Pod1 Blog

Hats off again to the Reiss team…the site has just been ranked 24th in this weeks Design Charts!

http://www.designcharts.com/

It’s that time of year again when Design Week magazine publishes their annual league tables of the top 100 design consultancies performance based on the last 12 months billed fees.

This year saw Pod1 climb 26 places to number 35 in the overall chart due to a very healthy 74% growth in fee income. This strong performance is all the more impressive when you note that the Top 100 includes all forms of design from print and product through to branding and packaging and if you take away the other design disciplines and just look at digital media, Pod1 ranks number 6.

Design Week comments “…digital specialist Pod1 shoots up the charts, from 61 to 35. Pod1’s performance continues an impressive performance in last year’s league table, where it was then the second highest leapfrogger, rising 39 places to 61. Engage’s growth is driven, at least in part, by merger – it was formed as a result of Limehouse Group joining up with Trident Communications – whereas Pod1’s performance is all organic.”

The second part of this statement refers to the fact that Pod1 was yet again the second placed “leapfrogger” moving up 26 places compared to Engage’s 38 thanks to a merger.

It is also worth noting that Pod1 also had the 4^th highest growth in overall fee income, of any design agency, at 74%.

Design Week – “Pod1 was almost on the nail, predicting 70 per cent growth and achieving 74 per cent.”

View the full Top 100 table and associated articles here

Recently Uniqlo, one of Pod1’s clients released Season 3 of the UNIQLOCK series which just won the Black Pencil award from D&AD. This series has grown exponentially every year to include a range of features including a screensaver and an alarm clock this year. The updated graphics and movement makes the newest UNIQLOCK look more interactive and more fun than the previous ones.

The focus of this viral campaign is the different t-shirts that the girls wear while performing in the clips. The release of the UNIQLOCK is helping to increase brand awareness and put a focus on the UT t-shirt range that has just been released. Within the viral there are links through to the products so that anything that catches your eye is easy to buy.

With online retail now big business, Drapers talked to four web developers about the issues independent companies face with online retailing. Drapers selected a panel of experts in the field of ecommerce web design, including our own Fadi Shuman, and asked them the same three questions:

Q: How can indies market their sites effectively when competing against big multiples & brands?

Fadi: Firstly, take advantage of what you’ve already got, real customers who shop in your stores. Focus your marketing on getting your offline customers online. Our research has shown that one in two customers who are asked to register their email address at the checkout will oblige. Give them an incentive such as free delivery.

Make sure all your printed collateral, from receipts to bags, displays your web address and spells out that people can shop online. This is really important as people don’t automatically assume they can buy from your shop online.

Finally, display the URL behind the till. This is a prime opportunity to hit customers with the web address as they’re going to be standing still, with nothing to do but gaze around the till area. Topshop does this very well.

Q: How much time and money should a retailer be prepared to invest in the initial launch and maintenance of a website?

Fadi: Nine out of 10 websites that we’ve worked on achieve sales equal to if not higher than the top performing bricks and mortar store within 18 months of launch. You could base your investment on the fact that the average life of an ecommerce website is three years.

However, to ensure you’re getting a solid design and backend system, I can’t imagine any retailer at the level Pod1 targets would spend less than £100,000 in year one.

When confronted with this question, we always ask our clients to think of their website as their global flagship store. The reality is that the website will expose their brand to far more people globally than any offline shop would. So how do they want the world to perceive them?

Q: How much support should an indie request from their website developer?

Fadi: Service level agreements (SLAs) are really an insurance policy – it is important that you are neither under nor over insured. Retailers must calculate the cost-benefit analysis on any SLAs. Different levels of service are usually on offer, and you get what you pay for. Should you be paying £10,000 a month for 99.95% availability? If the site is down for 20 minutes a month (99.95% availability), how much would you actually lose in sales, even in peak times? Would your customers go to a competitor for those 20 minutes, or would they come back later? Is there a non-financial impact to the brand? If 20 minutes of sales is less than £10,000, then you’re over-insured.

The Pod1 designed website for Travel Intelligence (www.travelintelligence.com) scored top marks in Travolution Magazine’s ‘Site seeing’ website review section. Travel Intelligence was designed to be the ultimate one-stop shop for finding and booking the ideal hotel, showcasing a global collection of chic, boutique and luxury hotels, with reviews, articles and insider knowledge by an informed network of professional travel writers.

Travel Intelligence was reviewed alongside two other sites Splendia and former Pod1 client Mrs & Mrs Smith based on their first page results on Google for the term ‘boutique hotel’. The test set for the review was to book a night at the Hotel Omm in Barcelona and the sites were then scored out of 25 for design, usability, content and revenue generation. Travel Intelligence and Splendia came joint first with 82/100 while Mr & Mrs Smith came in third with 77%.

Key points of note in the review were the improvement of the design over the previous incarnation of the site with large images, well structured content and easy links to online booking. TI also scored the best marks for usability and was commended for being both fast and easy to navigate. The other area TI came out top was content, thanks to the professional reviews and the seamless integration with the booking engine.

To read the review for yourself go to Travel Intelligence / Hotel Omm

The Pod1 designed website for Travel Intelligence (www.travelintelligence.com) scored top marks in Travolution Magazine’s ‘Site seeing’ website review section. Travel Intelligence was designed to be the ultimate one-stop shop for finding and booking the ideal hotel, showcasing a global collection of chic, boutique and luxury hotels, with reviews, articles and insider knowledge by an informed network of professional travel writers.

Travel Intelligence was reviewed alongside two other sites Splendia and former Pod1 client Mrs & Mrs Smith based on their first page results on Google for the term ‘boutique hotel’. The test set for the review was to book a night at the Hotel Omm in Barcelona and the sites were then scored out of 25 for design, usability, content and revenue generation. Travel Intelligence and Splendia came joint first with 82/100 while Mr & Mrs Smith came in third with 77%.

Key points of note in the review were the improvement of the design over the previous incarnation of the site with large images, well structured content and easy links to online booking. TI also scored the best marks for usability and was commended for being both fast and easy to navigate. The other area TI came out top was content, thanks to the professional reviews and the seamless integration with the booking engine.

To read the review for yourself go to Travel Intelligence / Hotel Omm

Pod1 has just launched the latest banner campaign for Schroders’ Multi Asset Fund. This is a trade investment fund aimed at independent financial advisors.

Working closely with Schroders’ above the line agency, Brand Union, the online campaign was a direct development of the print ads. This was based around a statue of a woman with a bow ‘targeting’ the funds performance figure. Expanding on this theme the Pod1 campaign used an interactive Flash banner which fired an arrow, that could then be moved from side to side with the cursor, through a forest until it hits the target.

Schroders plc is a global asset management company with £130.6 billion (€163.8 billion / $259.6 billion) under management as at 31 March 2008. Clients include corporations, insurance companies, local and public authorities, charities, pension funds, high net worth individuals and retail investors.