Online retail, growth ahead

The good news:
Online retail is still estimated to grow, despite the global economic crash-landing the financial markets performed last year.

The bad news:
The growth from previous years is not sustainable, so you'll have to put up with single digital growth very soon!

This all kinda makes sense as its not possible to grow a market beyond the total possible number of potential customers. (See http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007142 for some US-centric info.) However, its obvious that the mad days of the eCommerce teenage years are now changing into something more like maturity.

Hurrah!

MP's Expenses and crowdsourcing

It struck me that a particularly good example of using crowdsourcing techniques in journalism is the publishing and subsequent Questions & Answers of UK MP's expenses claims.

Having published the details of each MP's claims online [you can find yours by postcode, geographic region or political leaning here] , the BBC has subsequently asked the relevant MP to explain their potential mis-use of public money [here].

Why is 'word of mouth' gaining interest?

WOM, or Word-of-mouth used to be the old method of spreading information. Then along came technology...

.... and I don't mean the Internet. I mean the printing press, then everything else afterward (which has been accepted by consumers in increasingly quicker timescales)

But now, with social media, we are seeing a shift back to WOM and WOMM (Word of Mouth Marketing). But just who do consumers listen to for references and recommendations? Well suprisingly its not just their online friends.. its their real ones!

According to a Mintel report this month, 34% of US Internet users who bought a product or service based on a recommendation got the information from a friend or relative, and a quarter got it from a spouse or partner. However only 5% of respondents bought something based on the recommendation of a blogger or someone from an Internet chat room.

Chris Haack, senior analyst at Mintel said

“Young adults are somewhat more likely to turn to the Internet for advice and referrals, but even they listen to their peers first.

So whilst the modern methods of Word of Mouth via social media are rapidly gaining interest, we shouldn't forget how powerful human-to-human contact is.

Do you have your Facebook vanity URL yet?

This weekend Facebook started accepting requests for personalised/vanity URLs. This allows a user to add their name to the end of the Facebook URL to allow them to be found directly (e.g. http://www.facebook.com/haydensutherland). Its thought that this feature is the next step along Facebook's plan to become more Twitter-like.

However, it is also possible to set up a vanity URL for a company group / page if you have more than 1000 fans.

Have you got yours yet?

Note:
The way to obtain yours is to go to http://www.facebook.com/username and register the one most suitable that is still available.

Ignore social media at your peril

Brand Republic today have a nice little article on how some companies are still shying away from Social Media.
http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/912481/Companies-ignore-social-media-digital-consumer-peril/

Whilst it seems quite strange (to those of us that use & work around the online social space) that some organisations would still chose not to venture into this area... we still have to remember that we are (including our clients) still all relatively early adopters in understanding and using social media for business purposes.

Measuring online friendships

As part of my ongoing facination with the Corporate Social Graph and its personal equivalent, I've been researching the range of online friendships a person can have (with the aim of seeing if this matches the organisation ones).

After reading the work of Mike Arauz on his 'Spectrum of friendship', I'm tempted to suggest that the range he gives may be similar to the 'friendship' customers have for companies.

Here's how I think it works (and the difference):

Passive Interest:
A person is aware of a company and has visited the website

Active Interest:
They have been to the website several times and interacted with it (e.g. engaged with the content, bought something, been encouraged to do something in an offline channel, etc.)

Sharing:
An individaul has linked to the company website (e.g. via Twitter) or joined a group (e.g. become a fan of them on Facebook)


Public Dialogue AND Advocacy:
I've participated online with or about the organisation (e.g. posted a product review, sent a page/link to friend, contributed to a discussion forum, etc.)

Investment:
Now here's where I get stuck. I can't actually make up my mind if this is a capital investment (e.g. stocks & shares), an emotional investment (in that case its mixed in with Public Dialogue and Advocacy) or another....

Any thoughts?

