'Net Features

Pinterest Introduces Rich Pins

2013-05-20T17:30:00Z

Pinterest has partnered up with some top brands in order to make pins more useful.

The pin-boarding social network is working with companies like Anthropologie, Home Depot, Target, Urban Outfitters, Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping and Netflix to offer rich pins, which are pins that contain additional information and allow members to discover more about content without having to leave Pinterest.

Partners, for example, can include information like pricing, availability and where to purchase items onto product pins, as well as include information like cook time, ingredients and servings to recipe pins. Moreover, Netflix, Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes will be able to include content ratings and cast member information onto movie pins.

In order to see the new rich pins, however, users must first enable Pinterest’s new look, which can be done be clicking the “Get it now” button at the top of the homefeed. Additionally, businesses interested in using rich pins must first prep their site with meta tags, test out rich pins and then apply to get them on Pinterest.

It is also important to note that Pinterest has taken steps to make its social network more mobile, by making the Pin It button available on a variety of mobile apps, including Behance, Etsy, Jetsetter, The North Face and Zulily.

The Popularity of On-Shore Hosting

2013-05-20T17:25:00Z

Pingdom has released a study which explores the percentage of sites with a given country code top-level (ccTLD) domain which are hosted in that particular country.

According to the Pingdom research, people in Germany, South Korea, and Vietnam were the most likely to choose "onshore web hosting" (hosting your website in the country where you live or conduct business.) Pingdom examined Alexa's top one million sites to determine the percentage of sites per ccTLD that were hosted domestically.

South Korea had 1,750 ccTLDs in the top one million with 97 percent hosted in that country. Vietnam, with 2,260 ccTLDs in the top one million, was a close second with 93 percent of those sites hosted onshore. Germany, with just over 25,000 ccTLDs in the top one million at Alexa had 92 percent, with Japan close on its virtual heels at 91 percent of its 14,188 ccTLD's hosted onshore.

Pingdom also explored the top 10 ccTLDs in Alexa's top one million sites and found that Russia had 43,000 in total, followed by Germany, United Kingdom (17,558), Brazil (16,991), and Poland (14,235).

5 Simple Steps to Set Product Targets for Google Shopping

2013-05-20T16:00:00Z

:: By Jacques van der Wilt, DataFeedWatch & WordWatch ::

Google Shopping is a great channel for Web shops, but many merchants are still struggling to figure out how to set product targets for their Product Listing Ads campaign.

We've developed a successful standard operating procedure for setting up new PLA campaigns by sticking to these five simple guidelines:

1. Start Simple: Brand & Product Type

If you are creating the first Google Shopping campaign for your shop, keep it simple. You need performance data before you can set any fancy product targets. So start getting that data in a simple way: Set product targets for each brand or each product type or each combination of the two. Don’t worry whether that is the best you can do: get started and get the data you need.

2. Performance Data: Don’t Spread it Too Thin

If your product targets get two conversions per month, your data is too thin. It will be weeks before you have enough statistically relevant data to change your bids and then it will be another month before you can evaluate it.

So it’s great that you set 80 product targets for all 10 sneaker-types of each of your eight brands, but you buried yourself in detail. Set your product targets for brands only or product type only and start collecting the data.

There is one way to get the best of both worlds: create one adgroup for each of your eight brands and put product targets in there for each of the 10 product types. That’s still 80 product targets, but you can aggregate the data on brand-level and get enough data for your first optimizations.

3. Top Performers Get Their Own Product Target

If you have a few products that make most of your sales, you should get them ‘their own’ product target. Don’t do that for the best 100 products because you will bury yourself in data. But if five or 10 products make >50% of your revenue, you want to monitor and optimize the performance of these Product Listing Ads closely.

4. Group by Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the single most important reason for grouping products into a single product target. If all your tennis shoes (regardless of brand) have similar conversion rates, you can group ‘m together. Bidding up or down may affect impressions, but conversions happen on your site, when the customer has already arrived to your store.

