KMP Digitata

Pinterest is the quickest growing referrer for retailers in the USA

2012-02-03T16:48:34Z

Launched back in March 2010, Pinterest is a social bookmarking site that allows users to create an online pin board of all the things they like, that can then be organised and shared. In the run up to Christmas a number of large apparel brands saw Pinterest appear in their 5 five social referrers in their analytics.

Pinterest users create a number of pin boards for categories such as interior design, food, fashion and as they discover things they like they can “Pin It” to one or more of their boards. This is nothing special in the social bookmarking field, but Pinterest’s heavy emphasis on imagery has seen it become popular amongst women, who are interested in fashion and other aspects of retail.

Since September Pinterest has seen its user base increase fourfold, resulting in 7.51 million new visitors in December and in a single week (Dec 10-17th) it received 11 million return visits. This obviously resulted in the amount of traffic Pinterest was referring to other sites increased substantially

Brands that were early to use the service, such as Nordstrom, have used Pinterest as an online catalogue where other users can re-pin their favourite clothes items and outfits to share with their friends, while always linking back to their online store. More apparel brands are odopting this strategy help users share their favourite clothes.

This is a trend that is likely to come across the pond as more and more people become aware of Pinterest in the UK, but unfortunately you will have to wait for an invite. You can add yourself to the waiting list here.

Below is an infographic about Pinterest potentially becoming a social commerce game changer, made by Monetate.

2012 is the year of SoLoMo in the Travel Industry

2012-02-03T16:48:56Z

Social, Local and Mobile, nicknamed SoLoMo, is going to be huge in 2012 for a lot of sectors but in particular the Travel Industry. The term SoLoMo consists of three main components of a travel customer’s behaviour.

Social interactions are hugely influential on travel customers when they are looking a sorting out a holiday/trip, with recommendations from friends having more weight than a piece of advertising. This can also be thought of as your customers influencing their friends and effectively becoming ambassadors to your brand.

For the travel industry, the local aspect of SoLoMo is obviously important due to customers wanting to know information about where they are going or wanting to discover information once they are at the physical location. 1 in 3 searches done from mobile phones in 2011 had local intent, meaning that people are looking for information from their immediate area.

Back in September we said the 26% of the western population had a smartphone and that the number of people owning them was increasing by 3% each month. New predictions suggest that percentage of people owning smartphones will go beyond 50% in 2012. Add the fact that the mobile phone is one of the few personal possession that travel customers take on their holidays, you now have an extremely strong reason to engage with your customers on mobile devices.

As we look into 2012 and beyond we can see that travel customers are accessing information and sharing their experiences in real time from their location aware smartphones and tablets.

SoLoMo Strategy

Mobile websites and applications need to be robust, cater for all sizes of smartphone screens and have clear navigation. It is also important to has cross channel consistency because it is likely that visitors to your website might of been on your desktop site or seen your social media presence and will expect to navigate around your mobile site in a similar fashion to the desktop and for it to have the same aesthetics.

For local, the most important action is to make sure that all the location information about your hotels, attractions or destinations are correct. Without correct local information any strategy you implement will be immediately ineffective. Once all the geo-location information is correct then, thanks to location aware devices, your mobile website or application can access the user’s location in order to provide then with the most relevant information for their area. This could take the form of showing the user where your nearest hotel is, information about the local area or public transport information.

With a robust mobile website that can provide location based information the next step would be to integrate social functionality to allow users to easily share the information they have found or use services like Facebook connect to create a more personal mobile experience. Social media integration can go further than just sharing experiences, it can help users to ask for recommendations from their friends through the likes of Facebook and Twitter, rate a product.

Although we’ve talked briefly about SoLoMo as a whole package, they can also easily exist separately and paired together in order to achieve your business objectives. If you would like to discuss SoLoMo in more depth and how it can work for your organisation then please get in touch.

Tablet users spend over 50% more than Smartphone users online

2012-01-20T13:53:08Z

A study performed by Adobe Digital Marketing discovered that tablet users spent, on average, 50% more per transaction than smartphone users in 2011. The study consisted of analysing over 16.2 billion transactions on 150 online retail stores.

