10 best intergalactic oddities from the internet this week

Something feels different today... Not sure I can quite put my finger on it.

It’s as if there’s been a fundamental change in the way you can read this article. Almost like if you were to stretch the edges of a window either way, it would adjust to fit.

I would even go so far as to say that if you happened to be reading this on the tiniest mobile phone, your experience would be as legible as if you were looking at it on the side of a mountain.

It’s probably just my imagination. Perhaps this new found... um, what’s the word I’m looking for? Responsiveness! Perhaps this new found responsiveness will lead to a brand new outlook for the weekly round-up of internet oddities? 

Not bloody likely. On with the show...

IT’S HERE IT’S FINALLY HERE

Well it depends on what time you’re reading this. As I write, it’s approximately three hours away from Star Wars Episode VII trailer time, but by Friday evening we’ll have already judged it, tailored our hilarious tweets accordingly based on its brilliance/rubbishness and the cycle of expectation can begin once again.

So in order to remain relevant and evergreen, may I present a whole bunch of beautiful Star Wars infographics that will either help celebrate the release of the new trailer if it’s good, or help forget there were ever more than three original films if it’s bad. 

How I Met Your Mon Mothma

This is a definite curiosity, a Star Wars inspired sitcom pilot from the 70s that was promptly shelved and hidden in a vault till this Redditor got their hands on it.

Seven brand new jukebox musicals (that may not actually be real but should be)

Is there anything worse than a jukebox musical? Of course not. Don't worry though, I've fixed them. Here are seven brand new productions featuring your favourite artists, including Aphex Twin, GWAR, Neil Young, Death Grips, Bonnie Prince Billy, Gary Numan and Ice-T. (Two warnings: #1 I wrote it. #2 Bit sweary).

How do I look?

Here’s a collection of older people wearing funny t-shirts. Do they know what they’re doing? I don’t think it really matters.

A force to be reckoned with

A group of drunken Australians challenged some cops to a dance-off. They lost. The next challenge, bare knuckle fist-fight, also didn’t end well.

What makes you dutiful

So Liam Payne from One Direction, when exactly did you lose your zest for the mega-pop-star life?

Hack the planet!

It’s a supercut of computer hacking in 90s movies. Ah Ah Ah! You didn’t say the magic word!

Your weird doodlings brought to life, within reason

Budsies is a US based toy company (or flipping dream-weavers if you want to be more exact) that’s taking childrens’ drawings and making bespoke genuine stuffed toys based on them.

My anatomically correct Ryan Gosling is still being ‘processed’ apparently.

Guardians of the Galaxian

Sit back, relax, and enjoy this five part video history of video game graphics. Bliss.

Chancellor of the Exche-bleughhh

Because we can all spare a few moments to gaze at a deeply hungover (do I need an ‘allegedly’ here?) George Osborne.

That’s it for this week, me and the internet have left a massive queue outside Currys' online store while we did this round-up so we should probably head back to attend to it.

Is it all over for content?: 11 talking points

Is it all over for content? Are we all about to drown in cr*p? Are we all in Content Shock? Is the anti-content backlash finally here?

Here are 11 perspectives on the great content deluge debate...

A vast cloud of blah

"I've recently been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of jabber in the world: a vast cloud of blah I felt I was contributing to every seven days.

"If a weatherman misreads the national mood and cheerfully sieg-heils on BBC Breakfast at 8.45am, there'll be 86 outraged columns, 95 despairing blogs, half a million wry tweets and a rib-tickling pass-the-parcel Photoshop meme about it circulating by lunchtime. It happens every day...

"Everybody talking at once and all over each other; everyone on the planet typing words into their computers, for ever, like I'm doing now.

"I fail to see the point of roughly 98% of human communication at the moment, which indicates I need to stroll around somewhere quiet for a bit."

• Charlie Brooker resigns his weekly Guardian column

Proudly content-free for more than 150 years!

"WARNING! Harper's Magazine is 100% Content Free! Everybody gives you 'content'. But you'll never find that in Harper's Magazine. Instead, you'll get literature. Investigative reporting. Criticism. Photojournalism. Provocative adventures. Daring commentary. And truth-telling as only Harper's Magazine can tell it.

"Subscribe today and join the thoughtful, skeptical, witty people just like you who pay for culture, not content."

• Full-page subscription ad, Harper’s Magazine, October 2009, cited here 

Buried in the brown stuff

"Do the math... Lots and lots more content. From more and more sources. From a pool of inexperienced content creators that are stretched to the limit. There’s only one conclusion: We’re all about to be buried in crap.

"'Me-too' blog posts. Three-sentence ideas pumped up into 36-page eBooks. [...] Microsites full of the obvious disguised as the profound.

"This doesn’t just suck because we’re all going to be targeted by this drek. It sucks because the people we’re marketing to will start to raise their barriers again."

• Crap: Why the single biggest threat to content marketing is content marketing, and how building a Great Content Brand will help you survive the deluge by Doug Kessler, Velocity Partners

An infinite digital toilet

"The informational ease of access that Google and the internet provide have made information into something like a cheap commodity.

"Remember when teachers started worrying about students citing Wikipedia in essays?

"Now we have a flood of even less-moderated information that gets recycled by people and websites until it becomes ubiquitous. Like an infinite digital toilet, the internet is playing host to its own form of redigested waste."