So dig into Analytics and find similarities. You may find that tennis-shoe-conversion is not dependent on brand, but that the pink ones convert better than the other colors. That means that you want to create an additional product target for pink tennis shoes (set an AdWords Labels for color) and set a higher bid. You’ll get more conversions and still have a lower CPA.

5. Mind Your Margin

Cash is King. You may have successfully executed the previous four steps, but always keep your eye on your Gross Margin. If your Tennis-shoes and your Tennis-socks have a similar conversion rate, you still don’t want them to have the same product target: With a $20 gross margin on shoes you want to bid a lot more than for the socks with a $2 gross margin. So always combine the wisdom of the first four steps with the financial rationale of step five.

One way of ensuring that there is a fit between your bid and your margin, use AdWords grouping to group all your products based on price (or margin if you have that in your data feed). Then you can set separate product targets, with higher bids for high-margin products.

About the author

Jacques van der Wilt has worked in online media for more than 20 years. He has held leadership positions in both the US and Europe. In the past 10 years he has worked as an entrepreneur and founded several start-ups. He is also a mentor at accelerator Startupboothcamp. As founder of WordWatch (automated bid management) he became an expert in search engine marketing for medium sized advertisers and with its spin-off DataFeedWatch (a web-based tool for merchants to optimize their data feed for Google Shopping and other comparison shopping channels) he established a leadership position in managing data feeds and Product Listing Ads campaigns.

GoECart Glues Together Fragmented E-Commerce Channels

2013-05-20T14:55:00Z

Sixty-five percent of shoppers in the U.S. currently shop across at least two channels, while 21 percent of U.S. respondents are using four or five channels to shop, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. What does this mean for retailers?

It means online merchants must find e-commerce solutions that meet the demands of the increasingly sophisticated online shopper. In fact, PwC reports that 72 percent of the consumers surveyed consider themselves to be either confident or experts in researching and purchasing online.

“Online merchants face massive competition today, and most of them are feeling stranded by multiple e-commerce systems and technologies,” said GoECart’s founder and CEO Manish Chowdhary. “But, there is a better way.”

GoECart, which provides integrated, on-demand e-commerce solutions, thinks its the solution to streamline processes. This is because GoECart helps clients sell across multiple channels, manage and fulfill inventory across multiple warehouses and process tens of thousands of orders each month without skipping a beat, like it recently did for GameQuestDirect.

GameQuestDirect offers a vast selection of new and rare video games online with more than 10,000 titles for all leading game consoles. In addition to selling via its own website, the company sells its products through 15-plus online marketplaces including Amazon.com, eBay and Buy.com.

Previously to leverage GoECart, GameQuestDirect used three systems to run its multi-channel retail operation: a standalone ecommerce solution, an independent order management system (OMS) and a separate shipping software. Since switching to GoECart, GameQuestDirect has lowered its costs by 60 percent, while increasing order volume by 40 percent.

Websites for Restaurants with GoDaddy & Locu

2013-05-20T14:50:00Z

GoDaddy's Website Builder, which provides ready-made designs for those looking to establish a Web presence, has formed an alliance with Locu - a technology solution that enables restaurant owners to update manage their menu's and publish that information onto sites including Citysearch, Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, TripAdvisor and OpenTable.

Locu specializes in easy menu-management and has hundreds of thousands of menus from all over the U.S. pre-loaded into their database, waiting for a restaurant to claim them. Once claimed, a restaurant can set prices, change descriptions and add photos of their meals. That means menu items don’t have to be entered manually on the website – it’s already loaded.

If a restaurant is brand new or Locu has not collected their menu, the automatic conversion of a document, pdf or image of a menu quickly enables users to have an SEO-rich menu online. Restaurants can print menus on a daily basis, making changes as often as needed for their menu.

