Pod1 Blog

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

The popular brand of bubbly water created a site where you can go 100% interactive with Dita Von Teese:

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

Magento commerce has the ability built in to run test with Google Website Optimizer. But these are limited to the default style templates and limited to the category and product detail pages. This is less than ideal if you want to go onto the big guns and test your checkout for example.

At Pod1, the Magento Development team and the E-Commerce Strategy Team have come up with a simply way of testing all aspects of a page or section within magento.

We simply use the cascading element of Cascading Style Sheets, CSS, which allows us to overwrite styles. We leave the control variant untouched and simply use Google Website Optimizer scripts to load an additional stylesheet with corresponding styles in. These of course are altered in a way that allows us to change the layout of the page quick and efficiently. Either hiding elements or repositioning them or adding to them. If setup that way, you can do the same with JavaScript using the DOM model. Change the “Add to bag” button to a “Buy now” without the need for having graphical representations produced.

This way, we are able to reduce the cost of producing variants dramatically as all you need is a front-end developer and not the whole team. This makes for remarkably quick turnaround that yield results much faster than changing the whole site using all skill sets of your agency and implementing costly multivariate software that requires you to produce every page two or three times.

If you’re interested how to get the most out of your Magento Commerce Package, have a click around our blog.

The saga continues (see Google threatens to pull out of China) and the statement below from Google’s blog shows how reluctant it is to pull out of such a lucrative market, while at the same time trying to remain loyal to its own pledge of providing uncensored results.

The latest plan is to provide a landing page on Google.cn which then links to Google.com.hk allowing users to continue to perform uncensored searches.

“We currently automatically redirect everyone using Google.cn to Google.com.hk, our Hong Kong search engine. This redirect, which offers unfiltered search in simplified Chinese, has been working well for our users and for Google. However, it’s clear from conversations we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable—and that if we continue redirecting users our Internet Content Provider license will not be renewed (it’s up for renewal on June 30). Without an ICP license, we can’t operate a commercial website like Google.cn—so Google would effectively go dark in China.”

“Over the next few days we’ll end the redirect entirely, taking all our Chinese users to our new landing page—and today we re-submitted our ICP license renewal application based on this approach.”

It remains to be seen how China will react to this as there is always the chance they will simply block the new landing page leaving users no choice but to use the censored version.

Full article on Google’s Blog

ITV Live is an exclusive live online service for football fans providing video replays, real-time stats and live chat during the football World Cup in South Africa.

Capitalising on the open platform access afforded by social media applications, ITV Live will seek to connect with the likes of Twitter and Facebook inviting as much interaction as possible.

In keeping with the sharing theme, the network has worked with producers and talent – such as ITV’s World Cup team led by presenter Adrian Chiles, who will refer to ITV Live comment and chat during match presentations – to develop content to support programmes.

Coverage starts at 1.30pm on Friday 11th June so there’s no excuse to miss any of the action.

Let us know what you think of it and if there are better services out there?

An article of mine was published in New Media Knowledge about Behavioural targeting. You know, the thing that stops you dead in your tracks when you suddenly see that lovely pair of denims all over the net you’ve been looking at a few days ago on that website. Some stumble over Banana Bags as well.

The article in NMK is currently free to view: Behavioural targeting – Is big brother watching you?

For all the social media non-believers out there.

Erik Qualman from Socialnomics has updated his video on current statistics from the giant that is Social Media (SM).

I think the comment at 3:49 sums it up well: “Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate”.

Just like any well-defined communications strategy, it’s important that businesses begin adopting formal processes and policies to manage customer communication with social media.    It’s not enough to have ticked the first box by having a mere presence on the usual SM channels; we need to consider what this means for effective ongoing engagement with our customers.

If you haven’t done so already, try thinking about the following actions for your social media strategy:

• Understand how different social media channels affect the buying decisions of your target market
• Consider how your method of social communications compare to your competitors
• Identify offline promotions, events, messages that may be more effectively communicated through social channels
• Assess your tools – do you have the right ones to follow the conversation and listen to what is being said about your brand/products?
• Remember to respond. Communication is two-way, and by joining social media you become part of a conversation.
• Define processes and conducts for how your staff communicate & via different social media channels.  Remember, tone of voice is important here.  Social Media isn’t a formal business document, it’s conversational.
• Governance – define internally who is responsible for what area of SM communication.  Ensure they understand the processes, policies, and arrange communications training if needed.
• Integrate social media into crisis-response strategies with your customers.  Social media is a great way to reach a large number of people with a message, quickly.
• Consider how to promote and support social media as an effective communication channel for your brand.
• Monitor and evolve.  The video above is telling us the social media is moving FAST, if nothing else.  Have a strategy in place to continuously monitor, optimise and evolve your communications.

This is a great campaign run by Diesel: not just a fun concept, but good linking through all channels.

From a photographic ad campaign with strong impact

They also added the hilarious offline events that happened on the streets of London

the world’s first stupid music video (you can download the mp3)

http://www.diesel.com/ahundredlovers/

..And the Facebook bomb: win 50k to be stupid with a “stupidly creative idea”!

http://www.facebook.com/Diesel

I’m filling the form out right now, while I’m publishing all the Campaign statements on my Facebook Profile..

Last but not least, they added to all of this the Sex sells* *unfortunately we sell jeans tag line for the jeans collection.

I’m excited about a new premium jewellery brand to the online market, Anon Jewellery.

Anon soft-launched their new e-commerce website this week www.anonjewellery.com. The pureplay digital brand specialise in the sale of high quality diamond engagement rings onlines, but without the hefty price tags.

What we love about Anon Jewellery:

Pod1 will be working with Anon Jewellery throughout 2010 on their digital marketing strategy, social media, and campaigns.