• How Google flushes knowledge down the toilet by Bryce Emley

Content supply is exploding, demand stays flat

"Look at the two factors that impact the economics of content marketing — the amount of content available and the amount of content consumed (supply and demand).

"Of course the volume of free content is exploding at a ridiculous rate. Depending on what study you read, the amount of available web-based content (the supply) is doubling every nine to 24 months. Unimaginable, really.

"However, our ability to consume that content (the demand) is finite.

"There are only so many hours in a day and even if we consume content while we eat, work and drive, there is a theoretical and inviolable limit to consumption, which we are now approaching.

"This intersection of finite content consumption and rising content availability will create a tremor I call The Content Shock.

"In a situation where content supply is exponentially exploding while content demand is flat, we would predict that individuals, companies, and brands would have to 'pay consumers more and more just to get them to see the same amount of content."

• Content Shock: Why content marketing is not a sustainable strategy by Mark W Schaefer

The good stuff always rises to the top

"Ultimately, the equation is the same as it always has been: Quality content will win, regardless of how deep the pockets of the company producing it.

"That quality content will spread more quickly given the application of savvy social marketing techniques.

"But the capacity for consuming content will continue unabated regardless of the amount of content available. For most people [...] it’s as simple as this: I can stand all the quality content you can throw at me, as long as it’s about the stuff I’m interested in."

• Six reasons there will be no Content Shock by Shel Holtz

The line grows blurrier

"The bizarre idea that web audiences might like to read something relevant and interesting rather than have a brand message forced into their eyes is anathema to the content marketer.

"Most people are at least tangentially aware that the average fun internet listicle is laden with sponsored content; but the line between meaningful online media and manufactured SEO chowder grows ever blurrier.

"This month on Australian blog mUmBRELLA, a ‘content marketing specialist’, defended native advertising on the grounds that it’s occasionally entertaining and not quite as viscerally terrible as slavery.

"It’s a common cognitive error amongst a class of people who no longer have a natural understanding of what 'interesting' means to the average web user."

• Content marketing is ruining the web. Its decline will be poetic justice by JR Hennessey

People aren’t stupid

"It is precisely because the arrival of the internet saw so much of marketing devolve into a game of chasing numbers and algorithms (I'm looking at you SEO, as well as those Facebook marketers posting crap memes to drive 'likes') that true content marketing is trying to redress the balance back to offering valuable and genuine information that people actually want.

"It's amazing how, if you just write quality content containing fresh information and ideas that the right people actually want to read, the search results largely take care of themselves.

"The good thing about content marketing is that it's the reader's decision to seek it out and read it.

"There's no forcing of hands through digital trickery, no broadcasting a self-serving brand message to a passive audience, no attempt to turn everything into a thinly-veiled pitch.

"People aren't stupid. They're more likely to trust and follow a brand that doesn't treat them so. Give them what they want and let them make up their own mind."

• Jonathan Crossfield, commenting on JR Hennessey, above

Both laugh...

Robert: "Are we in trouble with content marketing? Does [Mark Schaefer] have a point at all with what he’s saying?"

Joe: "No."

[both laugh]

• Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose, podcast: Content Marketing: Dead Already?

Duck for cover

"If someone tosses three tennis balls your way, you'll probably catch at least one of them and maybe two… but if instead they were to throw a hundred tennis balls at you, all at the same time, you’d duck for cover and catch none.

"And you’d probably emerge somewhat confused by the experience too. (Of course if someone filmed it and put it online you’d probably have some kind of viral hit on your hands.)"

• Dave Gorman, Too Much Information… Or can everyone just shut up for a moment. Some of us are trying to think 

Nurture the skills that lead to quality

"So how do you ensure you’re not adding to content landfill? Think what quality means in your content market.

"Quality doesn’t necessarily mean bigger budgets or expensive bylines. More often, quality is about providing the best answer to the question a user is asking or telling people something they didn’t know. It’s where editorial intuition and instinct come in.

"Businesses need to learn how to harness and nurture such skills – and trust their possessors to get on and do their thing."

• Dan Brotzel

13 compelling stats from around the digital world

Stats life! That’s what all the people say. 

By people, I almost exclusively mean researchers, analysts and statisticians. Not that they’re not people of course. Perhaps I should start again...

Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the best stats flung our way by all the best researchers, analysts and statisticians from around the marketing world, who I hope continue to do so after that introduction.

Apple vs. Paypal: the mobile payment showdown

Mobile payments will hit $142bn by 2019, but which company will be the dominant force in providing easy payment options?

Retale’s new report reveals the following insight:

• 36% have used mobile payments before, more than double the number from 2012.
• Nearly three out of five (56%) are interested in using mobile payments for holiday shopping.
• 24% actually say mobile payments are inconvenient relative to cash, credit and debit cards.
• Nearly 30% cited privacy concerns as a potential obstacle to them using mobile payments.
• 53% of ‘young people born between 1980 and 2000’ (there was another term here but I redacted it) have used mobile pay in-store (17% higher than average)

On the topic of which brand is currently leading the pack, when asked to identify the mobile payment service they would most likely use in-store, 51% mentioned PayPal with Apple Pay in third place with 10%. 

Testing... testing...

According to our Conversion Rate Optimisation Report 2014 companies that test more often derive greater rewards from their activities. 

Companies that saw a significant increase in their sales conducted 6.45 tests per month, compared to just 2.42 tests among organisations that saw their sales decrease.

