Pod1 Blog

“Is that dress from Asos?” asked a girlfriend one clubbing night during my holiday back in Malta. “Yes,” I replied quite astonished she recognised it from thousands. “I had it saved in my favs. Looks fab on you.” “Thanks!” I replied not quite sure whether to be flattered or not.

Malta is a tiny island, for those who don’t know. It’s about the size of the Isle of Wight but has a population of half a million. Due to space limitation there are only a few ‘largish’ shopping malls and most fashion shopping is done from boutiques and outlets that line promenades and town streets. But this certainly doesn’t limit the fashion savvy Maltese woman. Believe me, the latter knows her stuff.

Online fashion retail is fast becoming a shopping haven worldwide and women in Malta are certainly making the most of it. ASOS alone ships its clothes and accessories to 167 countries. Its reported annual profits of £20.3m are higher than some analysts had expected. Group sales were up 35% to £223m in the year to 31 March while international sales surged 95% to £63m.

I was surprised to see Boohoo billboards splashed all over the tiny island. The early 20s to late 30s shoppers are increasingly becoming obsessed with online fashion shopping. My cousin for starters seems to get an extra kick from shopping at Boohoo, she just loves the fashion and it’s cheap.

The online fashion retail world is certainly globalising fashion trends as well as making it available to anyone who wants to join the club. You see it, you want it and it’s yours! Did you see that the fantastic pink ruffle dress S J Parker wore in STC II the movie? It’s a Halston Heritage and you can have it by visiting Harvey Nichols online shop.  Yes, that’s all it takes (not to mention the essential limitless credit card!)

The fashion industry is catching fire as online retailers take the lead and even more are throwing themselves into it. According to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index, total online sales rose 18% year on year to £5bn last month with clothing being one of the fastest growing online shopping sectors.

From a consumer perspective the quest for fashion is going beyond the physical in-store shopping   experience.  Shoppers are buying online at the expense of not trying before buying and forking out money to return any unwanted items, as happens with most returns policies except in the UK and US.

Having said that, while many women are die hard shopping goers they can’t help being enticed by what they see and is available online. What’s makes us want to shop our clothes online?  Do we think certain items aren’t available in store?  Are there more and better bargains online? Is the high we get from receiving a parcel through the post greater than trying an expansive dress in a store’s fitting room? Is it just because there is more choice online?

Feeding this appetite are agencies such as ours which continuously improve the online shopping experience making it even more attractive with tons of eye-catching web pages, even more fashion smartphone apps, creating virtual fitting rooms and sleek’n’easy checkouts.  All of this backed up by the retailer’s efficiency in stock management and delivery logistics, ultimately boosting the online shopper’s confidence.

Thanks to ecommerce shopping goes beyond the length and breadth of Oxford Street and stretches out to the four corners of the world. The fashion item you want is only a click away and a matter of a day or two before it’s delivered to your doorstep.

References:

http://www.mercurynews.com/fashion-style/ci_15881865?nclick_check=1

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/09/asos-sales-rise

http://www.netimperative.com/news/2010/july/top-100-online-retailers-in-the-uk-how-do-they

Please vote for Pod1, nominated by the people (which we love) now all we have to do is win!

http://www.thenetawards.com/

The V&A recently commissioned design studio Troika to create a sign for the tunnel connecting the museum and South Kensington tube station. The playful palindrome kinetic V&A monogram consists of 3 revolving pieces which deconstruct and reconnect every half turn with a gentle ticking sound.

Watch the video below and enjoy Tchaikovsky’s beautiful Nutcracker Suite:

Troika_Palindrome from Troika on Vimeo.

As the SEO industry grows the number of keyword research tools grows along with it too. There are tens, if not hundreds, of keyword research tools and extensions utilising search engine APIs to present the user with all possible synonyms and relevant keywords.