Turn your site map upside down

We've been working with a client on redeveloping their website from its present incarnation. This current site has a homepage with an introduction animation and some navigation. This in-turn leads you to further pages (with even more under that).

Creating a site map of the pages you get a typical tree structure, with the homepage at the top and all the content on the lower 'branches'.

However, does this actually meet the needs of the orgainsation's (potential and existing) customers and search engines?

Customers want instant information about the organisation. They want to know some of the stuff on the lower levels and don't necessarily want to have to forrage for it through the navigation to find it.

Search engines also want content to spider and understand the site. The more this content is relevant and updated, the more likely the spiders are to return.

This therefore means exposing the content as quickly and effectively as possible and dispensing with conventional information hierarchy... or in other words turning your site map upside down! Content rightly therefore becomes the empowering factor.

When mentioning this to an Information Architect friend of mine he did questions whether this would necessarily work for all sites, especially those that have significant content and functionality.

However, is this not what the BBC news homepage and other such resources try to do?

The future of search?

For the last few weeks there has been a lot said (both positively & negatively) about the new Wolfram Alpha service, a 'computational knowledge engine from egghead Stephen Wolfram.

Initally labelled a 'Google Killer' it is nothing of the sort. What Google does - very well - is make it easy to search through as much of the world wide web as possible for specific search terms. What Wolfram Alpha does is make information computable. But what does that actually mean?

It means that Woolfram Alpha is building up resources of data that can have calculations run against it. This means that whilst Google can tell you every single page it has found where the number 1970 appears (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=1970), Wolfram Alpha will recognise it as; an integer, a year, an even number, etc.)

However, Google can also do basic mathematics (e.g. if we type 1970 - 1960 into both, they give the correct value of 10), but will struggle when things get more complex (e.g. typing 1970-1960x into WA will actually plot you the value of 'x' http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1970-1960x)

So is this a cuase for concern for Google? Well not really, despite there being a lot made of the alledged rivalry between the two) as Google has its own version of Wolfram Alpha up its sleeve in the form of Google Squared, a product from its labs project that it showed off last month.

Interesting note:
If you type in 'Google Squared' into Wolfram Alpha, rather than get a long mathematical answer to a very large number multiplied by itself, you get the message:

"Wolfram Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."

Ooooh... Nice touch!

Tweet this!

We're currently investigating for a couple of clients the best way for a user to post a Tweet via a link or button on their website .

I've come to the conclusion that a simple 'Tweet This' button can do this by posting an automatically generated update via a user'sr Twitter account, removing the need for them to type the whole message.

What benefit can this provide?

Well, it could help promote news and updates on you site, by making it easier for users to tell their friends what they are reading or find interesting.

Click on the link below to see what I mean:

Media trust, why newspapers are still worthy

Something that may suprise a few of you... newspapers are still a trusted source of information

The recent eMarketer survey on media trust (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007067) found that a surprisingly high number of people trust the news. But the more suprising finding is that online news scores higher than traditional newspapers in a lot of countries including us here in the UK!

The survey found that online news is trusted in the UK by 40% of those asked, compared with 23% trusting their paper.

Is this a false trust in modern digital news or a cynical perspective of our current celebrity & scandal - filled broadsheets & tabloids?

Enabling inter-company communication

Imagine the situation... you want to find out what's happening in your own company (e.g. strategic moves, etc.) but because of communication / management / location issues, you don't always get to find out the official news. On top of this, you also want to find out what is 'really' happening, in a Twitter-like status feed that is only seen by those who work at your company.

Well, this is exactly what Yammer provides as is an instant way to tell your colleagues "what am I working on?"

Yammer (www.yammer.com) addresses the issue of using your Twitter status for updates that are really only relevant to others in your company and offers a restricted area (and therefore hopefully a more open conversation).

