Pod1 Blog

Pod1 is happy to be hosting the Magento E-commerce Forum in New York this month.

So if you’re a merchant looking to upgrade your e-commerce platform and want to know about Pod1 and/or Magento, then make sure you register for an invite.

As well as Pod1 and Magento, there’ll be presentations from two of our lovely clients, Echo and Erno Laszlo (launching soon), as well as from analytics partner jirafe.

Long term hosting partner Rackspace will also be at the event to answer any hosting questions you may have.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Pod1 is pleased to announce the launch of Echo:

Spanning almost 90 years, the Echo brand is synonymous for it’s use of color and patterns in everything it does.

Pod1 was tasked with creating a next generation e-commerce site for Echo. The brief was to enhance the brand experience online, improve the customer journey and upgrade the e-commerce platform.

Working closely with the brand, our UX and interaction designers created an innovative, layered navigational structure to the site, mirroring today’s touchscreen App experiences.

The site was also built using an adaptive layout so no matter how large or small your screen, you’ll get a great visual experience.

The same page on a wider screen:

As well as gloves, scarves and accessories, the site also caters to the Home category:

Other sections on the site include an editorial section:

A gift guide:

and brand story:

The techie bit: site was built on the Magento Enterprise platform as well as WordPress. Hosting is via the cloud at Rackspace.

The Maje e-boutique was launched as part of the bigger launch strategy for the brand as it enters the US market and opens a number of stores on the east coast of America, and ultimately nationwide.

Maje is the success story of a “fashion child”, Judith Milgrom, who was introduced to the art of crafting garments at a very early age. Judith created the name “Maje” as a combination of the initials of the names of her loved ones.

The site focuses on the simplicity of the brand, allowing the design of the products to speak for themselves.

As well as the shopping pages, the site features a store locator, look book, press section and news area.

The techie bit: The site was developed on the Magento Enterprise platform for e-commerce functionality, and WordPress to manage editorial. Pod1 also hosts the site on it’s ecommerce optimized, cloud-based infrastructure.

We came across this Facebook post from one of our clients CAbi, that we had recently created a new site for, as well as a cool ‘Outfit Builder’ app.

…and it goes on. Great to hear from the site’s users for a change!

Read our original post on this here.

We’re happy to announce that our work for Asda’s fashion brand George is now live on the world-wide-interweb!

Pod1 was tasked with overhauling the entire user experience for this hugely popular brand.

The George label provides cost effective fashion across all categories, from Women to School and Babies.

Custom pages were also created to allow for style tips and bespoke content.

Pod1’s clean approach was implemented across the site to ensure a simple user experience.

Large drop down navigation also cut clicks for faster access to content, and allowed for inline promotions.

The site was developed on the Demandware platform.

We communicate with colours

We are confronted with colours every day but it signifies more than just an objective tool of communication to describe our world, it affects how we feel.

Even though there is no official rule suggesting that some colours are exclusively feminine or masculine, from the first time a baby is dressed up in its gendered base coloured tiny suit, will have set off the first of many implications. However studies have been done and have showed some differences in the way men perceive colour and the way women do.

Studies show differences in perception for men and women

Studies relating to colours, their many meanings and the way they are taken in have been made for hundreds of years, and a very interesting finding by Guilford and Smith (1959), that has been recurring on many occasions, suggests that men are generally more tolerant to achromatic colours; therefore women might be more colours conscious with colour tastes that are more flexible and diverse, as mentioned on the hereby image.

the differences in perception

On a similar note interviews by Thomas, Curtis, and Bolton (1978) were given to 72 Nepalese and asked them to list the names of all the colours they could think of. The women consistently listed more colour names than men did. However there is also a cultural phenomenon that must be noted, traditionally Nepalese women dress up in a wider variety of colours then men. But then the original issue re occurs, do Nepalese men traditionally dress up in less colours because they are more responsive to achromatic colours, or are they more responsive to these colours because culturally they were never pointed to them.

Another interesting finding (Radeloff, 1990) is that women are more likely to have a favourite colour then men.

Colour in e-commerce

“Those into web design, could have a look at this website for insights about colour perception and colour psychology in website design”

Here are some general associations of colours found on this website, which are used in (e)-commerce and web design a lot. You will probably recognize them.

Do men “see” ecommerce?

A very interesting finding is that very often when combining the notions of gender differences about colour, with the associated meanings of colours we can strongly notice that e-commerce targeted at men is very often made with more achromatic colours such as, grey, white or black.

For example the Porsche website

So gentlemen are all of my headers blue?

Choosing the right Facebook media channel to use for your business or client isn’t an easy task. Each one has its own use, and depending on what you want, social media will help you choose which you should be using.

Types of Facebook media channels:

Here is a quick break down of the key channels you should use:

1. Personal Profiles should just stay personal. There is no need to use this channel unless you are tying it into your brand via various other channels and methods. Profiles have more limitations than groups or pages.
2. Business or Fan Pages allow real organizations, businesses, celebrities and brands to communicate and build a stronger relationship, which will hopefully turn your fans into customers.
3. Groups provide a closed space for small groups of people to communicate about shared interests. In other words, Groups are a lot like clubs in normal life, and are generally used to reflect a common interest, rather than to represent your brand or business.
4. Applications provide greater personalization. This allows you to enhance the users experience with specific features and interact with the user while keeping them interested in your brand. The biggest problem is that most developers do not know how to utilize the functionality provided by Facebook, that can be used to interact with the user.

Looking at these main Facebook media channels, Groups and Pages will be your starting point when starting up.

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We are really pleased to announce that Pod1 was ranked as one of the best agencies in the Top 100 design groups in Design Week’s 2011 independent survey of the UK’s creative services.

The highly respected Design Week survey is based on audited fee-income and is a measure of how successful companies are in the UK’s creative services market.

In the full top 100 listing Pod1 was ranked at number 23, up 8 places from the previous 2010 survey.

Pod1 was also listed in the top 10 UK digital consultancies in terms of market share.

And last but not least we were also positioned at number 10 for “leapfroggers” within the consultancy chart.

We are very proud to be listed amongst some of the UK’s finest. It’s also a great testament to the outstanding expertise and creative talent we have at Pod1.

Renowned furrier J. Mendel has won the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s National Design Award for Fashion Design.

Gilles Mendel’s unprecedented mastery of fur and his adherence to the highest standards of beauty in both fur and ready-t0-wear collections have garnered him celebrity acclaim and now — a coveted award from the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum.

Pod1 New York is delighted to be redesigning J. Mendel’s website this summer.  His stunning creations continue to inspire all of us as we work, even if we can’t wrap ourselves in his dreamy fur vests and the like, we’ll still feel the warmth — the satisfaction that comes with creating celebrated designs.

This month saw the launch of a new site for the iconic luxury brand Smythson.

Founded in 1887 and renowned for specialising in luxury leather goods and bespoke stationery the new website showcases their latest collections with a clean and simple layout.

Working closely with the creative team at Smythson, Pod1 developed the online styling to represent the heritage and quality of the product.

Built on the Magento enterprise platform the site features rich filtering and faceted navigation to guide customers.

The product detail page is kept simple and informative. Customers can additionally personalize certain products with various motives and lettering.

Personalised stationery is also key area of the website. Customers can select from a range of stationery that includes letterheads and luxury invitations. They can choose their own typeface, watermark and paper to create their own exclusive stationery online.

The store locator allows users to browse form a menu or use the postcode look up functionality to find a store near them with Google maps.