More than half (57%) of companies cited a “lack of resources” as a barrier to improving conversion rates, by far the most common answer. 

Our research analyst and all-round good guy Bola Awoniyi has more to say on the subject in his four hallmarks of a successful conversion rate optimisation strategy.

ASOS nails Pinterest

For the second year running the UK fashion retailer is outstripping (yes a pun) the competition on the visual sharing platform.

Content from ASOS generates an average 7,202 pins a week, which is nearly five times more than Amazon (1,620 pins) and almost seven times more than John Lewis (1,096 pins).

Here’s the full countdown from Searchmetrics... 

1. Asos.com: 7,202 pins per week, 656,851 total pins, 198,385 followers
2. Amazon.co.uk: 1,620 pins per week, 176,990 total pins
3. Johnlewis.com: 1,096 pins per week, 198,697 total pins, 8,875 followers
4. Marksandspencer.com: 761 pins per week, 53,321 total pins, 14,745 followers
5. Tesco.com: 586 pins per week, 35,764 total pins, 41,878 followers
6. Next.co.uk: 554 pins per week, 131,857 total pins, 13,856 followers
7. Debenhams.com: 531 pins per week, 119,970 total pins, 9,884 followers
8. Argos.co.uk: 508 pins per week, 36,556 total pins, 26,986 followers
9. Asda.com: 448 pins per week, 22,712 total pins, 3,753 followers
10. DIY.com (B&Q): 71 pins per week, 8,312 total pins, 3,785 followers

Decisions, decisions... oh come on!

Rakuten Marketing’s reveals that savvy consumers now spend longer than ever researching and comparing products. 

The average shopper now makes on average 9.5 visits to a retailer’s site before deciding to buy, compared to just 2.5 visits three years ago.

Over the last four years, the average number of channels used before conversion has also risen from 1.25 in January 2010 to 3.25 in 2014.

And here’s a visualisation on how the UK’s multichannel players fared during Christmas 2013.

In the dark

RadiumOne has discovered that brands are in the dark about three quarters of their online audience, with UK consumers sharing over three times more content via email and IM (which isn’t tracked by web analytics) compared to public social channels.

For the following stats, ‘dark social’ refers to any inbound web traffic coming from sources that web analytics are unable to track.

It’s got nothing to do with the ‘darknet’, which is where all your favourite experimental electronica musicians share their music. 

• 91% of UK consumers regularly use dark social channels alongside social channels when sharing information online (93% globally).
• 26% only share in the dark, meaning brands with no dark social strategy in place know nothing about a quarter of UK consumers online – this rises to almost a third globally (32%).
• The topics discussed most often via dark social channels are typically more one-to-one in nature such as property (89%), careers (87%) and personal finance (83%).
• Conversely, the topics most discussed via social channels are more one-to-many such as pets (81%), family & parenting (54%) and society (43%).

Non-marketing stat of the week

To get their hands on $10m, 25% of people would abandon their friends, family and church. 7% would murder.

D-I-S-E-O

Based on a survey of enterprise companies, Conductor discovered that 17% of large companies rate their SEO as “very successful” and 28% as “not successful”.

However for a majority of enterprises SEO has become more effective in the last year.

Take that Santa!

Christmas is not the biggest season for retail affiliate marketing budgets, reveals R.O.EYE. 

While 45% agreeing the festive season was a key period, most preferred to direct budgets towards affiliate marketing during the New Year getaway (24%) and UK summer time (19%), with Easter, September’s new school term and Halloween each receiving 4% of the vote respectively.

gTLDs Tl;dr

With new web extensions going live on the internet, those that are retail focused are deemed the most valuable by marketers, according to Trademark Clearinghouse.

• 69% of respondents are interested in registering a .Buy domain. 
• The second most-anticipated domain is .VIP (67%), followed by .Store (65%). 
• 84% of those polled considered registering a new domain name within the next twelve months. 

The US to tread carefully this holiday season

Fluent found that more Americans say they’ll spend less on holiday gifts and travel in 2014 than they did in 2013.

According to the survey of 994 American adults aged 25-54, 46% of women and 37% of men plan to spend the same or less amount of money on shopping this year.

The research also revealed: 

• Digital dominates for researching gifts with respondents using online reviews (27%), social media (7%), and daily deals sites (8%).
• Mobile still lags when it comes to purchasing, with 32% of respondents saying they’ll buy in-store and 19% on desktop, while only 6% will buy through a tablet and 3% via a smartphone.
• Men are three times more likely to wait till the last minute to shop.

Which is exactly why 24 hour service stations exist.

The UK to tread less than carefully this holiday season

Criteo’s holiday shopping data reveals a 70% increase in online sales during a 25 day window leading up to December 18.

During this period:

• Retailers will see a 38% increase in conversion rate and 19% increase in CPCs
• Mobile devices will play a major role in consumer purchase behaviour this year with a projected 41% of purchases coming from mobile devices and 61% of those coming from tablets.
• The highest-performing time for purchases via tablets is 8-11pm the highest-performing time for purchases via smartphone is 5–10pm, and purchases via desktop is 11am-11pm.
• Once the 25 day window closes, sales will fall 49% during December 19-25, compared to the previous week. 

The stats within the stats

Like a multi-layered puzzle you might find in the movie Inception or the lyrics to ‘The Onion Song’, may I present you this stat based article within a stat based article... Yes it’s David Moth’s fabulous Black Friday 2014 stats round-up.