Tablet adoption by consumers has been on the rise since Apple launched the original iPad in 2010 and although they currently represent a small percentage of online browsing this study shows that, compared to smartphones and traditional computers/laptops, tablet users were the most valuable online customers in 2011.

During 2011 tablet visitors delivered an average conversion rate of 2.3%, which is considerably higher than the conversion rate from Smartphone visitors (0.6%). Traditional computer and laptop visitors still delivered the best conversion rating of the three, but at 2.5% the difference is minimal.

What makes tablets the most valuable of the three devices is the Average Order Value (AOV). Tablet visitors, on average, spent £79 ($123) per transaction, which is 54% higher than Smartphone visitors, who on average spent £51 (£80). The AOV from tablets was also 21% higher than that of traditional computers/laptops visitors, who spent an average £65 per transaction.

What tablets mean for online retailers

Despite representing the smallest percentage of total visitors to a website the study showed that the number of tablet visitors is rapidly increasing. The percentage of tablet visitor went from 1% to 4% during 2011 and the report A Portrait of Today’s Tablet User predicts that the number of users will increase a further 23% in 2012. The report also put the average tablet owner in the 18-34 age range and came from a household with above average incomes. So all together this means that some of your most affluent customers are accessing your website on their tablets and this trend is growing. It is also worth noting that mobile traffic to retail sites double in the same period.

So the retail sector must now consider the fact that a one-size fits all strategy to mobile optimisation might no longer be the best method.

“Mobile” must now be split into “Smartphone” and “Tablet” when it comes to a retail website and e-commerce website, due to tablet and smartphone visitors not having the same objectives when visiting the website. Tablet users are 4 times more likely to purchase than smartphone users and when they do they spend over 50% more, so their value is also not equal.

As tablet adoption increases retailers should look into how best to provide an engaging customer experience for tablet users. With an effective strategy a tablet optimised experience should generate a higher ROI, whether it’s a tablet optimised website or a native/hybrid app.

If you would like to discuss anything mentioned then please feel free to get in touch. You can also read the full Adobe Digital Marketing Insights report here.

Seasonal peaks in the Travel Industry are becoming irrelevant online

2012-01-06T14:35:00Z

The time of year people chose to go on holiday is unlikely to change, with people wanting to go away in the summer and again in the winter. What is changing is when consumers are looking for and booking their holidays online.

As anyone within the Travel Industry will know there are seasonal peaks at January and then again in July. These are due to people first looking for early deals for their summer holiday and late deals on winter sun trips in January and then again in July/August with late summer and early winter deals. This pattern occurs in both the high street and online but research carried out by Hitwise has shown that online consumers are changing their habits and we are seeing that the peaks where people used to search for and booking holidays is, year on year, slowly being eroded to an even spread throughout the year.

By looking at online traffic from the Travel Industry for the past 3 year we can see how this change is happening.

The graph shows that the seasonal peaks in January and July/August have seen a decline in traffic, whereas the months running up to them have seen a year-on-year increase, with December experiencing the greatest amount of growth. This indicates that the Travel Industry is becoming less reliant on the seasonal peaks and if this trend continues, travel companies might have to adapt their digital strategy to accommodate this change.

This will involve shifting focus to capturing more customers outside of the traditional peaks, in particular during the months December, May and June where we can see the largest increases.

If you would like to discuss this trend and how it should change your digital strategy then please get in touch.

Improvements made to Facebook Insights

2011-11-24T14:16:37Z

Facebook has been rolling out a number of updates recently that impacts both users and brands. One aspect that has just been launched is a major overhaul to the Facebook Insights feature on pages that provides greater emphasis on how users are interacting with content created by the page rather than just the number of likes a page received.

With the latest update, page admins now have access to information on the number of people talking about their content, their weekly reach and the virality of the content they create. Below are the explanations of the new features provided by the New Facebook Page Insights tutorial:

People Talking About This and Weekly Total Reach
People Talking About This is the number of unique people who have created content about your page on Facebook in the past week. The more people that talk about your page, the more distribution it will get. The number of people that have seen your message is displayed in Weekly Total Reach.

