “Do I really need that huge photo on the homepage?” and even if the answer is ‘yes’ you should check to see if you can compress it even slightly with no obvious reduction in quality. Remember… compressing images to optimum levels should be part of your regular website publishing process and just because you have a great data connection in the office, don’t always assume your user has one too.

Speak with your hosting company
A lot of website availability issues occur when systems are subjected to unpredicted demand. You should already have some idea what your busiest day and hour figures are and when in the next few weeks this could be (if you also do your analysis right, you should also have a good idea of your peak visitors and transactions – see point 1). If you haven’t already, talk to your hosting company and share this information with them. Ask them what they can do to maintain site availability and what monitoring / alerting they have in place. Also discuss with them the possibility of temporarily boosting your bandwidth to higher levels should you need to.

The previous post is here:
http://press20.blogspot.com/2011/11/surviving-peak-ecommerce-christmas.html

Surviving a peak eCommerce Christmas

So how is your website going to get through Christmas? How can you test things to ensure you can survive this year's busiest periods? Here's some pointers to guide you....

Check your figures
Look back at your website analytics from the same period last year and see what volume of visits (not just unique visitors) and transactions you had back then. Dig down into the detail and record not just your peak daily figures, but your peak hourly or even your minute-by-minute maximums.Then multiply these numbers by the growth you’ve have had over the last year (always rounding up your figures, as it is always better to err on the side of caution). This will give you an idea of the peak figures you can expect in the next few weeks.

Check if you actually have any problems and what they are
If your site actually broke during peak trading last year (rather than just went slow), identify exactly when and how it broke. Speak with your IT Operations team to see if they can provide more detail about what happened and what action they took.Note: If you have hit similar peaks to last Christmas over the last year of online trading, also check to see if you had a reoccurrence at these points. If you haven’t, then you may have less than an issue than you thought.

Twas the month before Christmas...

Imagine the situation.... you've recently moved departments and been put in charge of your eCommerce website. However it is just a couple of weeks until Christmas peak trading. Perhaps you've also been told the site almost broke around this time last year and fear for the worst. Is it too late to do anything?

Don’t worry, there’s always something you can do to help your site survive peak holiday trading. Christmas and sale shopping are both a blessing and a curse for online retailers, as unlike their store counter-parts, website managers don’t have the ability to queue people out of the door and around the block. Instead sites have to be permanently available to deal with visitors, but when they want to arrive….

This is great for the bottom line if you can cater for this demand. But it is bad for business both financially and reputation-wise if you can’t.

Over the next few posts are my list of key things you should do to survive Christmas peak eCommerce trading....

Some Facebook comments now indexed by Google

It's been widely known that Facebook does not allow search engines such as Google to index its content. It does what it can to stop the Googlebot getting in (and instead Facebook has done a deal with Microsoft for Bing to power its internal search). 

However, If you use your Facebook account to post a comment on a website that uses Facebook Comments, your comment can now be indexed by Google's web spiders. This is because Google has developed its software to be able to run some JavaScript, which Facebook Comments uses.

This means it will now be searchable in Google's index and could help your SEO efforts. 

Prepare yourself for an eCommerce Christmas

If you run a transactional website you just have 2 weeks to prepare for the busiest online shopping of the year! Get ready...

According to Amazon, Monday December 5 at 9pm will mark the peak of this year’s online Christmas shopping season in the UK. For other retailers the key date is sometime the following week, when people start to focus on the presents they need to get and panic buying sets in.

IMRG calculates Europeans will spend 52 billion euros online this year. This forecast is 20% up on last year, which was higher than anything else before it.

So.... "Will it meet this lofty projection?" I hear you ask. 'Quite possibly' is my view, as eCommerce sites try to market to their potential customers is as many ways as possible. And with newer innovations such as Facebook stores (FCommerce) in the mix, there's now even more ways to transact online.

Are your sites ready?

Photos from #ishopkent2011

Here are some photos I took from Friday's #ishopkent2011 eCommerce in Kent event & awards.

Note: these may not be great quality, bit if you attended please use.

The day that Social Media died

Yesterday I gave a presentation to the eCommerce in Kent (iShopKent) event. The topic I was supposed to talk about was 'Social Media for Retail', however I think I managed to shake things up a bit.

And it wasn't my criticism of Google Plus while Jon Marsh from Google was in the room that raised the most eyebrows.... but this slide:

The whole idea behind this image, besides a bit of shock to the system after the lunchtime recess, was to communicate that if you are a company looking to use channels such as Twitter & Facebook to get your message across... you don't need Social Media, you need Social Business.

So as far as the attendees were concerned, Social Media needed to die and we should have had a minute silence.

Perhaps that's what the attendees would have preferred as well... :-)

Google’s new AdWords algorithm

Ip

We all should know by that Google makes around 400 changes a year to its search algorithm (yes, that is over 1 change a day), with some such as the recent 'freshness' update being more significant than others.

However last month Google made a change to its AdWords algorithm which is significant in several regards
1. This affects Google's revenue if they get it wrong
2. This affects advertisers (e.g. those with fixed PPC budgets may find they get more or less for their money now)

What actually changed was an update to the 'Quality Score' factor that is given to each advert within Google's pay-per-click system. Quality Score in the past has previously been an arbitrary weighting that was given and that meant more experienced online marketers could mysteriously bid less than their competitors and still get a higher ranking in the search engine results pages (SERP's).

More and more is now gradually known about Quality Score (mainly thanks to Google posting blogs and videos on the subject) and it is now widely accepted that it is a mixture of three things:
a) the historical performance of the advert (what percentage of people actually clicked on it)
b) the relevance of the ad text to the search term (e.g. are you actually advertising for what people are seaching for)
c) the quality of the landing page (how relevant is the page you're actually taking users to?)

