Black Friday - The Farce Awakens

So that was the first full-scale Black Friday that the UK has ever experienced.  And what an event it was.

Stories of in-store wars, bargains snatched from the hands of those who waited patiently in line for hours and police arrests for fighting at 24 hour supermarkets have been written about and told over the last few days. The British shopping masses have been shown as a brawling uncultured rabble, who would happily trample others underfoot just to get their hands on a discounted television for themselves... that they probably would not have purchased anyway.

Previous pre-Christmas sales have now been overshadowed by the dark lord of post-Thanksgiving sales bonanzas that we have willingly inherited from the USA...without any of the thanks or the giving we are supposed to have at this time of year.

If this is the beginning of a new saga in retail... then part of me wished I lived a long time ago and far away.

#blackfridayfail - eCommerce sites struggle under high volumes

So, Black Friday fever really looks to be kicking in, as a number of websites seem to either be having issues or are down entirely.

Argos

As of writing, the multi-channel catalogue-based retailer claims to be "experiencing a very high volume of visitors"

River Island

Apparently failing to cope with the pressure of the pre-Christmas bargain hunters, the fashion retailer seems to be having a few issues delivering a homepage.

Tesco
Although this site is up right now, at certain points late last night the UK's biggest retailer was only able to display a waiting page

What does Black Friday mean to the UK?

It seems to me that the use of 'Black Friday' as a retail promotional tool is now everywhere in the UK. From Glasgow to Manchester and Plymouth to London it seems to have sprung up from almost nowhere just few years ago into a few days of serious high street and online discounting.

But why is it especially this year that a lot of UK retailers have embraced an American holiday?

Here's a few suggestions:

1. The high street needs to stimulate sales
Following a mild autumn, a lot of people have not raced out to the shops in September and October to buy items such as a new Winter wardrobe (if you don't believe me, ask your peers if many have bought a big coat recently).Consequently year on year takings are down across a number of sectors, including clothing.
2. Autumn sales aren't a new thing
Discounting around this time isn't a new concept and many stores have been having 'mid-season sales' for decades. Yes, a lot of retailers have been dropping prices of specific products and ranges in mid-to-late November, it's just that...

3. Black Friday sounds cool
It's good to give something a catchy name and it seems that yes black is indeed the new black.  I suggest the fact that it refers to the day after the US commemorate a harvest festival celebrated by the Pilgrim Fathers in 1621 is pretty irrelevant to the average Brit.

4. The UK is becoming more and more American-ized
As reflected in: the recent growth in Halloween over this side of the pond, the increase in Seattle style coffee shops that sell huge capacity cups of caffeine and the gradual use of "Tuxedo" (an American club that adopted the use of the black suit and tie) over the "Dinner Jacket".

5. The Internet is reducing cultural barriers
I first noticed the use of 'Black Friday' on Amazon.com about a decade ago, when just like today, I couldn't find anything interesting to buy on the site. The increasing use of global eCommere sites like Amazon, eBay and the like have created a boundary-less society that is only too happy to embrace different retailing concepts.

Which leads me to a slightly cynical further idea... Could it be that Black Friday is just another ploy adopted by savvy retailers across the globe to get rid stuff that would never have shifted at full price anyway?

What does Direct Traffic actually mean?

Website Analytics (e.g. Google Analytics) provide a lot of insight into digital user behaviour, including what keywords they are typing into search engines, what pages they are arriving on and the locations they are coming from.

However all too often I have seen visitors coming into a site as Direct Traffic pretty much ignored or understated as a source. For example if all other digital marketing sources come to 80% and analytics says Direct is 30%, I've heard clients say “Oh, let’s just make Direct 20% and show how good my paid for efforts are"… rather than looking at why a site is showing 110% inbound traffic.

But I think we all need to stop and reconsider this approach, take another look at direct sources of visitors and assess the value that they bring.

Although we tend to take this as "the visitors who type the URL direct into the browser" - this is not the full picture. It is also includes:
- bookmarked visits
- those campaigns that are incorrectly tagged
- those visits where the referrer data is not available (e.g. those coming from an https source, such as a secure site - which may even be your own site itself )

Note: There is even the suggestion on some forums that Google Images has been a source of direct traffic because it creates visits from links that are not traceable.