“GoDaddy has built a business on serving small businesses and we are excited to partner with them to better help local businesses get found online,” said Locu CEO and Co-Founder Rene Reinsberg. “This integration makes it extremely easy to keep the key information on restaurants’ websites in sync with the rest of the Web.”

Yahoo! Acquires Tumblr in Billion Dollar Data Play

2013-05-20T14:45:00Z

News broke over the weekend that Yahoo! would acquire blogging platform Tumblr for approximately $1.1 billion.

Many in the business and technology industry believe the acquisition is a smart one for Yahoo! (but it has its detractors too). Tumblr now has more than 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups every day. It's not just those raw numbers however, but likely the engagement metrics that Yahoo! was most interested in tapping into.

Tumblr sees in excess of 900 posts per second and 24 billion minutes are spent on the site each month. But it gets even better from the perspective of Yahoo, who has its sights set clearly on mobile, as more than half of Tumblr’s users are using the platform's mobile app and do an average of 7 sessions per day.

The deal offers interesting opportunities for both companies. Tumblr will be able to deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help users discover creators, curators, and content and Tumblr in turn will bring 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences. Expect the two companies to start working on creating advertising opportunities immediately.

Reports from early this morning indicate that Yahoo-Tumblr will have advertising on the network as early as 2014. Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer revealed that she doesn't care if Tumblr visitors don't visit Yahoo!, which indicates (at least to me) that, thanks to Yahoo's aggressive behavioral marketing and personalization efforts, this may be more about acquiring an audience (advertising inventory) to leverage its relatively robust advertising technology.

If you're not on Tumblr yet, you may want to check out Website Magazine's 5 Tips for Taking Over Tumblr.

Talking Internet Taxes, Outright

2013-05-20T14:40:00Z

As one of the first beta testers for Outright, accounting software for small businesses and those who are self-employed that was launched in 2008, Kat Simpson has seen her fair share of changes affecting online sellers. Perhaps no fluctuations as impactful as the one facing Internet retailers today, however.

“We are in the middle of a new era and whether or not the Marketplace Fairness Act passes will make a huge impact on how we proceed,” said Simpson. “Currently my advice is hold and keep an eye on our Senate.”

Simpson, who started her business in 1997 selling household items on eBay for extra money around the house, currently has a branded store, Kat's Boutique, on eBay selling products invented by and used by women. She also sells some of everything on the Amazon FBA platform.

In addition to tax changes, Simpson has seen changes to Outright, a solution she relies heavily on. In 2012, Outright was acquired by Go Daddy, a natural fit as both companies are passionate about helping small businesses grow. Go Daddy helps companies get online, and Outright helps them stay there with bookkeeping needs.

“I use Outright each week to reconcile my books, keep an eye on expenses and prepare for taxes,” said Simpson. “Monthly, I use the Sales Tax Reports to help me file sales taxes in the 10 states in which I have a presence thanks to FBA and at the end of the year I rely heavily on Outright to help prepare my income taxes.”

For those companies needing extra assistance in regard to the impending Marketplace Fairness Act, Priyanka Sharma, Product and Marketing at Outright, says they’ll be there to help.

“Regardless of what happens, Outright is committed to helping small businesses understand their sales tax obligations,” Sharma. “We have easy sales tax reporting so that sellers can see how much sales tax they have collected and submitted. Additionally, our blog, The Bottom Line, provides tips and information for online sellers, including a state-by-state guide to sales tax collection.”

Outright’s sales tax report also shows sellers how much they have collected in sales tax. Its sales-by-state report shows how much they have sold for the year in each state, so that they can determine whether they have met the limits that require them to collect sales tax.

Flash Sale Sites Don't Deliver when it Comes to Shipping

2013-05-20T14:35:00Z

Flash sale sites like Fab, Gilt and RueLaLa excel at offering savings to consumers, however, they often fall short of meeting consumer shipping expectations, according to a new study.