Virality
Virality measures how likely a person is to share something about your posts with their friends. This is a great indicator of the kind of posts your audience responds to.

These extra features provide Facebook Page admins with knowledge on what their fans find interesting to the point at which they believe the content is worth sharing with their friends. With this knowledge future updates can be tailored a certain way to achieve objectives. To start with though it’s down to experimenting to discover what your fans engage with.

As of the 15th December 2011 the old Insights tool will stop collecting data, but thankfully all your page information is already being collected for you in the new Pages Insights. If you would like to keep the old data collected by Facebook before the switch over to the new Insights then you will need to export it because all the old data will be deleted on 15 February 2012. The export process is relatively simple. Just use the “View Old Insights” link on the right hand side of your page. From here you can choose the date range of the data you would like to export and the file format.

To discuss how these new Insight features can give you a more in depth knowledge of what your fans are interested in the please feel free to get in touch.

KMP Digitata’s Facebook Page

Foursquare.com gets a major update to help discovery

2011-11-23T13:50:03Z

You would be forgiven for forgetting that Foursquare has a home on the internet other than on your phone as an application. Well the Foursquare website has received an update to provide users with improved functionality to help discovery.

If you’re a Foursquare user you probably already know that the mobile application has regular updates to help the service evolve from simply checking into a location to help people share their experiences, create recommendations and earn rewards. With this latest update to their website Foursquare are hoping to improve the way you discover new and interesting things in your area.

Foursquare updates

Live Map

The most notable change is the addition of a map that shows locations and your friends near to where you last checked in that automatically updates. The locations displayed on the map are also colour coded to show which places are trending (yellow), popular places (blue), places with offers (orange) and if you’ve created any lists then places in them will be shown as green. Users can then drag the map around and zoom in and out in order to see other locations.

Time related suggestions

The new map also features a “Suggestions” box which provides the user with suggestions depending one what their friends have done in the area. This isn’t anything new but now the suggestions box also takes into account the time of day, for example if a location is popular for breakfasts it will be promoted during the early hours compare to restaurants in the evening.

List searching

With the previous website you were able to search for people and places, now though users are able to search for lists, such as “Best restaurants” in order to discover what other people recommend.

Other small changes:

You can comment and see comments on the homepage.
Brand pages now have a section on the homepage.
Improved usability on tablets.

The new website also lays the ground work for Foursquare to launch further updates and features more easily in the future, so we can expect more to come.

Potential further update

The updates Foursquare have made are great at helping users discover more in the local area but I would love to see a feature that would allow you to search for a city then look at what is hot before arriving at that city, say for a holiday. Although this is possible by zooming out of the map and then zooming back in I believe that a search feature would hugely improve this process. It can only be a matter of time before Foursquare develops from discovering cool things around you to discovering cool things to where you’re going.

We look forward to future Foursquare updates.

If you’re a Foursquare fan and are interesting in where we go then you can follow KMP Digitata on Foursquare.

Google+ business pages finally arrive

2011-11-08T12:19:27Z

Yesterday Google finally announced that Google+ Pages were here and available for everyone to use. The announcement was a little premature because I was unable to create a page for KMP Digitata until this morning but thankfully it is now done. And here are my thoughts…

My first impression of the Google+ pages is rather an underwhelming one and I’m left questioning why we waited so long for this update. On the surface the new Google+ pages don’t appear to be any different from profile accounts and then after I played around with the new pages I also found out that the functionality isn’t that different either.

Here is a list of differences between Google+ Profiles and Pages from Google:

Pages can’t add people to circles until the page is added first or mentioned.
Pages can be made for a variety of different entities whereas profiles can only be made for people.
The default privacy setting for elements on your page profile is public.
Pages have the +1 button.
Pages can’t +1 other pages, nor can they +1 stuff on the Web.
Pages can’t play games.
Pages don’t have the option to share to ‘Extended circles’.
Pages don’t receive notifications via email, text, or in the Google bar.
Pages can’t hangout on a mobile device.
Local pages have special fields that help people find the business’ physical location.

So the majority of differences is that Google+ Pages are restricted from using many of the Google+ functions but on the other hand they have a +1 button. It makes me wonder what has been done over the past few months and I can only hope that Google has a lot more up their sleeves for Google+ Pages.