The Importance of Keywords in Digital Marketing

Keywords have a huge influence across many areas of online marketing. They help to drive the correct traffic from organic positions in search engines, which in-turn need to be optimised through SEO efforts (white hat only of course). Keywords also form the fundamentals of any pay-per-click activity done across Google, Yahoo/Bing, etc.

Keywords therefore have a big impact wherever they are used online and you should make sure your keyword strategy is:

1. Planned in advance of any major digital work, taking care to analyse and understand the terms and phases your target audience is really using (not just those your client thinks they should use)

2. Incorporated in your onsite efforts, such as: Page titles, Meta Description and body copy (including semantic headings & structure)

3. Communicated to other parties, such as your PR company and external copy writing / translation agencies.

4. Reviewed and updated on a regular basis, to ensure you are still getting the required traffic and conversions. This is an evolving situation after all, where new sites and efforts are always changing.

Stupid things said in October

Since it is the end of October (and a Friday),  I thought I'd let you all read some of the daft, incorrect and just plain wrong things I have heard people say this month:

1. Our contact centre isn't 3D Secure right now
2. Why are we building our site so blind people can read it?
3. We need a business case written for something that won't happen.
4. If I could go forward in time and see what I needed to do, then I would come back and tell myself not to do it. (Oh hang on, it was me that said that!)
5. If you build it, they will come back again
6. I know the figures haven't changed... But can you send me the latest version?

I can't wait for November....

Google Wallet or Apple Pay - the UK is waiting

I moved away from using Apple and the iTunes ecosystem a year & a half ago and I went back to Android. I thought the devices and flexibility offered by Google's open operating system and Play Store was a better choice than the locked down offering from Cupertino. 

The only thing the whole Google ecosystem was missing in the UK was a decent mobile payment solution. It's been a gap in the British eCommerce chain since the retirement of Google's Checkout product was announced 18 moths ago and Google Wallet was described as the successor.
But since then we have been teased and tantalised.

According to the Google Wallet website:

"Google Wallet is an easier way to pay in stores, pay your friends and pay online.
Shop in stores with all your loyalty, offers and gift cards in one place. Send money to friends and they can spend it instantly with the Google Wallet Card."

But I'm still waiting for Google's payment offering to extend beyond North America.

So, with the recent announcement of Apple Pay, I have to admit I felt a twinge of jealousy... 

as it looked like UK Apple users were going to get a mobile payment system before UK Google users. But it looks like this could be another year away, despite Steve Perry, Chief Digital Officer of Visa Europe, going on record as stating  "We are working closely with Apple and with other member banks to bring this new service to market in Europe."

In short.. neither payment service looks like they will step out out of their comfort zone (the USA) for some while... despite other services such as Zapp, Pingit (by Barclays), PayPal and others marching forward.

Or maybe that's both Apple & Google's strategy... To see which product or vendor looks like winning out in Europe and further afield... then to swoop down and buy them.

British consumers spend more online

According to respondents to The 2014 Parcel Deliveries Usage and Attitude Survey carried out by consumer delivery specialist Hermes, British consumers are now spending substantially more online than those in France and Germany.

Apparently twice as many Brits (27%) have shopped online in the last three months compared to the French (14%) and the Germans (10%).

This confidence in online retailing is also refelected in a greater proportion of each nation planning to use eCommerce channels next year than they did this year. With 42% of British consumers now planning to shop online over the next 10 months compared to 30% of French and 28% of Germans consumers.

One of the more facinating insights in the report is that us British customers are using mobile devices far more to buy items online... 23% compared to 9% and 11% for French and Germans respectively.

However, the most interesting fact from an International eCommerce perspective (something that I've been increasingly focusing on for my own consulting clients) is that home-grown sites are doing a Stirling (pun intended) job of attracting foreign custom, with over a third of German and French shoppers stating they have now bought from a UK online retailer... even beating American and Chinese sites to claim the top spot.