Non-marketing data-visualisation of the week

Comes from Michael Devereaux and it’s presented to you in honour of Friday’s release of the first trailer for Star Wars VII. 

How Star Wars changed the world... (click for larger version).

Hungry for more stats? Check out last week’s stats round-up and also download our Internet Statistics Compendium. 

13 Holiday Small Business Specials

Need to give your small business a competitive boost? Here are 13 easy-to-implement holiday small business specials. Use these promotions 365 days a year.

The post 13 Holiday Small Business Specials appeared first on Heidi Cohen.

What is ASOS doing so right on Pinterest?

It used to be that a week wouldn’t pass without one of us writing a Pinterest-related post.

In the last few months though we’ve barely covered the ‘visual discovery platform’. It’s not because interest has waned, in fact Pinterest currently has 70m users and the platform drives an unprecedented amount of traffic to retail sites.

It’s just because the best practice guidelines for brands to succeed on Pinterest haven’t really changed.

As an example, for a second year in a row ASOS is the most popular UK online retail site when it comes to having its content shared on Pinterest, according to Searchmetrics.

Content from ASOS generates an average 7,202 pins a week, which is nearly five times more than Amazon (1,620 pins) and almost seven times more than John Lewis (1,096 pins).

This is an incredible win and clearly shows that having a presence on Pinterest is just as vital as ever.

So what accounts for ASOS’s success?

Back in December 2013, ASOS had 49,458 followers (which was up from around 8,000 18 months prior).

Here’s how the ASOS Pinterest page looks now...

ASOS has seen a massive follower growth in the last year, with 220,784 users. Although the retailer only maintains a comparatively small number of boards compared to other brands, each one is meticulously curated, with each board containing on average 100-200 pins. 

ASOS has also made a point of adding its own brand name to each board to help drive search traffic to the page.

Not only that, it also thematically links each board with the <3s symbol (that means ‘loves’ right? Not spilt ice cream cone) which means that ASOS has to think more creatively about naming its boards.

For instance here is 'ASOS <3s Wrapping Up', which is much more interesting then calling it 'Clothes for Winter'.

It’s a thoroughly well-stocked board, that has five different trusted curators pinning images to it. This means users get to see a huge variety of fashion from various different sources to keep things updated and interesting.

The team at ASOS regularly pins and repins images from other sites and blogs, showing a desire to provide a deeper consumer experience by going beyond self-publicising. 

Brands that repin third-party content attract more followers than those who simply link back to their own ecommerce sites. The key is to remain relevant but also entertaining, useful or have a keen eye for visuals that your users find attractive.

There is also the standard ‘bread and butter’ of Pinterest here:

Inspirational quotes board.

Retro nostalgia.

And of course... uh... this...

All the types of content that Pinterest users generally respond to.

However the key thing that ASOS practices, which is also vital for any retailer wishing to drive traffic to its ecommerce store, is that it’s enabled 'Rich Pins’.

Meaning that any product image contains information on price and availability. 

This also links directly to the relevant product landing page.

For information on this, check out our post on how to use Rich Pins.

Four hallmarks of a successful conversion rate optimization strategy

The difference between successful and failure is often in the details.

This is why the virtues of testing and optimizing are continually extolled on platforms which claim to promote best practice.

From lingerie companies A/B testing their models, to Amazon’s authority and leadership in ecommerce and customer experience, the internet is full of examples of how conversion rate optimization has helped organisations achieve better outcomes and better serve their customers.

However, examples can only take you so far. In order for companies to create a sustainable competitive advantage from conversion rate optimization (CRO), a strategic approach must be taken.

The 2014 Conversion Rate Optimization report by Econsultancy and RedEye has revealed some characteristics of organisations that are successful in their CRO efforts and the following four characteristics are among the most effective.

A huge appetite for testing 

It should almost go without saying, but companies that test more often derive greater rewards from their activities. Companies that saw a significant increase in their sales conducted 6.45 tests per month, compared to just 2.42 tests among organisations that saw their sales decrease.

While the above may seem obvious, companies must ensure they have sufficient resource to implement the appropriate number of tests.

More than half (57%) of companies cited a “lack of resources” as a barrier to improving conversion rates, by far the most common barrier. 

What are the biggest barriers preventing your organization from improving conversion rates?

Testing effectively requires companies to do more than just conduct the test to achieve better rates.

Organisations must review their results and use these insights to not just affect processes and activities that are thought to have already been ‘optimized’, but also to fuel further tests.

It is only through this process that companies will remain agile and responsive to consumer demands and competitive pressures.

Testing within a structured approach

If conducting a higher number of tests leads to greater conversion rates and increased, it would be wise to take a structured, deliberate approach towards this.

Currently, only three in ten companies are taking a ‘structured approach’ to improving their conversion rates. 

Without a structured approach, it is very easy for marketers to see the optimization of conversion rates as a solely tactical activity, driven by quick wins.

The vast majority of companies (85%) that take a long term view on this are seeing improved sales. This suggests that while CRO can have short term benefits, a structured approach can provide consistent, efficient and significant improvements to the performance of the business.

Use multiple methods for testing

Chances are if you are already optimizing conversion rates, you probably engage in some form of A/B testing. The good news is you are among good company.