Fullfillment and logisitics solutions provider Dotcom Distribution has announced the results of its Facebook Flash Sale Analysis, which took a look at 2,776 Facebook conversations between customers and flash sale sites. The results reveal that one in five (22%) Facebook comments are related to negative shipping experiences with these companies. In addition, 49 percent of all negative comments were related to shipping.

“Flash sale customers are social-savvy, and they are taking to Facebook to express their frustrations, specifically when it comes to issues like delayed orders or shipping issues,” said Maria Haggerty, president of Dotcom Distribution. “If these sites want to improve their social feedback, they need to start by selecting a fulfillment partner that has the scalability to handle the high volume of orders that come with flash sales.”

While most of the customer complaints regarded the speed of delivery, others mentioned the condition of products. According to the report, Fab.com and Gilt.com ranked the best out of the top 11 flash sale sites, with 36 percent of negative comments relating to shipping. Conversely, BeyondtheRack.com, HautLook.com and Zulily.com all tied for last with almost two-thirds of negative comments mentioning shipping problems.

That being said, the report also notes that customers post positive comments on these companies’ Facebook Pages as well, especially in regards to specific products and positive customer service experiences. According to the data, 30 percent of all positive comments are about products. Ideeli.com, for instance, ranked highest among the sites with 57 percent of positive comments relating to its products. One Ideeli customer even posted, “Got my new OTBT ShoShone shoes tonight – even my cat can’t stop admiring them! They’re so comfortable – I don’t even want to take them off to go to bed!”

On the other hand, Facebook comments about customer service were mixed with both positive and negative reviews. One example from a Fab.com customer commended a customer service representative, saying, “I would like to recognize customer service agent, Nicholas. He helped me with a problem on December 6 and was a great spokesperson for Fab. Please give him a giant raise, or at least a giant cookie.”

Other noteworthy findings from the Dotcom study show that out of all the comments analyzed, 44 percent were negative, 29 percent were positive and the remaining 27 percent were neutral. Moreover, OneKingsLane.com and Zulily.com were the only two sites that received more positive comments than negative overall, while RueLaLa.com had an equal amount of positive and negative comments (each at 38%), and the rest of the analyzed sites received mostly negative comments. However, one in five negative comments involved flash sellers’ websites, and many complaints related to login issues. In fact, three percent of all conversations were about login issues or a preference to not login at all.

Check out the list of flash sale sites ranked by percentage of negative comments related to shipping, lowest to highest, below:

1. Fab.com (36%)

1. Gilt.com (36%)

3. RueLaLa.com (37%)

4. JackThreads.com (39%)

5. Ideeli.com (43%)

6. OneKingsLane.com (44%)

7. Plndr.com (53%)

8. Foundary.com (57%)

9. BeyondtheRack.com (61%)

9. HauteLook.com (61%)

9. Zulily.com (61%)

4 SoLoMo Loyalty Program Leaders

2013-05-17T18:45:00Z

Rewarding consumers for positive behaviors (e.g. purchases, social activity, etc.) is a win-win for brands and customers. To take advantage of the many benefits of loyalty and engagement programs, however, companies must transcend paper punch cards to offer comprehensive SoLoMo (social, local, mobile) offerings, as do the four big-name brands discussed in this article.

So what does a brand have to gain? CrowdTwist, which powers the loyalty programs of such brands as Pepsi, the Miami Dolphins and FOX, for example, reports that multi-channel loyalty programs increase the average order size by 35 percent, while increasing repeat purchases by 36 percent.

Companies looking to explore software solutions to begin (or enhance) their own programs, can look to the aforementioned CrowdTwist, Perka, PunchTab (discussed below), NextBee, Shopkick (also discussed below) and myriad other advanced platforms to address (e.g. engage, analyze, optimize) the different touch points its consumers connect with them on.

Read on to see what brands are conquering SoLoMo loyalty and engagement programs.