More information is available here:
https://www.hermesworld.com/en/press/press_releases/pm-detail-hermes-ltd-uk_27136.html

5 questions to ask your new SEO agency

So let's imagine you've recently hired a new search engine optimisation agency to improve your organic position in the popular search engines.

Before you actually engage with them, here are a few important questions you should ask:

1. Does the SEO agency understand my business?
Or again more specifically, do the people actually working on my account understand what my organisation does, its products or services and what it's unique proposition or selling point is?
There will almost certainly be some initial familiarisation with your offering or processes, but first check that this agency gets what you do and has a firm understanding of who your competitors are.
Note: The counter to this issue however is when you hire an SEO agency that knows your industry very well and already has a number of your competitors as clients in this market sector... are they really able to provide you with a unique and perhaps innovative approach to on-page and off-site optimisation?

2. How much of my monthly retainer is for actual work?
Or more specifically, how much of what you pay for is agency 'padding' in the form of 'Project Management', 'Account Management' or even worse... 'Administration & Reporting'?
(Note, most SEO tools these days have quite decent automated reporting functions. So sending out a regular report is just a case of configuring the reporting service once).
In one situation I saw last year, where my agency won the SEO business, The outgoing agency managed to fill over 60% of its monthly SEO retainer with non-specialist staff. Nice work if you can get it....

3. Who is actually doing the work?
It's a pretty good bet that you had a smart(ish) new business person put together the proposal that you accepted. Or if the agency is a smaller one, then it may well be the owner or other senior person that wrote the document that won them the work. But will this person be the one actually working on your account day-to-day or will it be a junior person they may not even have mentioned in their credentials? My guess is that in most SEO agencies it will be the latter that does the hard graft most of the time (not the 'Head of Search' or 'Head of SEM Services' you were promised)
Note: If it is someone you never get to speak to, then reconsider hiring them. And if it's 'someone in their [not this country] office' then get concerned quickly, really quick....

4. What tools & techniques do you use?
Some SEO agencies like to keep the tools and techniques they use a secret to their clients. I guess they feel it adds an air of mystery to the complex art of search engine optimisation. As far as tools go, there are a few good ones out there that the majority of agencies use for most of their clients. Also make sure that you are not being charged extra for these tools, the costs for them should be included in your retainer.
Note: Some of these tools use propriety indexing technology to work, whereas others need to link to your own site's Webmaster Tools accounts. Neither is wrong, but be prepared to grant them access in the same sort of ways you've granted them access to your website analytics package.
As for the techniques used... you should have full transparency about what they are doing and the rationale for doing it. However, if they mention the act of buying links... run a mile!

5. What do you want me to do next?
Getting started with a new agency is usually a process of learning, testing, evaluating and refining. Expect the agency to ask to speak with other stakeholders or 3rd parties in your business (e.g. PR company, website development agency and product / catalogue managers if you have an eCommerce site). Having an SEO firm that is not just technically competent, but has decent organisational skills can be a rare find. Also make sure that you have regular review sessions booked in the diaries. Even if these are done over the phone / Skype or webex... your business, the competition and most definitely the search engines change all the time.

Customer Data Is Essential To A Digital Strategy

The cornerstone of any Digital Transformation Programme, to move an organisation to a place of improved digital maturity, is customer data

The collecting, storing, processing, analysing and presenting of data collected about your users needs to be a fundamental requirement. From data comes an understanding of who your customers are and what they are doing.

Who they are:
(Typically obtained from account / registration database)
Address
Age, sex & other demographics
Communication preferences
etc.

What they do:
(Typically obtained from your online analytics package)
Device(s) used
Time of day they visit
Browsing behaviour (e.g. pages visited)
Marketing campaigns they have interacted with
Goals completed
etc.

Or put a different way... structuring your digital transformation efforts around your customer is more important than you possibly realise.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media Marketing

From the pen of Marketing cartoonist comes another witty illustration, this time on the 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media Marketing:

Which do you practice?
(I bet you do at least one, if not more)

The full selection of cartoons can be found here: http://tomfishburne.com

Happy 16th Birthday Google

Can the search giant really only be 16 years of age today?

Has Google really only hit it's mid-teens already?