Two-thirds of companies (67%) are using the method as part of their CRO efforts and it is considered to be ‘highly valuable’ to the largest proportion of respondents (62%).

Which of the following methods do you currently use to improve conversion rates?

However, a lot more headway can be made by organisations that engage in different types of testing methods. Specific combinations of methods can also lead to higher success rates.

Of the companies that used customer journey analysis, copy optimization and segmentation, 95% saw an improvement in their website conversion, compared to an average of 72% among other respondents.

Irrespective of the combination of methods, it is worth bearing in mind that each test is different and will provide different insights.

In order to choose which methods are most appropriate, setting clear testing objectives and following a plan and process (structure!) should point towards suitable testing methods.

A corporate obsession with conversion rates

As cliché as it may seem, an insatiable attitude towards the improvement of conversion rates is key. CRO is not just about getting the best results and then being content.

The competitive environment is changing at a rapid rate and having an infrequent, tactical approach to the improvement of conversion rates will leave organisations merely scratching the surface on the potential for improvement.

Ultimately this is down to the culture of the organisation. If CRO is truly going to be a significant part of any organisation’s digital activities, it must be embraced and spearheaded by senior management who can push the agenda across the organisation. 

Without the appropriate culture and support... well, you get comments like this shared by a digital manager at a recent Econsultancy roundtable:

I was told by a member of senior management that, if I need to test out what works, then I must not be able to do my job.

For more statistics and insight on how to improve your conversion rates, download the 2014 Conversion Rate Optimization report.

How can ecommerce sites use Instagram?

As Facebook continues to ease the way businesses pay-to-play on its network, its other social network Instagram has notoriously kept marketers at a much further arm’s length.

Things are starting to change though.

If you’re a Facebook user you will have been updated this week on its new terms and conditions. These relate mainly to privacy and giving its users more control over ads.

Part of this control includes the introduction of a cross-device ‘opt-out’ button, which allows users to better manage the ads they see on mobile and desktop and location based targeting. This hopefully means better relevancy for your promoted posts. 

Also in some regions, Facebook is testing a ‘buy’ button that helps users purchase products without even leaving Facebook. 

Things are certainly looking up for the marketer willing to spend some cash on the biggest social platform in the world, but what of its other concern, the three-year-old social photo-sharing network Instagram?

According to Forbes, social media users are 58 times more likely to interact with brands on Instagram than they do on Facebook, and 120 times more than on Twitter.

To put that in perspective, Instagram has 200m active monthly members. Facebook has 1.35bn, and Twitter has 284m (check the current social media landscape for more stats). So that’s a comparatively small but massively engaged audience actively seeking interaction with retailers and brands.

Is there any way marketers can take direct advantage of this? 

Instagram doesn’t allow links on images in the way that Pinterest does and successfully drives traffic towards ecommerce stores through. Social media teams can place relevant URLs in the comments underneath posts when someone makes a specific enquiry, but they aren’t clickable.

The only place you can place a clickable link is within the description on the profile page.

Using this single link, some third party companies are helping brands monetise Instagram…

Using ‘like’ to buy

US retailers Nordstrom and Target are currently using Like2Buy’s service. Here’s how the link is featured in the profile.

Once a user clicks on this, they are taken through to a page featuring all of the Instagram posts with items available to buy.

If you click on one of the images, you are taken through to that product’s landing page on the ecommerce store.

There’s also a ‘wishlist’ function that collects together everything you’ve ‘liked’ from the brand.

Non-retailers such as bloggers and publishers on Instagram can also use a similar service called LiketoKnow.it, which is essentially an affiliate sales platform.

If a user likes a post with the ‘LiketoKnow.it’ tag, they will be sent an automatic email featuring links to buy the items from that post.

The catch is that the user also has to sign up for the same service.

Vogue trialled this feature back in May, but scrolling through recent posts it looks like the fashion publisher has abandoned it.

So what have we learnt from this?

That it’s difficult to make money on Instagram and that the only current options are for third party workarounds that don’t exactly scream ‘best practice’.

Of course you could always go down the ‘sponsored photo’ route, as introduced by Instagram in September.

Although it seems to be a very slow roll-out, in three months of daily Instagram use, I’ve only seen one single sponsored which was from Channel4.

For a brand, succeeding on Instagram perhaps shouldn’t be related to direct sales anyway? Instagram is obviously a fantastic engagement tool, which sees users interacting with brands knowing full well that there won’t be a hard sell, because the platform just doesn’t have the functionality for it.

Instead what companies are doing here is driving brand equity, creating and building relationship, improving loyalty, raising customer lifetime value. All the nebulous metrics that are terribly difficult to measure, but are absolutely crucial to your business. 

You want to know the real secret of being a successful brand on Instagram? Make some flipping amazing Instagrams.

Start Me Up! A profile of Quikkly

Quikkly aims to kill the QR code, if it isn't dead already. 

We asked Quikkly CEO Fergal Walker how it works...

What is Quikkly?

With Quikkly for iOS and Android, what you see is what you get.

See it, scan it and you are there in the blink of an eye. Using Quikkly's Action Tags, you can connect instantly to Wi-Fi, follow someone on Twitter or listen to the latest hit track on Spotify.

These are just some of the things that Quikkly makes possible wherever you are. 

What problems does it solve? 

When you see interesting stuff online and there's a button to interact with it, you can click on it and something happens immediately. 'Like' on Facebook, 'follow' on Twitter, 'add to basket', 'listen' to the song. In the physical world, it's considerably more difficult.