Something I would like to see in the near future is the ability to customize the pages, much like how Google allow companies to do fun and exciting things with their YouTube Pages. Even just the ability to change the background would be welcome!

A feature that Facebook has that Google+ Pages desperately needs is the functionality to have multiple admins managing the page. As well as this we are again left frustrated by not having vanity URLs. Surely this isn’t too much to ask!

A nice feature Google have included is called Google+ Direct connect where users can search for Pages from their search box by adding a + at the start of their search to view the Google+ Page and the company or brand logo is shown in the drop down. Although this is a nice feature I’m unsure whether it will change how people search. Instead it would be better to have the logo appear without the need for the + or for the Google+ Page to appear in a promoted location somewhere in the SERPS, with some of it’s latest updates (this would involve being a verified account or more likely coming at a cost).

There is bound to be more on the way…..there has to be if brands are to embrace Google+.

View the KMP Digitata Google+ Page

Java Developer Required

2011-11-04T14:54:09Z

We are looking for an experienced web-developer to join our 6 man technical team in a digital agency in Stockport. Reporting to the Head of Technology, the role will involve developing and supporting websites and web-based systems for clients ranging from SME to blue chip. You will be required to liaise both with clients and project managers to develop cutting-edge solutions across web and mobile.

Essential Skills

Thorough understanding & experience of Java J2EE used for developing web applications, at a senior level.
Java Script / jQuery
Experience of working with relational databases from major vendors
HTML/CSS

Desirable Skills

MS SQL Server
IBM DB2
Experience of PHP
Experience of CMS platforms such as Domino, Sitecore, UMBRACO
Experience of .NET MVC
Experience of IBM Web Sphere

Location: Stockport

Duration: Permanent

Probation: 6 months

Salary: Negotiable

Benefits: Annual team bonus scheme and Free lunch on a Thursday

NO AGENCIES

Please send your CV to KMP Digitata Recruitment or ring 0161 4291497 for more information

Happy Halloween – Google Doodles

2011-10-31T15:11:25Z

Happy Halloween everybody.

We’re big fans of the Google Doodle and so rather than just document all the Halloween Doodle we thought we would take an office vote on which was our favourite.

1999 – 0%

The first ever Halloween Doodle was a simple one with two pumpkins instead of the Os. It was so simple that the shadow wasn’t even updated.

2000 – 0%

The two pumpkins returned in the millennium along with a spider and its web and black theme.

2001 – 0%

The pumpkin was join this year by a ghost and a black cat.

2002 – 9%

The first Google Halloween Doodle to have a background.

2003 – 0%

For the first time a pumpkin didn’t represent an “o”, now it was the “e” looking off to the right (signal it’s leaving?)

2004 – 0%

We say good bye the the Google pumpkin and welcome a Witch theme.

2005 – 0%

The Witch was sooo 2004. 2005 was the year of the Vampire for Google.

2006 – 9%

Zombies/Mummies were the 2006 Google Doodle.

2007 – 10%

2007 was a haunted house. A nice touch was the “o”s lack of a reflection.

2008 – 27%

Wes Caven provided his horror expertise for 2008′s Doodle.

2009 – 0%

2009 saw a change in the Google Doodle with multiple logos being used. This time showing the logo turn into sweets before being eaten leaving just the wrappers.

2010 – 45%

Similar to 2009 this year’s logo consisted of 5 different logos being used to tell a Scooby-Doo story.

2011 – 0%

And now we have a time-lapse video logo of the people at Google HQ carving 6 pumpkins to spell out Google.

Add your vote in the comments below or send us a tweet @KMPDigitata

Facebook updates – What do they mean for businesses

2011-11-23T11:27:27Z

We’ve been subjected to waves of Facebook updates over the past couple of weeks but they have been more user focused, such as the fixed top nav, the chat box, the activity ticker and most importantly Timeline. After the F8 conference on the 22nd of September we felt that not much was mentioned about Pages, but we’ve noticed a few small changes and if pages get the same updates as the profiles we are in for some significant changes.