Google has now put a greater emphasis on the landing page quality, which to me makea a lot of sense. All too often you get taken from a PPC advert through to a page that has very little to do with the craftily-worded advert.

I just hope they also factor the page speed performance into account as well!

The Great Google PPC scam?

Does your company spend money each month on Google advertising? You know, that small little Pay-per-click campaign you started a couple of years back for a pound per month, that you now have to spend a few hundred quid a week or more on?

Well, according to one train of thought it could be costing you more than it needs to. And the company you have to blame is?.... Google.

Yes, that's right, the 'do no evil' company is possibility affecting your bottom line says Vinay Sahni:

https://plus.google.com/104371975904409493484/posts/XFYfF1jujdE#104371975904409493484/posts/XFYfF1jujdE

How?

Well, have you attended an Internet exhibition, bought an Internet industry magazine or even just purchased a business publication recently? And did a 'free Google advertising' or similar leaflet fall out of it offering you £50 or £70 of free keyword advertising?

Sahni states that this activity (e.g. giving ad vouchers to those who don't currently use PPC) is not just encouraging more people to use Google's advertising system, it is driving the price up.Yes, his theory is that the online auction of keywords is skewed when you let more people bid on the same terms and giving (potentially less-experienced) users into the system with what really is free money. Like a person who enters into an auction with someone else's wallet, the theory is that everyone else using their own money has to bid that bit more to beat them. So overall the rising tide of cost makes more money for Google at no loss.

Although a good theory, I don't actually buy this. Plus there are several possible flaws in the argument:

1. Google is actually losing money giving away vouchers (Assuming there are other bidders who are prepared to pay but were out-bid by someone with a free voucher)

2. Its not always about paying the highest price for some keywords. Often a more cost-effective campaign can be run by targetting lower positions (although you could argue that these are still more expensive with free bidders loose in the system)

3. The price of keywords will find its automatic level once the free bidders go away again (although its not often I've seen the price of keywords drop over time).

4. Sahni is forgetting Google's Quality Score weighting of PPC adverts (e.g. how well your advertising matches what users are looking for r how relevant your ad is). This secret scoring system is designed to reward PPC advertisers who take the effort to optimise their online advertising. It therefore means that those who know what they are doing don't necessarily have to bid more than those who are using a free voucher.

 

There's no proof that Google does NOT return the price of keywords back to the proper market price over time and indeed this would be a huge reputational and business mistake if it was ever the case.  However the fact remains that you should always monitor your PPC campaigns to ensure you are always getting the best return on your marketing spend.

 

A Multi-Channel Future - are you in denial?

If you work in retail these days you have to get used to a customer who is increasingly tech-savvy and multi-channel minded.

Gone are the old days where stores would offer a 'price matching guarantee' to anyone who found the same product only in a competing branch nearby or glossy catalogue. Now they have to offer the same deal to any reputable online source too or face some pretty strong criticism (usually on social media networks Luke Twitter or in blogs).

And its not just tightly-clasped black & white printouts that nowadays get shown to store staff to price match. Its now incredibly easy to take a picture with your smartphone camera, submit the image to a site or application and get an almost instant price from a number of highly-competitive online retailers.
Note: If you haven't tried it already, Amazon's iPhone app does exactly this.

In my opinion some retailers are most definitely still in denial about the whole multi-channel approach. They don't want to join up the sales channels in an effort to win the sale and their store staff on commission are not encouraged to tell customers that the same product is not out of stock on the company website.
And why should they? Unless there is some way of attributing an online sale to the physical visit, then there's no value in them giving the company website address. To them they might as well tell the potential customer to go next door to the competition....for all the financial good it will do them.

But is doesn't have to be like that...... Does it?

27% of smartphone owners will shop online this Christmas

Smartphone usage for online shopping purposes is on the rise and
Christmas peak trading is almost upon us. Therefore if you don't have
a mobile commerce site that provides information, displays products at
competitive prices and ultimately has the ability to sell via a
portable interface..... you're missing out on the biggest sales
opportunity of the year.

This holiday season millions of smartphone-weilding shoppers will be
looking to transact online for everything from presents for their
nearest & dearest, to the latest designer outfit to look fantastic at
the office party.

According to Deloitte's 2011 Annual Holiday Survey 27% odf those who
owned a smartphone (e.g the Applie iPhone or one of the many Android
devices) will use their phone for Christmas / Holiday shopping. The
study also highlighted that consumers with smartphones will more
generically use them to:
find store locations (67%)
compare prices (59%)
obtain product information (51%)
shop online (45%)
scan bar codes (40%)

Retailers now need to tap into this market. They may even want to
provide services that will encourage smartphone purchases such as WiFi
connectivity in store (useful if your products are sold out in a
physical location, but still available via your online store) and QR
Codes (to tie together the online and offline worlds).

Google is killing Sidewiki

So, Google Sidewiki is going the same way as Buzz and that other thing
that nobody used..... (Wave wasn't it?)

This news must hardly come as a surprise to those who actually used
the product. It never really got mainstream acceptance in the way that
some other Google products did, even though it was pretty useful.

Google's approach creating a range of different products and
killing-off those that don't work, is a double edge sword. Yes they
are willing to crowdsource approval of their efforts and see which
ones are viable in the longer term, but it does create a bit of upset
with those who were keen users.

Personally I'm a little sad to see it go, as I was a user of it for a
while when it first launched. I either used it to make notes against a
site, like a schoolboy writes in the margin of a literature classic or
as a form of private digital vandalism.