If you're interested, you would have to manually search for the item, hope you find the right one, and hope it works on your mobile.

Quikkly removes the hassle and makes it as simple as it is online. You see the 'button', you scan it, and it's done. The product is 'liked', the account is followed, the item is in your basket, the song is playing.

Quikkly also makes it super easy for anyone to create their own Action Tags, and use them on their business card, flyer or poster. It just takes a few seconds from within the app or online.

What are your goals for Quikkly? 

We see that a lot of people have been disappointed by other solutions in this space. Our immediate goal is to restore their faith that there can be a simple way to bridge the offline and online worlds.

To go back to those who have tried solutions like QR and say, "Hey, we think we've fixed it. Check it out." We're focused on doing that by making it super-easy for everyone to make their physical world interactive.

People are doing cool stuff all the time. Hopefully we can just help them get their message out in the physical world as well as online.

What are the biggest challenges you face? 

A challenge is that people have tried scanning before and been disappointed. So they've written it off. We believe they have not, until now, been presented with a solution simple and rewarding enough.

With Quikkly, we hope to restore their faith, make their effort worthwhile and ultimately save people time. 

Where would you like to be in one, three and five years’ time?

We're on a mission here to help people get more out of the physical world and to save people time. It will take time.

In five years' time, we hope people will be able to look back and think: "How on earth would I have done this before?"

Other than your own, what are your favourite websites / apps / tools?

Our current favourites are CityMapper and Afterlight. And there's always a little time for Stick Hero.

Cartoons aren’t just for kids, they could help you break the Korean market

As I have discussed previously, South Korea offers an interesting proposition for global brands and marketers, with an incredibly high internet penetration rate, strong propensity to purchase and a mature ecommerce landscape.

Naver, which handles the vast majority of search queries in South Korea has several unique paid products for advertisers that are worth exploring in more detail.  

An initial obstacle for advertisers looking to reach Korean consumers is understanding that with a different type of search engine also comes online behaviour that is different from what traditionally occurs in Google or other comparable search engines. 

Koreans regard Naver not just as a search engine but more like a comprehensive information portal, with a number of functions covering news channels, games, mail services, comics, shopping, videos, blogs, and social media channels (such as Naver Café) just to mention a few.

Naver receives around 16m unique visitors, 1bn page views and 285m search queries per day. The huge difference in the number of page views and search queries suggests that a large amount of users do not use Naver just for search but to also consult its other services.

The portal aesthetic, larger number of potential user actions and differing types of advertising channels means that there are also more considerations and decisions to be made for advertisers as how to best communicate their brand messaging.

Is it notable in particular with Naver that in comparison to Western search engines, the more open-ended creative advertising channels and those that are data led are more closely aligned.

It must be considered that for a large number of Koreans, a brand’s entire online presence may be assessed by what they find across the various search, social and visual channels on Naver.

Paid ad options on Naver

Naver offers a number of paid search products similar to other engines but in a slightly different format and with more variety.

Naver’s PPC ads are called ‘Powerlink Ads’, which compared to Google ads are significantly shorter and have no site links or social extensions.

Naver also offers something called BrandSearch, which is similar to Baidu’s BrandZone. BrandSearch allows advertisers to show a combination of images, links and descriptions at the very top of the SERPs for pure brand, highly relevant brand, plus generic keyword variations. 

Naver BrandSearch offers an opportunity to protect branded keywords from competitors that also bid on these terms, with visibility in a premium position above any general and often unrelated PPC and organic results.

Away from the better known paid products, Naver also offers other advertising formats unique to its search engine.

Webtoon is one of the fastest growing ad channels with about 20m unique visitors and around 2.5bn page views per month.

In terms of the significance to Korean audiences, it is notable that webtoons are increasingly inspiring or directly being adapted to fuel the domestic Korean movie industry.  

What are Naver Webtoons?

Webtoons are online comics designed by a variety of well-known cartoonists in South Korea, which are updated regularly in one dedicated section on the Naver web portal.

Webtoons have grown in popularity across the whole APAC region; other search engines such as Daum also offer their own distinct Webtoon products.

The Financial Times earlier this year reported that: “According to KT Economy Research Institute, South Korea’s webtoon market... was worth about $96m in 2012. KT predicts that it will grow to $290m by 2015 as webtoons tap into new revenue streams.” 

What are the options available to advertisers?

1. Brand Webtoon

The advertiser selects a preferred cartoonist who will then create a story about the brand. The visibility of the Brand Webtoon depends on the popularity of the cartoonist as well as on the success of how well the story connects with the Korean target audience.

The Brand Webtoon will remain active indefinitely, however its position amongst other Webtoons moves further down as new ones are posted.

2. Webtoon PPL

For product placements, an advertiser can also pick an existing cartoon and ask that a product or service is featured in the storyline.

The media cost for this activity depends on the popularity of the cartoon and its cartoonist.

To ensure that the product placement is most effective, it pays to have an understanding of popular webtoons and where your product or service could be most relevant.  

3. Webtoon Display

Advertisers can also put a display ad at the end of a cartoon. This is the only option where the user can actually interact with the ad and since it is clickable, the user can be sent to the client’s website to convert.