Here we look at what’s been done, what we suspect might happen and what it all means for brands.

Update to OpenGraph vocabulary

A update to the OpenGraph system means that the current “Like” system could be ready for a major change. The current system of liking a page or a product is a good one keeping up to date about what you’re interested in and then sharing with peer but it didn’t always fit with certain products. The latest update will bring new vocabulary that will allow people to interact with content more creatively by not being restricted to just “Like”. In the future brands will be able to define the verb and the noun before their product or brand, making it possible to create activity updates such as:

KMP Digitata “read” a “Book”
KMP Digitata “Watched” a “Movie”
KMP Digitata “Designed” a “Website”

So for a company that is about to launch a product they can let people announce that they “want” it, for example “KMP Digitata wants an iPhone5″, and then once the product is launched the Facebook user can update their activity to “has” or “owns”. With the information this feature would provide brands can create focused updates targeted towards those who want and those who have the product. To those who “want” the product, updates can be targeted towards them containing information to entice them to purchase or special offers, whereas people who “own” wouldn’t be shown those updates and instead could be shown updates about the latest developments or fun things being done with the product.

Updated News Feed Structure

The news feed on users home screen now consists of multiple feeds. For a brands their updates still appear in the main feed but those who rely on the appearance of friends “Liking” a page in order to achieve more fans will be disappointed to hear that “Likes” no longer appear in the feed and instead appears in the Friends Activity ticker in the top right mean that the updates are buried deeper and harder to find. Although it means “Like” update will be a lot less visible we are believers that if you rely on the Like feature to attract more fans then your strategy is flawed and instead you should be actively engaging your fans to get them talking and truly sharing your news.

Although activity updates now appear in the top right of the home screen Facebook now recognises when multiple people are doing the same thing and promotes that activity to the top of the news feed. An example of this would be if a number of friends were listening to the same album or mentioning a movie, then it will now feature at the top of the news feed.

Focus on Engagement

The change to how Facebook promotes popular activities is a shift from trying to get more people on Facebook to trying to get people engaging with each other and the brands they are interested in. No longer will the focus be on how many people “Like” your page but instead it will be about how engaged your fans are with you. If you have 100,000 fans but only 1% of them actively comment or share your news then you will be less likely to be promoted in the news feeds then another brand that might only have 20,000 fans but 80% of which engage with them regularly.

Potential of Timeline

Timeline is designed to create an individual’s life story through their Facebook profile, where they are able to identify key points in their life, for an example of what Timeline is then watch the video below;

There was no official word on how Timeline will fit into Brand pages just yet, but if the design is applied to pages then brands will have the opportunity to express themselves creatively and create a page that features updates as usual but also build an engaging story to how the brand got to where they are now. A good example of how it could be used is by Coca-Cola who could set their brand designs over the past 125 years as a key point and so their Timeline would feature large images of each new design.

Increased Advertising Space

Facebook has played around with its measurement metrics to provide marketers with a larger premium ad format that although it’s not too noticeable to the end user it does provide more space for adverts. With this extra space Facebook will apply a similar system as the Sponsored Stories feature, so that adverts will display friends who have engaged with the brand presented. This will add validity to your Facebook adverts because people will see that their friends have also chosen to click on the advert or engage with the brand another way.

The demise of the Discussions Tab

Facebook alerted Page owners about the removal of the discussions tabs with a message saying “The best way to encourage conversation and feedback is through posts and comments on your wall” despite AppData showing that there are 22 million monthly discussion users.
The problem with removing the Discussions Tab to focus on the wall is that the wall doesn’t provide the functionality to group comments around a single topic or archive them. Facebook did comment about the issues though, saying “We’ve removed these tabs for now as we work on tools to help you moderate and filter content. Our goal is to help you can manage everything from one powerful place. Stay tuned”. Whether this means that discussions could return in another form or if the wall will receive new functionality we can’t be sure just yet but we are keeping a close eye on it.

What are your thoughts on these latest updates for brands? Leave us a comment below or tweets us at @KMPDigitata.

It is important to stay ahead of the curve to get the most out of your Facebook strategy. If you would like to discuss anything above or your digital strategy on a whole then please get in touch.