One of the recent trends in keywords research tools development includes making the results more pleasant for the eye. They still use the same Google, Yahoo or other search engine’s API, but they can present the query output in a nice and logical way, particularly useful for those who prefer to see a visual representation of the data. Here are some of the best ones out there right now:

Visual Keyword Research Tool No. 1 – Keyword Eye

http://www.keywordeye.co.uk

Very visual and useful keyword research tool showing the results in a tag cloud where keywords with higher number of monthly searches are displayed bigger and in different colours.

The monthly search volume is shown when you hover over the keyword. You can also add the keyword to the right hand side panel and then export all keywords to csv, excel or text file.

The keyword research tool also includes a 3D view of the results tag cloud:

Visual Keyword Research Tool No. 2 – Thesaurus

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/

Although Thesaurus is not the first keyword research tool you would think of, it has a nice feature called Visual Thesaurus which is an interactive tool that allows you to discover the connections between words in a visually captivating display. Word maps let you search for just the right word and then explore related concepts, revealing the way words and meanings relate to each other. It’s a word-lover’s delight, with more than 145,000 words and 115,000 meanings organized in an innovative and intuitive design.

Visual Keyword Research Tool No. 3 – Google Wonder Wheel

Just search Google for anything and switch the standard view to Wonder wheel view on the left.

Useful visual keyword research tool which allows you to see relevant search results to your query in a unique semantically relevant and graphically design way.

Visual Keyword Research Tool No. 4 – Google Trends

http://www.google.com/trends

Google Trends is not a keyword research tool as such, but it provides extremely useful visual representation of the number of Google searches for the particular keyword during the chosen period of time. We found it very useful when planning the SEO strategy, especially for retail and travel ecommerce clients – you can easily spot when people search for holidays, resort destinations or specific gifts.

Visual Keyword Research Tool No. 5 – Google Sets

http://labs.google.com/sets

Google Sets is an experimental keyword tool at Google labs that creates sets of items based on a couple of seed keywords. You simply enter one or several words and the tool generates a list of related terms.

Visual Keyword Research Tool No. 6 – Microsoft adCenter Labs Keyword Research

http://adlab.msn.com/Keyword-Forecast/default.aspx

This tool forecasts the impression count and predicts demographic distributions of keywords. Enter keywords separated by semi-colons and click the submit button.

Visual Keyword Research Tool No. 7 – SEO Keyword Tag Cloud Generator

http://www.scotiasystems.com/keyword-tag-cloud/keywordcloud.php

This tool can be used to analyse keyword placement and frequency on any website. It displays a 3D tag cloud for each of the ‘SEO-sensitive’ areas of the page, e.g. different tag cloud for meta keywords, image titles, page titles, headings, etc.

You can read more about Pod1’s SEO Services London and general ecommerce design offered by Pod1.

Visit http://www.ar100days.com/ from September 8th and submit your thoughts on how to instigate change, demonstrate your individuality and stand out from the crowd. This is an initiative from Vivienne Westwood Anglomania and Lee Jeans – an interesting fashion, art and social conscience project.
Take a look here for the hot topics being explored – http://www.activeresistance.co.uk/

Those going to ‘Fashion Night Out’ can catch the launch of the 100 days ‘exhibition’ at the Lee Stores in W1 where Vivienne will be celebrating in style no doubt!

Perhaps not as intriguing as ‘No 1 on Google’ but definitely more relevant to ecommerce, I wanted to address one of the most common issues I come across – namely the difference between Orders and Sales. The definitions are key to the difference between Analytics data and Financial data which is often the cause of much (unnecessary) heated discussion between Marketing and Finance.

Analytics solutions, correctly tagged for ecommerce, measures demand in the form of orders. It measures nearly everything you need to know about visitors to your website and how the orders ended up being placed.

Finance software should, hopefully, actually measure the exact sales that will lead to an equal and opposite receipt of cash (though maybe not immediately.) A sale should equal any shipment out of the warehouse, recognised on the date of shipment, whether for a whole or part of an order.

