Pod1 Blog

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.

Very good round up of all the stats you need to know about…

Gave this presentation at the Ecommerce event held by Figaro Digital on Wednesday. Lots of pictures, very few words….

It looks at new and emerging trends that are changing the ecommerce landscape. Take a look:

Areas covered include:

- Ecommerce Platform
- Crowd Commerce
- Online/Offline
- meTail
- magCommerce
- mCommerce
- Distributed Commerce
- Social Commerce

We’re very happy to announce the launch of Dia, the first fully comprehensive Arabic (and English) fully transactional ecommerce website on the Magento platform.

Dia has a unique proposition in that it’s aimed at showcasing and selling middle-eastern style to the world.

The site is also the home for a major online magazine ‘Dia Magazine’, a borderless urban guide to a region that is not defined by geography as much as it is by a collective desire to broaden the frontiers of contemporary fashion, design and art. Cool.

Even though this isn’t Pod1’s first foray into the Arabic language (Chic Outlet Shopping), it’s certainly our first into Arabic ecommerce.

Watch out for further developments.

And here’s what the English version looks like:

Last week saw the first of this year’s league tables for agencies with ‘Design Week’s Top 100 Consultancy Survey‘. The survey focuses on all creative agencies in the UK, not just digital.

Unsurprisingly, many consultancies were reluctant to enter. The argument being that they have had a bad year. Fair enough, but it’s been a bad year (2009 that is) for everyone so surely the results will level out?

With all said and done, it’s always an interesting indicator to see how one has faired, even in such a harsh climate:

Top 100 Ranking: No.31 (up from No.35)

Most Bullish: No.3 (based on a projected 40% growth in 2010)

Market Share within Digital: No.5 (based on 5% share of total digital income in survey)

Top of the list came Imagination for the second year running, followed by AKQA, a new entrant to the survey.

So there we are. It is what it is. Here’s to surviving the worst of the recession and looking forward to a more spectacular return to form in 2010 and beyond…

The Telegraph has a pretty simple tool called Vote Match for those voters that are still undecided on who to vote for in these elections.

Don’t panic, but having got my hands on an iPad (for research purposes of course), I very quickly noticed a quirk that negatively impacts the online shopping experience on a huge amount of ecommerce sites. The good news is that this can be fixed relatively quickly.

Viewing an ecommerce site on the iPad

The flaw I discovered is around the product detail zoom functionality. Many sites these days ask the user to click on the product image to activate the zoom feature, which then appears next to the original image (see AlexandAlexa and HOBBS for example). You then use the mouse to move around and see the zoomed selection. Oops…can’t do this on a touch-screen system as the touch and drag feature doesn’t work in the same way as a mouse click and drag. Not being able to zoom into a product is a show-stopper in my books and will pretty much guarantee a no sale.

Not the end of the world as the solution is quite simple: just add another link to view an enlarged image (many sites have this dual functionality). I actually prefer this method of viewing detail as opposed to the letter box zoom that’s so popular.

Doing it properly...

And if your site uses flash to zoom or enlarge, then again you’re out of luck. Just like the iPhone, the iPad doesn’t recognise Flash. And unlikely to for the foreseeable feature.

Small things but really brings into light the additional user behaviours that designers have to now consider when creating a website. The need to think about multiple platforms beyond the browser/screen resolutions/etc are now a must to ensure a website is going to work as imagined for customers.

That’s it for now. More ecommerce/iPad posts to come I’m sure.

You have been warned.

Our latest ecommerce whitepaper has just been published and is available for free from our download centre. Grab your copy here.

Working within the world of fast fashion means that we don’t always have the opportunity of flexing our usability muscles on some of the ecommerce websites that come out of our well oiled machine. So when I came across this little gem, it urged me to start this new series of posts of sites that put the user at the heart of the website.

1. Nabru: they sell sofas

- Loving the mega top-nav drop-down

- BIG buttons and BIG words make me and my grandmother so happy

- Visual checkout

http://www.nabru.co.uk

Good work fellas.

1. Homepage takeover of VIMEO that is pretty outstanding. Great execution. It goes from this:

To this:

(originally found here: http://www.andykinsella.com/2010/03/02/tostitos-salsa-nice-takeover-example-on-vimeo/)

2. Skinput: using the skin on your arm instead of a joystick/keyboard – see for yourself: