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May 22, 2008 by JP

UNIQLOCK viral wins the Black Pencil Award

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.

Wold.UNIQLOCK

April 25, 2008 by JP

Effect of Search Behaviour on Conversion Marketing

At a recent presentation on streetwise marketing Fadi Shuman, pod1 founder, discussed the impact of conversion marketing. This is the method of analysing the behaviour of online searchers for certain keywords. It details how a customer moves from the stage where they think that they want a product or service to the end stage where they convert on a site.

The concept broadly analyses the different stages that a potential customer goes through when trying to purchase an item online, regardless of what it is. This includes details of the four stages of a customer’s online decision making process: Awareness, Research, Decision and finally Purchase.

Each of these stages cause the customer to use different search terms as they progress. For example someone looking for a personal loan may go through the following process: In the Awareness stage the customer is likely to type in ‘Loans’, while in the Research stage they are likely to type in ‘Best Loans’. In the Decision stage they may type in ‘Debt Consolidation Loan’ while in the Purchase stage they are likely to type in the name of their preferred provider and the possibly product name such as ‘Picture the Loan‘

This analysis is causing a reanalysis of which terms are best for a particular client to rank for since competition for 1 word terms is normally extremely high. While it may look good for a client to rank for a 1 word terms such as ‘Loans’ they may see greater conversions for longer terms such as ‘Debt Consolidation Loan‘.

If you can’t be top for every term in a user’s search process then being no. 1 for the term used during the decision stage of their move to convert will give you a far higher chance of getting their final conversion to occur on your site. As opposed to the conversion taking place on the site of the people who ranked for no. 1 during the initial searches that occurred during the awareness and research stages. This can be due to the fact that your name is the most recent and therefore the one most likely to be remembered.

This is not necessarily standard for every searcher who visits the net, but it is equally applicable for purchases, sign ups and other types of conversions that are measured on a site. The benefits that you can gain from ranking for the longer tail and more specific terms include higher conversion volumes for the traffic you gain. This type of focused traffic means that it is imperative to capitalise on the visitors who do find you at no. 1 during the decision stage by completely ‘owning’ your brand name.

In order to own your brand name you need to ensure that as many entries, both paid and natural on the first page of the search results are for your site. While some people think that bidding on your own brand terms is a waste of money, being able to ensure your competitors are kept out of the results is priceless. Once a person decides on your product the last thing you want them to do is get distracted and end up giving the conversion to a competitor who ranks well for your brand name or brand terms.

April 23, 2008 by FS

UNIQLO at it again with ‘UT-Loop’


March 20, 2008 by JP

Search within a search within a search

Recently I was searching for certain big brands on Google and I started finding a new feature in the results, which Google has quietly slipped in there. It’s a search box that site beneath the site links in some brand name searches. I first saw it on results for Virgin Holidays (One of Pod1’s favourite clients), but there seem to be a few other sites, such as Audi which also have this box.

 

The search box apparently allows you to search the site without needing to go to it first. This saved a fair bit of time, especially with graphics heavy sites that take forever to load. I managed to get to the page I wanted in about half the usual amount of time.

The first question I heard when I asked other people about it was ‘How do I get that for my site?’ The answer, of course, was ‘I don’t know,’ a very common problem when it comes to Google and natural search. The inevitable next question is ‘ Will it affect natural search rankings?’, however I don’t think this will be the case.

As far as I can see the main factor in whether a site is ‘blessed’ with one of these boxes seems to be the amount of searches that take place on a site. Unfortunately, this is not a good reflection on site structure and navigation. While I wish all my clients had a search box like Virgin Holidays, I can help feeling proud that visitors don’t have to use the search box to find the page they want.

As the search box becomes as standard as site links have become now, the benefits and drawbacks of it will become more apparent. For the moment though it’s just something cool to play with, a sign that Google is still trying to be innovative on some level.

March 13, 2008 by MB

London SES 2008 – Everything you ever wanted to know about search but were too afraid to ask.

As a complete newbie to the SES events I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect but I was hoping this would be an informative day out. I guess I was looking for a combination of some ‘top tips’ and some ‘myth busting’.

Let just say I wasn’t disappointed. I’ve read a few other posts about the event, some more positive than others, and if you were expecting a trade show and exhibition you’d be disappointed but if you were looking for a top notch informative seminar then this would be right up your street.

I started the day with the keynote presentation “The Changing Search World”, which was as good a place to start a day of SEOism as any.

The first problem arose trying to decide which of the presentations to attend, so after much deliberation I chose the following sessions;

News Search & SEO - This was a very useful session for me and I picked up lots of tips as well as reinforcing what I already new with good presentations from Greg Jarboe, Lee Odden and Tim Gibbon.

Blog & Feed Search SEO - This wasn’t quite as relevant for my clients but triggered a couple of good ideas we can use like a Widget for e-shop clients that notifies users of the item of the day, new stock & sales items.

Podcasts & Video SEO - Some interesting stuff here like Google only indexes videos if they have been posted on sites like You Tube, Metacafe etc. letting user do the hard work for them by applying the tags & descriptions.

Balancing Organic & Paid Listings - Paid V’s Natural Search, the age old question PPC or SEO (well not that old as neither have been around for long). The answer DO BOTH;-)

Linking Strategies – This was tricky how do you turn down the opportunity to listen and hopefully learn from some of the industries big dogs but it did clash with the new kid on the block Social Search Overview. In the end the allure of the perfect linking strategy won me over, and on reflection it was the right choice as the nice people at SES have put all the presentations online (including all the ones I missed) http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london/presentations.html.

So in summary a great day out informative and well worth a look, I’ll definitely be there again next year.

November 28, 2007 by FS

UNIQLO Grid

Have a go…

It’s strangely addicitive!

uniqlo grid

November 21, 2007 by AS

Elf yourself- again…

Last Xmas ‘OfficeMax’ created the Elf Yourself site. No doubt you found it in your inbox a few times?
This year, they’ve expanded the application to include your friends! Take a look if you happened to miss it: http://www.elfyourself.com/
For those who are bracing themselves for the influx of Xmas ‘viral’ this may be more suited for you ‘Scrooge Yourself’ - http://www.scroogeyourself.com

Ho Ho Ho

by AS

AT&T Campaign went to XXX - and all i got was this lousy T-Shirt…

http://www.attwheredoyoulive.com/

A campaign which encourages people to make up slogans and buy merchandise of the back of it.

Quirky idea and  a brilliant way to get users playing with a brand.

November 14, 2007 by AS

ING needs to go…

http://i-needtogo.com/ is a new campaign from ING.

An interesting approach.

Will it sell accounts?

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