Between the two there are several reasons that cause them not to match for a particular date range:

• An order that goes to back-order as the item is out of stock and not shipped until later.
• Previously back-ordered items that are now shipped.
• Part-shipped orders.
• Cancelled orders.
• Refunded orders (if not separately reported)
• Warehouse being closed (i.e. not shipping at weekends)
• Date range difference – Marketing often work to calendar months, Finance (in retail) to 4/4/5 week months.

So who is right? Well, cash is king, and finance is therefore right. However, there is little Marketing can do about any of the items listed above and therefore focussing on demand as per Analytics suffices in most respects. i.e. it measures what can actually be influenced. However there is one area where finance data is most definitely needed. ROI.

To truly measure ROI you need to know the contribution (that is the contribution towards your fixed costs) that a sale makes. Try not to be distracted by the paint drying on that nearby wall. That means understanding the product margin and all the variable costs associated with a sale (delivery, picking, packaging, card commissions, variable warehouse and CS staff costs etc.)

Only by knowing that can you understand your true ROI and make marketing investment decisions such as modifying spend on paid digital channels to increase CPAs for higher contributing products or vice versa.

Google has announced the latest change to their ranking algorithm on Friday 20^th August in their Webmaster Central blog post. Google now shows more search results from the same domain. The search engine giant claims that “for queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, we’ll now show more results from the relevant site”.

For example, one of Pod1 ecommerce design clients, the women’s shoes retailer Kurt Geiger, has now 7 out of possible 10 search results for the query ‘Kurt Geiger shoes‘:

Although Google claims that they “expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page”, it’s arguable whether they should do it and if this is actually what users really want.

One thing is certain though. There are some very serious SEO implications that every search engine marketer should consider in near future. Firstly, the importance of a ’strong’ website domain is more important than ever. Secondly, SEO specialists and brand owners have to consider optimising the site for branded search terms as well as generic key words. Thirdly, the move has definitely favoured brand owners websites and has certainly disadvantaged affiliate / price comparison websites which traffic from brand name related search terms will drop as their listings would have suddenly dropped in rankings from position No. 2 or 3 down to No. 6 or No. 7 or even lower.

The algorithm update has already sparked a wildfire of comments in the search engine marketing community. Some say they really like it as it’s easier to find what they really want. Others don’t like it and they feel their choice is restricted when viewing search results. My personal opinion lies somewhere in between as I do think it’s a useful feature and will definitely help smaller businesses to defend their brand from more powerful comparison and affiliate websites. However, I also think that the number of possible listings should be restricted to 3 or maximum 4 top spots in SERP. My another personal disappointment was when I realised that the update is not resolving the issue that many big jewellery and retailer brands, including Links of London, face when dealing with fake website listings.

Came across this at the weekend, a shop window display for a travel agent claiming they were ‘No 1 on Google’

What does that even mean. When? / For what keyword? / For how long? / On which Google site? / Natural or Paid?

A stern letter to the advertising standards authority I think….. or am I over reacting in my ecommerce geekery?

We’re happy to announce the latest incarnation of the Barcelo Hotels website.

Rebuilt from the ground up, using our in-house Epifony CMS, the site is focused on delivering a much more simplified and intuitive user journey.

Once of the key features is the ability to filter criteria to meet the customer’s specific needs.

The new site also comes with a brand new, redeveloped, user-friendly booking engine.

As well as the hotels and bookings sections, the site comes with new areas to explore and book all the other hotel facilities available.

Barcelo Hotels has been a Pod1 client for over 6 years (previously called Paramount Hotels), with the very first website delivered in 2004, (and winning an NMA site of the week).

Website number 2 came in late 2006, and this won Travolution’s Best Hotel Website category.

We have high hopes with this latest release, but as with all new websites, the proof is in the pudding.

Check out the site here, and let us know what you think.