Passing Go with Optimized Landing Pages for Gamers

2013-05-17T18:30:00Z

:: Maximilian Beer, Senior Online Marketing Manager at TrafficCaptain ::

Spurred by the increasing popularity of online games, the computer and video games market has in recent years seen rapid growth and today constitutes an important element in performance marketing. All major performance networks have added online games to their portfolios.

More and more gamers are drawn to online games, using their browsers as a quick and convenient way to play against hundreds of thousands of real adversaries without having to install anything. Apart from online games, there is a plethora of forums, blogs and communities where gamers can communicate and connect in various ways. This traffic is monetized by advertising and affiliate networks targeting specific groups of users. Around the world, the profitable online games market is highly contested. Observing cost-per-click (CPC) development over a five-year period shows that advertisers today have to pay prices that are several times higher than they were in 2008.

The great number of new start-ups in the games sector increases competition even further. As players have become more discriminating, sophisticated graphics and an interactive gaming experience are absolutely essential. If a game is not on the cutting edge in these areas, the initial media hype is inevitably followed by declining conversion rates (users on site in relation to registrations effected) and at the same time, the acquisition costs for new users rise.

The increase in development and advertising expenses makes an optimized landing page an integral component of the marketing strategy: Because the landing page is the point of first contact a new player has with the game, every click that does not result in conversion makes an offer less attractive in the competitive global environment and thus costs companies real money.

Therefore, the most important factors for a successful gaming landing page are presented here:

1. A landing page should always have a clear message and target orientation

The objective is to prompt the user to sign up for the game. This should be the central and immediately recognizable message. Anything that distracts from it should be avoided and relegated to the background. Typical examples are forum registration links, or generally, links leading away from the page.

2. Request only the most relevant information

Unless absolutely necessary, detailed queries regarding interests, age, password and repeated entry thereof (this can be requested at the user’s first game log-in) or the like should be avoided. Unnecessary inquiries increase the risk of the registration being aborted, and at the same time, the validity of additional answer boxes can be called into question given that many users will enter fictitious responses simply to speed up the process.

3. Design for Efficiency

An uncluttered, straightforward design is often the most efficient: Users are not distracted, but led to registration swiftly and effectively. Background graphics are perfectly fine, yet should not contain complex animations which would divert the user’s attention away from the actual registration process.

Examples of well-designed landing pages:

Bumrise.com

Starforcedelta.com

Golden Age

4. Key messages & prompts

Clear, understandable messages asking the player to take action. In our case, the objective generally is registration or purchase of a game. “Sign up for free now” or “Free registration” are examples of a clear statement inviting the user to become active. Overly lengthy explanations, introductions or product descriptions lower the conversion rate measurably. The average user looks at a page for two to five seconds before deciding to subscribe to the service or not.

5. Improve existing landing pages

A landing page is never perfect and should be constantly optimized. This calls for bold new ideas and a conscious strategy to address different target audiences. This route has the advantage of increasing the chances of providing an offer that caters to the individual player’s taste.

6. Think about user flow

The objective of an easy, valid registration often stands in stark contrast to low conversion rates. Single sign-on services such as those offered by Google or Facebook may present a way out of this dilemma. These do not require a full new user registration on a landing page but instead link the user’s existing Google or Facebook account with the game. The advantages are: swift and simple registration and high-quality user e-mail addresses.

7. Consider rebates and special items

Already a standard element of e-commerce, promotion campaigns in online games still hold much untapped potential. The clear advantages here are higher conversion rates and the incentive for users to spend money on the game. Special offers which give the player exclusive benefits are an effective tool. An example is the Games.de campaign which served to attract new players to Starforce Delta (https://www.starforcedelta.com/), granting them in-game currency (Crystals) worth 15 EUR simply for signing up.

8. Test & analyze

Landing page tests should be conducted continuously and are never final. Mathematical models such as significance testing should be used to obtain reliable data. As a general rule it should be noted that a minimum number of 500 conversions is required to begin drawing any meaningful conclusions. Professional tools, e.g. Google’s Webmaster Tools (including HeatMap), can be helpful in taking the right decisions.