Yes, the site that made search simple and pioneered & perfected the pay-per-click advertising model was only founded in 1998 by two Stanford doctoral students called Sergey Brin and Larry Page who developed a bunch of algorithms that turned the search marketing upside down.

The 4 C’s of a Digital Platform

I've previously posted about the need for organisations to move away from just a website to a Digital Platform, so I won’t go into detail about ‘why’ you need one. However, from feedback I've had about this topic, I think I need to go into more detail about WHAT specifically one actually is.

To therefore keep things as simple as possible, I think the scope of a Digital Platform can be summed up in 4 terms beginning with the letter C:

Content:

Keeping any online property up-to-date requires a decent system for managing content. With free and easy to use CMS (Content Management System) tools available, the days of static sites are (or should be) long gone.
Note: although I know of at least 2 large eCommerce retailers who claim to manage their site content via their merchandising system, which only updates product and category information but still needs a fleet of developers to make HTML-based changes to their homepage, landing pages and anything else you would generally classify under the term content.

Commerce:

Having transactional functionality in your online platform is becoming more and more of a fundamental requirement for an increasing number of sites as they look to acquire and retain direct online customers rather than use a complex and commercially draining network of stores, partners, resellers or agents.
If you want proof of this, just look at the recent demise of the mobile retailer Phones4u in the UK. As the mobile phone operators have gotten more grown-up with their online selling and customer management propositions, then their need for an intermediate who takes commission and attempts to own the customer becomes less and less. In short, by having a mature online commerce and account management service, companies can now seriously consider or reconsider dis-intermediation in fast moving markets.
A digital platform should therefore have a host of features (shopping carts, integration to payment services, discounts & offers functionality and ‘my account’ database functionality, etc.) to enable your business to quickly allow your customers to self-serve.

Channels:

Forget that desktop-only site you've been holding onto for the last few years. The use of mobile devices to browse and buy are increasingly overtaking PC and laptop usage in all sorts of markets. Your customer is now almost as likely to be using their smartphone or tablet (in an array of sizes) to inform themselves. However, just because your mobile visitors have increased, it doesn't mean that your conversions have… as on average (in my experience anyhow) conversion rates on desktop sites accessed from mobile devices sharply decrease in correlation to the size of the screen used.

Or in other words… make sure your digital platform can deliver your content and commerce capability to all users regardless of their channel of choice.

Campaigns:

If you capture and manage customer data, then use it to communicate. To really leverage the user data contained in you Digital Platform it also needs to include (or fully integrate with) a range of digital marketing tools to get your message out and to build a relationship with your target audience. Can your platform:

• Deliver segmented marketing emails to a set of subscribed users?
• Send alerts to customers that they have left something in their shopping basket (and that they should jolly well come back to the site and buy it before someone else does or it is no longer available)?
• Send out SMS messages to those who want or need it (think how useful those text messages about that flight you booked for next week are and how they don’t need you to have a modern 4G data connection to look them up).
• Work out which of your customers are Tweeting and confirm what product they actually bought online from you?

Hopefully your answer to all of the above is “Yes”.

Flybe location picker touches down too far

I'm an admirer of the online usability shown on flybe.com's website (OK, they do have a few slightly sneaky techniques for increasing average order revenues - but you still have to take appreciate the way they do it).

So it came as a little surprise to see the site's location selection 'mega menu' partially disappear beneath the bottom of the page of my browser. This means that around half of the destinations the discount airline fly from (including Glasgow, my own local airport) aren't shown at full screen.

I know that Flybe do fly to and from a large number of destinations around Europe, but surely there must be a more economical way of showing as many locations on the screen at once.

Remember to spell your client's product correctly

Dear Jeep.

Can I please suggest you speak with your digital marketing agency pretty quickly and find out why they can't even spell the name of your flagship motor vehicle?

You would have hoped that the people creating the Facebook Adverts to entice people to view your large family 4x4 would be able to actually spell..... wouldn't you?

Yours

Hayden

Build a Digital Platform not a website

I still hear a lot of businesses talk about “building a new website” or “creating an online presence”. Now by itself this is not a bad thing and these organisations will no doubt join the ranks of those that regularly move pixels about to create more impact or sell more.