Also, in a very Twitter-esque way, you can add hashtags (themes or subjects preceeded by the # symbol that you want to subsequently track, e.g. #takeover)

Here was their intial introduction at Techcrunch last year:
http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/presenter.php?presenter=53

So, to answer the question "Is it any good?", my answer is a resounding "Yes". We at Ideal Interface have now been using it for a few weeks and are finding it a very useful way to share: thoughts, status updates, useful links and other info. It particularly suits our business as we are mainly out of the office (myslef on client sites most of the time and others working from their home offices, etc.)

Expect further updates on this useful business tool.

Growth predicted in Interactive Advertising

Despite all the doom and gloom of the current recession, Forrester Research are predicting that interactive marketing spending will hit $25.6 billion in 2009. This will be an increase on the 2008 total of $23.1 billion by 11%

Even better news that Shar VanBoskirk predicts:

We expect marketer spend on display media, search, email, mobile and social media to reach nearly $55 billion by 2014.

However, this growth witll not come without casualties, mainly from direct mail and print advertising.

The full article is here:

http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2009/05/interactive-budgets-are-growing-at-the-expense-of-offline.html

Google relaxing trademarks now?

Ok, its not usual for me to keep on about a subject for too long (especially when there's so much out there to blog about), but following on from last weeks postings [Monday and Wednesday]about Google and trademarks, there have been further developments in this area....

Last week, it announced that will ease its restrictions on trademarked terms in adverts in Google. Now brands can both positively and negatively mention each other in their PPC activity. Some see this as an opportunity to communicate their exact product offerings, others just see it as Google trying to squeeze more revenue out of their search marketing service.

Either way this is yet another blow for those companies who are trying to prevent their competitors marketing to their customers on the popular search engine. Where previously some brands avoided the crowded (and potentially monopolistic) search engine, they now may not have any choice but to out-bid others to protect their own trademarks and revenue.

Is Google a Monopoly?

Surely any company that has a 70% - 90% share of any market could be seen as having a monopoly?

Well Google currently has the following shares of the search market in these countries:

• USA: 72% [source]
• France 91% [source - in French]
• UK 90% [source]

However, I can't help feel that a lot of this hype about Google's monopoly has been based upon fear from its competition (e.g. Microsoft's multi-million pound lobbying of Washington to block the Google & Yahoo advertising partnership last October) or worry from those who have old business models.... newspapers please take a step forward. And talking about Microsoft, weren't they themsleves found guilty of all sorts of anti-competitive activity several years ago? It therefore makes it all the more hypocritical that they "wolf" now.

But even though Google may have power in the search market, it doesn't necessarily mean that this has corrupted them does it? Well according to Jon Leibowitz ,the new Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, when asked last week if he saw Google abusing its power, said:

"I certainly don't see Google as abusing its power right now, no. And also it's brought many benefits to consumers."

But nevertheless Google has gone on the defensive, readying itself with information such as this presentation to potentially defend itself against the Anti-Googlers.

One thing is for sure, there's a lot of jealous companies out there who would love even a fraction of Google's wealth... and they show no signs of letting up in the current market conditions.

Google PPC trademark and the Class Action Lawsuit

Sometimes I write about relevant things, usually a little time after they happen (this tends to be after I've either used it, read about it or listened to a podcast that mentions it), but rarely do I write about somehting and then the following day or so something significant happens... however, following on from my posting on Monday...

...there is an article in today's Register by online legal firm out-law.com. This gives details about a sales software company called Firepond who have sued Google in a Texan court, because the Google AdWords system apparently infringes their trade marks.

"Google has improperly infringed [Firepond's] 'Firepond' Marks by selling, for example, [its] trademark 'Firepond' to [its] competitors as a keyword so that when an Internet User searches for 'Firepond' on...Google's Internet search engine, the competitor's advertisement hyperlink will appear at the very top and/or on the right side of the first page of search results…thereby confusing Internet Users and diverting a percentage of such Users from [Firepond] and enjoying and benefitting from all the goodwill and 'buyer's momentum' associated with [its] valuable trademark,"

However, by hopefully teaming up with other companies who are also upset by this activity, Firepond hopes to create a Class Action which will prevent Google from profiting from competitive trademark keyword buying.