Ensuring further growth for online games will increasingly require game publishers to position themselves optimally against the rising tide of competitors. It is the author’s firm view that concepts from the more traditional fields of online marketing will find their way into the marketing strategies for online games.

The overwhelming success enjoyed by online games has caused many companies to overlook the need for landing page testing. This entails more than just changing themes and background designs. Rather, reorganizing input fields and password lengths, and integrating new registration options such as Google/Facebook single sign-on, should be considered in order to raise the conversion rate and ultimately, further increase the efficiency of marketing campaigns. The coming years will show which business models are most likely to succeed and which companies are able to achieve the transition from game developer to global marketing firm.

About TrafficCaptain GmbH

TrafficCaptain GmbH was established as a ‘Games Performance Network’ by iVentureCapital. iVentureCapital contributes its unmatched expertise in generating qualified traffic for online and mobile content to this online advertising network. TrafficCaptain offers performance-based campaigns for mobile, social, MMO, strategy and online games optimized for high eCPMs. TrafficCaptain campaigns are international, with a focus on Europe (Germany, France, Spain, Poland, etc.) and North America (USA and Canada). In addition, TrafficCaptain provides consulting services for media planning and the implementation of Google AdWords campaigns. TrafficCaptain’s Genre-Oriented AdManager targets specific user groups in different countries and automatically optimizes campaigns to achieve high conversion rates and maximum payout for publishers. Advertisers and publishers will find detailed information about TrafficCaptain on www.trafficcaptain.com.

Brands on Knotice for Complete Customer Profiles

2013-05-17T18:15:00Z

Creating coordinated brand experiences that extend across digital channels and device types can help companies better engage customers through consistency, helpfulness and value, according to Patti Renner, director of marketing at Knotice whose company recently announced an expanded relationship with Fender Musical Instruments.

Fender is using the Knotice platform to unite its campaign data and customer information. This relationship will allow Fender to inform highly tailored content across email, mobile, display, SMS and on their website. They will also be able to have a complete view of the customer across device types. Below, Renner offers an in-depth explanation of why this is important for all brands and the challenges that businesses face when creating complete customer profiles on their own.

How can unifying data and getting a complete customer profile help in a brand’s marketing efforts?

Patti Renner: Today’s customers are always connected, always looking for information and messages on whatever screen is handy at the moment. They could be browsing your site on an iPad, looking up information about your product on their mobile device or making a purchase on their PC. It doesn’t matter where they are or what device they’re using – they simply expect a consistent, relevant, enjoyable experience across channels. Connecting the channels across device types requires data management where the customer preferences and activity is stored within individual data profiles that can be automatically updated and appended as things happen.

Unfortunately, some marketers don’t think in terms of providing a cohesive consumer experience regardless of devices they use. They view each consumer by channel, focusing on their email audience as separate from their website visitors, separate from their online display views.

Having all their data unified within a universal profile management system, brands have the ability to connect the digital dots with each consumer, allowing them to provide a truly useful, relevant experience to each person as individuals. Here’s how a profile-based data management works. Let’s use Joe as an example. With proper data management, the brand knows Joe has opened their last 3 emails on a tablet, searched for the address of their nearest retail location on his iPhone, saw 4 ads for a blue sweater, then clicked on the sweater section of their website from his PC. Now, that brand can send Joe tablet-optimized emails, let him know when his favorite sweaters go on sale, and serve him with the content that interests him. The ability to cater to the interests of the custom based on available first-party data makes the brand experience better for Joe since he gets what he wants faster, and it also provides increase efficiency and a higher likelihood of conversion for the brand. Unifying your data makes this possible. Instead of pushing random offers to Joe, they’re now able to serve him with the information and products that best suit his needs.

What challenges are there for a company to try and do this on its own?