But your web presence should be only one part of an entire toolbox that larger organisations should be using to influence more, engage more, sell more and retain more. But in my experience, a lot of them don’t understand that to have a joined up online customer experience and you need to have a joined up collection of tools that all work well together.

In other words you need a Digital Platform not a website.

So what can a Digital Platform do for you?

Provide ubiquitous online access
It should give as many users as possible easy access regardless of: device, connection speed and ability.

Improve the Customer Experience
It should create a relevant & consistent digital interface for each user segment, allowing all interactions to be as efficient & intuitive as possible, allowing your business to understand customers better.

Improve revenue
It should maximise any online revenue opportunities through better marketing campaigns, improved conversion and opportunities for additional revenue optimisation

Improve insight
It should allow you to understand digital visitor behaviour with the intention of informing and optimising future digital activity.

Provide consistent content
It should allow the central management of content (text, imagery, etc.) across all online devices and interfaces.

Brandjacking is getting tired

I'm a lover of a decent brandjacking, where a brand, campaign, hashtag, etc. gets hijacked by someone else.

However it needs to be done elegantly and with more style or impact than the brand being 'jacked'. If it isn't... then it falls on its face.

And in my opinion this is what Kia have done with their promoted tweets intended to leverage off the marketing mammoth that is XFactor.

Subaru mobile website is roofless

With mobile web usage rocketing and more and more potential customers looking to inform their purchase online... you'd think that Subaru would get their website working correctly.

However this landing page for the new Subaru Impreza not only gives a poor layout, but also manages to only partially display the actual vehicle. In fact, the top half of the car is completely hidden from view and gives an overall poor experience to users looking to find out more on their smartphones.

Commerce and Content – Still not fully integrated

The two disciplines of digital content management and eCommerce have been side-by-side for many years now, but why has the enterprise software / service market not yet managed to create a bunch of mature products that have both great content management systems (CMS’s) and great digital retailing service… and that are actually fully integrated into each other?

I believe the root of this problem lies in the origins and on-going management of these two inter-connected digital disciplines. Back in the dim and distant days you had two distinct silos for managing online: the digital marketing team who managed the content (text, images and increasingly rich assets such as video) and the eBusiness or eCommerce team who managed the product catalogue & payment side of things. In my opinion this has historically resulted in two different sets of people creating disparate experiences and leaving one crucially important person floundering in between… the customer.

The only thing is, the customers these days do actually notice when an online experience clashes. They quickly give up when they are struggling with a user interface that doesn't help them search, find and browse through the products they want. They try your competitor’s URL when your site doesn't connect product content with the ability to buy it in one simple action.

I therefore think the major vendors of Web Content Management (WCM) and eCommerce need to seriously take a look at their product stack. They then need to integrate & align these two areas into one compelling proposition. This shouldn't be done in half measures (E.g. by a large CMS vendor just buying up a small eCommerce product and offering it as a complex bolt-on  to their already weighty offering), in most cases this will need a complete re-think of both sides of the equation to create something that works for the customer (and the end user).

Until then, both in-house teams and the customer will continue to have a mixed experience. And quite frankly in this more mature digital age…. That’s bloody awful!

What factors affect your conversion?

Everyone who runs an eCommerce website is hooked on conversion as the vital key performance indicator to improve. And quite rightly…. It is the one metric that tells you how well your website it turning lookers into bookers (or browsers into buyers if you don’t like things rhyming and prefer alliteration instead.).
So what affects conversion? Well there are a number of factors that have an influence including:

• Usability
  How easy your site is to navigate and transact with
• Security
  How well your site conveys and actually take steps to ensure the safety of customer data
• Content
  How well  the site text and imagery informs &  supports the sales process
• Layout
  It’s not just how much you have on a page, it’s where you put it that counts
• Speed
  How quickly your site appears & displays affects bounce & therefore conversion
• Aesthetics
  How it looks also affects how it converts (try changing the colour of a few buttons if you don’t believe me)

All you have to do it find out what works for your customers.