This will certainly be an interesting case to watch, especially I more companies join in.
Further information is available at outlaw.com

blog sentiment for retailers

There's no doubt that bloggers opinions count these days. But if you're a retailer, is the blogosphere a good or bad place for opinions?

If you believe the Mainstream Media (MSM), you'd be fooled into believing that bloggers only post about the negative things in life and seek to destroy reputations rather than say posisitve things. Well, research agency Carma has found the opposite!

In their report on whether Negativity does prevail in Consumer Generated Media, they found that..

the blogosphere was unfavorable in less than 28 percent of posts, while it was favorable in more than 41 percent of posts. Based on this data alone, it is not accurate to say that the blogosphere is pervasively negative. Perhaps the blogosphere is negative in other ways . . .

Or to put it in diagram form (from eMarketer):













If you're a retailer, are you monitoring blog postings or even tracking the collective sentiment of this influential group of commenters? Even if you start now... you may be suprised by what you find.

Google PPC & Trademarks

Since May 2008, Google UK has allowed companies to bid on other trademarks (although it claims it doesn't 'encourage' it). This was a reversing of their previous policy, where this was prevented by providing proof of your company trademark directly to them. This brought Google UK's policy into line with that of Google USA and Canada.

Now, this did start an intial flurry of Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising last Spring, with British companies suddenly fearing that their competitors would buy placements for their trademarks. However this paranoid has subsided somewhat, especially when Google stated that they would not allow trademarks to be displayed in the ad text.

But that's not the full story... 'Yes', you can bid on a competitors trademark term and 'no' you may not stick their trademark in the advert copy you display. But you can put the competitors name into your URL and display that at the bottom of your advert.

Therefore, the following PPC advert is NOT allowed:

competitor trademark
competitor trademark
competitor trademark
www.your_company_url.com

...but the following one IS:

Advert copy
More advert copy
Even more copy
www.your_company_url.com/competitor

T-Mobile takes over Trafalgar Square

T-Mobile, in a reprisal of their famous Liverpool Street flash mob dancing advert, took over Trafalgar Square in the middle of London on Friday evening and the actual advert screened last night on UK TV.



Although this didn't perhaps have the impact of the previous one, it continues the "Life's for sharing" theme.

The Customer is now Social

Hasn't you customer grown up? Haven't they learnt to ask each other for opinion and to trust each other?

Yup!

Never before have people started trusting each other and I'll once-again refer to the Universal Mccanns study on' When did we start trusting strangers?'

Universal Mccanns When Did We Start Trusting Strangers

View more presentations from mickstravellin.

And as customers get more social, they need new ways of interacting with companies.
So, just like CRM, that gave companies a segmented view of their customer-base, VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) allows customers the tools for engaging with vendors.

Could companies be realising that their customers' view of them is not the same as their own? Surely not?

unofficial blogs and their effect

Having read about the blog of http://ebayinkblog.com/, an unoffical blog of an Ebay staff member, it got me thinking about how unofficial company blogs can end up being the most useful source of company information to customers and employees alike.

So today, I found it quite strange to hear of reports that Carphone Warehouse has blocked access for some its staff to an unofficial blog. Now, this isn't just any old blog. Its one set up by the Communication Workers Union to update its members who work for Charles Dunstone (note to other unions: it also acts as a PR tool for the union and a source of useful information for journalists).

It seems that a few CPW sites (e.g. Preston & Irlam in Manchester) around the UK have had their access to the site blocked, as well as several others including Argos.com and Tesco.com.

From: http://carphoneworker.wordpress.com/

Once again, we have not been contacted by the company to explain why this might be. Indeed, we still have not received any written communication from the company explaining why they censored the site at Irlam, or why they decided to uncensor it.

Now, I know that the Carphone Warehouse doesn't particularly like blogs, but isn't this going a bit too far?