Brand Webtoon and PPL are mainly branding exercises that do not allow advertisers to incorporate any clickable elements. Webtoon Display, however, is fully trackable and it is expected to have a significant impact on assisted conversions.

Naver is continuously developing new products that are tailored to international brands in order to improve their visibility on their search portal and help to grow brand awareness as well as push traffic and conversions. 

Summary 

The Korean comic industry has experienced a particularly interesting adaptation to digital and consequent monetisation strategy.

With Webtoons, Naver has not only launched a successful subscription service that captures a sizable portion of the Korean comic industry but crucially has also blended the channel with other online advertising options across its web portal and made it easily accessible.

With a highly connected populace, that demonstrates a consistently strong propensity to purchase from overseas brands, South Korea should be on the radar of any advertiser looking into APAC expansion.

Webtoons help advertisers to not only build familiarity and establish a presence in the Korean market, but can also drive significant traffic directly from a chosen cartoon.

For more on digital in APAC, read our post on how Korean brands are using mobile to boost the in-store experience.

25 best branded Vines from November 2014

It’s our monthly round-up of the very best branded Vines of the past four weeks.

For your 150 seconds of pleasure this month we have a big name celebrity whose time has been exploited for all its worth, a mystical pizza snatcher of legend and some mild mistreatment of a plastic doll.

Lowe’s

Not that it’s a competition or anything but Lowe’s totally won Vine this month. Teasing its Black Friday offers with a series of beautifully made and witty animations.

Disney Parks

8-bit Mickey, somehow less grating then real-life Mickey. When I say ‘real-life Mickey’ you know what I mean, right? Just to be clear I don’t really think that Mickey is… never mind.

Hyundai

Introducing the absurdly clumsy Hyundai Hank. Looking forward to the final part where he just gets left on the hot dashboard.

Hewlett-Packard

Say what you will about giant super-computers, they could warm up an entire office in four minutes flat.

Ford

Behold, nature’s cruelest mistake.

Intel

“We could only afford Jim Parsons for three seconds worth of filming, but I don’t think anyone will notice.”

General Electric

Kind of beautiful. Kind of gross. Standard GE.

Converse

Questions raised: #1 How comfortable can a shoe made of broken bits of vinyl be? #2 & #3 Why the hell is there a shoe on my turntable and who the hell broke my Hall & Oates record?

Oreo

The fate that must befall every delicious cookie.

 

Verizon

Three excellent Vines from the US telecoms company, including the second Mario reference this week.

Best Buy

Best Buy has been offering advice on how to subtly hint at what you want for Christmas. Unfortunately I had already salted the words Nintendo Wii into my parents’ garden three months ago.

Domino’s

The Pizza Wizard, stealing pizza and delaying the need for drawstring sweatpants for another day

Sanuk Footwear

Behaviour that in the UK would get you imprisoned. And quite right too.

Benefit Cosmetics

Well the first mistake Brittany Furlan made was in using Copydex.

PG Tips

The monkey returns and gets in on the newsjacking game… these are for Movember and the inexplicable return of Nick Cotton to Eastenders. I think.

Lacoste

Just to show that even pros like Zach King can be caught out by the six second format and a lack of attention to detail.

For more bite-sized branded marvels, check out October 2014’s Vine round-up. 

All the stats you need for Black Friday 2014

It’s nearly Black Friday, and you know what that means... it’s time to start queuing outside Asda at 3am to get a bit of money off a pair of headphones.

Or not, depending on whether you think UK shoppers should really care about a sales event that coincides with an American public holiday that means nothing on these shores.

Either way you can’t deny that interest in Black Friday is slowly growing in the UK, mainly because retailers are keen to come up with a new reason for us to go and buy a load of electrical goods.

Obviously it has some way to go before it gets anywhere close to being as big as it is in the States though.

But to celebrate this annual spending frenzy, here’s a round up of all the Black Friday stats and press releases we’ve received so far this year. 

And don’t fear, I’m sure we’ll have another one for you next week to show just how crazy everyone went.

Online shopping is gearing up

Online shopping stats from the beginning of November suggest that US retailers are in for a bumper Black Friday.

Data from the Custora Ecommerce Pulse shows that online revenue from 1-15 November is up 15.5% compared to the same period last year.

Mobile now accounts for more than a fifth (23%) of online sales, up from only 17% in 2013. And Google is the engine powering online shopping, driving 42%% of sales.

The data includes more than 100 US retailers, over 100m online shoppers, and over $40bn in ecommerce revenue. 

Black Friday is dead. Long live Orange Saturday

Black Friday is old news according to Kenshoo, which found that US shoppers start hunting around long before Thanksgiving meaning that retailers can shift their holiday promotions into swing by 1 November.

This day is now handily dubbed ‘Orange Saturday, so we have a new colour-related date to add to our already busy calendar.

The data shows that paid search spend began to ramp up nine days before Thanksgiving this year, four days earlier than in previous years.

UK consumers set to save £233m this weekend

UK shoppers will apparently save £233m over the course of this whole Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend. This includes savings of £98m on Cyber Monday alone. 

However they’ll part with around £1.32bn, an increase of 9% on 2013.

That’s according to data from Pockit and the Centre for Retail Research.

In the UK it’s all about Manic Monday

Data from Experian and IMRG suggests that that the key peaks for pre-Christmas online shopping include Cyber Monday (the first Monday in December) and Manic Monday (the second Monday in December).