In most organizations, customer data lives siloed in separate systems or it’s difficult to access due to internal departmental hurdles. Trying to integrate customer data into a single system with just your IT team can be a real challenge as important data can fall through the cracks (or not integrate properly) when attempting to combine into a single system. If a company is able to get all its data into one place, it then faces the challenge of being able to create those unique customer profiles to wrap all that data around, with automation in place so the data profiles update and append as new information is received. On top of this is usability and actionability of the data so you can use it to inform content going out (so Joe sees sweaters and Mary sees the item she left in the shopping cart last week). You also want to be able to inform advanced analytics, so you send and spend smarter. There also is the issue of having a storage environment large enough for you to collect and quickly access all the information you’re taking it.

Working with a data management partner takes the stress of the organization by seamlessly uniting all that data, storing it safely in a powerful Big Data profile-based environment, which can then be easily used to inform messaging, content and analytics. For instance, our system has email, website, SMS and display options already built into the platform seamlessly. Everything can be simultaneously fueled by the same data environment, which makes response and relevance faster and simpler compared to pieced-together DIY integrations. We also offer analytics dashboards so you can better monitor what’s going on and make adjustments to help shorten the sales cycle. While you might be able to integrate a few points on your own, your time and money may be better spent working with a professional data management platform provider to get there faster.

For more information, visit www.knotice.com.

Easy Web Overlays with Chardin

2013-05-16T19:15:00Z

One of the most popular posts in April 2013 here at Website Magazine was about the Intro.JS jQuery plugin which enables users to create guided virtual introductions on their website.

But Intro.js isn't the only available option; you might also want to consider Chardin - a jQuery plugin that creates an attractive and very intuitive overlay for users visiting a website that can be used to display instructions or guidance to users on any predefined, existing element on a web page.

Users of Chardin simply need to define the text to be shown with the instructions, and indicate the data position (where to place the text with respect to the element).

Chardin can be downloaded at Github.

Below are two images - one without Chardin activated and another when the overlay has been activated.

Tubular: Use YouTube Videos as Website Backgrounds

2013-05-16T18:42:00Z

Delete that tired old static website background - and get Tubular!

The jquery plugin lets designers/developers use a YouTube video as a Webpage background - how cool is that? Now, I don't have any idea at all how or when this should be used (or if it should be used at all), but you have to admit it's pretty creative and the possibilities are pretty endless if you can find the right situation to use it in. Check out the demo of Tubular, created by Sean McCambridge, here.

Users of Tubular have some control over the options including mute, repeat, play/pause, etc. To get Tubular working, just attach it your website pages wrapper element, set the options, and you're done! Do note that browsers which do not support fixed positioning will not support the plugin.

The plugin, released under the MIT License, can be downloaded at Google Code.

That's not a static image below, that's Tubular - a jquery plugin to add YouTube videos as a website background.

Barriers to Engaging Web Design

2013-05-16T18:30:00Z

For all intents and purposes, design is the most important part of a website when it comes to getting users to convert, and what matters more than that, right?

Unfortunately, even on the most thoughtfully designed websites, there can be extraneous circumstances that make the whole site, or just specific pages, less engaging for users than they ought to be, which can ultimately hurt the site’s overall ability to convert. Certainly, the bleakest of realities for Web professionals is to realize that one or more pages on their websites just aren’t living up to the stringent expectations of consumers.

There are a handful of possible reasons why your website’s design may be ineffective and not as engaging as you’d like it to be. To ensure that you don’t fall victim to one of these critical barriers to engaging and effective Web design, you should make sure that you’re aware of what they are to begin with.