It’s predicted that Manic Monday will see £676.5m in online sales compared to £649.6m on Cyber Monday and £555.5m on Black Friday. 

Shopping actually starts in September

According to a survey from Accenture 82% of UK respondents plan to shop on Black Friday and 62% on Cyber Monday. 

But then 57% had already started or planned to start purchasing presents by mid-September.

Nearly all respondents (93%) said that discounts are the primary driver of purchasing decisions related to their holiday shopping.

The survey found that clothing (64%), grocery items (49%), gift cards (41%) and toys (37%) top consumers’ Christmas shopping lists this year.

Accenture surveyed a representative sample of 500 UK consumers in September 2014.

When to tweet?

Have you been wondering the best time to tweet on Black Friday to ensure maximum engagement?

I know I have, and now this helpful infographic from Socialbro has all the answers. 

Please be aware that all times are EST and you can click to enlarge the image.

Six shopping trends

We don’t often use infographics here at Econsultancy, but here’s another one for you from the folks at Sq1.

This graphic looks at six trends every online retailer can expect this 2014 holiday season.

Again you can click to enlarge the image.

 

Grazia launches responsive ecommerce site: Is it any good?

Grazia launched in Italy way back in 1938 but its international expansion only began in 2005.

Since then it has established editions in 23 different countries and as of this month it now has an ecommerce store.

However it won’t be the usual clickable magazine or affiliate scheme that you might have expected.

To understand how Graziashop.com works it’s important to realise that the magazine operates on something of a franchise model, so local publishers are licensed to use the brand name.

The ecommerce store is a separate entity run by the business owner, Mondadori Group, and as such it is more of a sister brand to Grazia UK rather than being a bolt-on extension of the magazine.

Graziashop will operate on a drop-shipping model (like a marketplace) where items are sent directly from brands and boutiques to consumers worldwide.

It will sell products from more than 250 brands worldwide, some of which have supplied exclusive collections for the site.

So now we’ve got the explaining out of the way, is Graziashop actually any good?

Read on to find out, or for more on this topic read our posts on Net-A-Porter’s shoppable magazine and Monsoon’s new tablet app called Swoon.

Homepage and navigation

One might expect Graziashop to have a strong focus on fashion content.

From my discussions with the team behind the site I understand that tie-ins with the magazines and additional editorial is something that will come in future, however at the minute it looks like a standard ecommerce site.

The homepage has a mix of specific product suggestions and links to broader categories such as ’10 lust-haves of the week’ or cold weather gear.

Yellow ‘shop now’ CTAs are littered all over the place but there’s only one that says ‘Read & Shop Now’.

But that’s not to say that the content doesn’t exist, it’s just hidden within the nav menus.

Weirdly each of the product categories in the top nav (shoes, bags, accessories) has four columns. Two that are specific to that category (‘shop by’ and ‘designers’), and another two that remain the same across each dropdown (‘trends’ and ‘features’).

The latter two are home to the fashion content, but I was slightly surprised that it remained the same regardless of which product category you’re viewing.

Content

The content itself is fairly thin at the moment, with a few paragraphs of text describing various trends before giving way to ‘shop now’ CTAs.

However Graziashop isn’t trying to recreate the magazine experience so the content doesn’t need to be hugely in-depth.

It allows shoppers to get a brief overview of the latest trends before giving them a few relevant product suggestions.

Even the ‘Grazify Yourself’ video presented by Grazia UK’s fashion editor remains pleasingly brief at just 58 seconds, while the accompanying text runs to fewer than 250 words.

Category and product pages

The category pages are clean and simple with plenty of white space. 

Users are given four different filter options (designer, category, colour and price), which isn’t bad but there’s definitely space for a few more to aid product selection.

The product pages are quite basic and would benefit from some additional features to encourage conversion.

For example, some of the items I viewed only had two product images which really isn’t enough. Also, there are no product reviews or videos, and the descriptions are extremely brief.

Shipping costs

One fairly major problem with Graziashop is that it’s hugely difficult to find out shipping costs.

If you go to the ‘shipping’ page it directs you to the DHL site to find the costs for delivery to your location. However after selecting UK from the dropdown menu it asked me to login, which was when I lost interest.

Hidden shipping costs are a major cause of basket abandonment so this is something that Graziashop needs to fix.

The good news is that shipping costs are displayed at the shopping basket, but at £9 for one jacket it’s not exactly cheap.

Checkout

We’re always harping on about offering a decent guest checkout, and Graziashop has followed this advice to the extreme.

Shoppers are automatically directed to the guest checkout where returning customers can login if they spot the tiny text link at the top of the page.

Overall the checkout process ticks many best practice boxes: it’s enclosed, there’s real-time error checking, a progress bar, and form filling is kept to a minimum.

It’s obviously not perfect though and could be further improved with a postcode lookup tool and additional security symbols.

In conclusion...

Overall Graziashop is a decent first iteration, however it certainly feels like a work in progress so I expect it to be altered and upgraded in the coming months.

This is no bad thing (we’re currently going through the same process at Econsultancy) and the developers will be able to improve the site based on user feedback.

Some of the improvements are basic things like user reviews, product imagery and more visibility on shipping costs, so it shouldn’t be too hard to fix.

Another aspect of the site worth mentioning is ‘Fashion Stories’, which allows users to create shoppable moodboards.

It’s effectively a mini social network within the Graziashop site and I’ll investigate it further in another post.