Read 5 Barriers to Engaging Web Design now

7 Key Principles for Mobile Commerce Success

2013-05-16T17:45:00Z

:: By Nathan Joynt, Volusion ::

There are currently 115 million smartphone users in the U.S. and an estimated 200 million users by 2017. According to Internet Retailer, in 2012 U.S. smartphone and tablet users spent over $24 billion in mobile commerce sales, accounting for 11% of total ecommerce sales. The digital age is advancing quickly, and with the boom of ever-increasing technology use and some promising statistics, online businesses can’t deny the fact that there is huge moneymaking potential in mobile business. Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, is the browsing, buying and selling of products and services on mobile devices. If being able to shop from your home computer wasn’t easy enough, smartphones and tablets enable you to research and compare products in a physical storefront. Often this can lead to a direct sale online – often from a competitor of the storefront. If you are looking to maximize your online business through mobile, this post will give you some important factors to consider when developing your m-commerce strategy.

7 Key Principles to Maximize your M-Commerce Strategy

To keep your m-commerce strategy running effectively and help your online business grow, make sure you adopt these principles:

1. Do on-going research to determine what mobile devices are popular with your target market.

This is about understanding how you need to prioritize your mobile strategy to maximize ROI. Not every online market makes use of mobile devices. You may have a business where users actually find it more difficult to research and shop for your products through a smartphone. What does your current analytics data suggest? Also, what is your competition currently offering in terms of mobile presence? A story can be formed by performing gap and opportunity analysis. The more persistent you are with research and analysis, typically the better you will be able to focus on what’s most important.

2. Keep brand consistency across your web and mobile properties.

Make sure your ecommerce and m-commerce sites are consistent and congruent in terms of design, product offering, content flow and overall brand messaging. If you are in a position to take advantage of responsive design, do so. Your visitors will expect a consistent branding experience, whether they know it or not. This builds trust, whereas any inconsistency is a sure-fire way to lose sales.

3. Try to keep it simple at first and then add complexity.

As a colleague states, “web users are finicky; mobile users are finickier.” Mobile users typically expect their content to load quickly. You have to take extra care to ensure your mobile content can be consumed in multiple formats. This means making the pages more light weight: use clean code, be careful with large data features like videos and make sure to test all your site’s features so you know what needs to be sped up, taken down or added in.

4. Remember to include mobile in your online testing strategy.

Smart marketers understand how to increase ecommerce sales through practices like user testing, landing page testing and conversion rate optimization. Due to the fact that the user interface and user experience on mobile devices are different, it’s important to understand what your target market expects from your mobile site and include these considerations in your testing strategy.

5. Remember to QA your mobile site.

The concept seems simple enough, but it can be overlooked, especially as websites continue to grow and stakeholders forget to take into account the mobile experience. Does the design break at any point? Is the site cross-browser compatible? Does the checkout process work? Are you able to track everything appropriately in terms of analytics? Do the forms work? Does every link and do all calls-to-action perform as expected? It can be frustrating to try and purchase something through a mobile device and encounter a broken link. This will typically lead to a lost sale.

6. Keep reading more about mobile optimization.

Things move quickly in this area. In order to correctly optimize your mobile business make sure all your mobile data is in order, know what metrics are key to your success and know the specifics of what your customers are searching for most. Mobile optimization is a key factor when looking to increase sales and improve customer satisfaction. This leads to…

7. Leverage customer feedback.

It’s very important to have a customer feedback page, suggestion box, review section, etc. Most businesses have drastically increased their online sales by listening to customer feedback, so why not do the same for your m-commerce business? Utilize your Facebook and Twitter friends/followers to understand their likes/pain points. Send out a survey to your email list. What one customer wants, usually many more will want. If you tailor your mobile business to your customer feedback you will keep them satisfied and coming back for more.

eMarketer estimates that by 2017, approximately 25% of online retail transactions in the U.S. will take place on mobile devices. As technology is changing and rapidly increasing, so is the way consumers buy their products, which means you, as an online business owner, has to change as well. The potential for your business to grow through m-commerce is extremely promising and is up to you, with a little help from the experts, to make the most of your mobile business.

Nathan Joynt is a Marketing Manager for Volusion, a leading mobile and ecommerce software company. He specializes in SEO, user experience and content marketing. Follow him on Twitter @nathanjoynt.