The second week of my effort to give more than 140 characters of explanation behind my tweets – If you have an opinion or thoughts on any of the below stories, leave a comment, or if you’ve spotted a different story this week mention it too!
13th June RT @getelastic Do you think Groupon will survive without a customer retention strategy? http://www.getelastic.com/groupon-strategy/ >> NO!
A nice post from Get Elastic commenting on the possible Groupon IPO and the state of their business. To my mind after the Linkedin IPO, there is such a lack of Internet IPO’s that people are jumping to be part of them regardless of the business. I have mixed views on Groupon, they have done well to become the biggest brand and be very well known. However speaking personally if I ever look at their site all it seems to offer is teeth whitening and massages.
Also despite all their success they are not making any money. I think there is a future in this industry but I don’t think it is Groupon. Currently I see Facebook Deals and their real time, local approach much more engaging to consumers, and much more mainstream, but time will tell
13th JuneThe first ever Rightmove Hack-a-thon|Rightmove Property Blog http://t.co/VW6i4LK > Congrats to Tom (Uni Friend) and all on the winning team
The property website Rightmove held an internal Hack a thon competition for its developers to propose new features and technologies for their website, and then the top 9 ideas were split between teams to design and build.
Firstly congratulations to the winning team and Tom (in the video) who was a housemate of mine at Surrey University.
Secondly though what a great concept. I’m sure we’ve all had ideas to push our respective sites forward, be they niche and cool, or far reaching and functional, but there is never time to do everything. This “Hack-A-Thon” gives everyone throughout the company chance to contribute, share their ideas and feel like they have the opportunity to make a difference to the business. For the management team it is an invaluable source of ideas for the site from the people who know it best, your staff! They can tell you what doesn’t work, what’s missing, and how to move it forward.
13th June – notonthehighstreet.com launches group gifting http://t.co/ucJOjFP > interesting concept, is it useful or a bit to complex/long to be used?
Not on the High Street have launched a group gifting system on their website, which is demonstrated in the attached video. To use it, you decide what to buy, how much each of you want to pay for it, who is paying what, send out the invitations, and once the product has been fully paid it is bought and sent to the recipient with cards.
This is an interesting concept, but I just wonder whether it is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Sure its nicer for everyone to pay individually than one person pay and try and claim it back from the others, but by the time you’ve all agreed what you want to do, then set this all up, then all paid for it – wouldn’t it have been less hassle just to do it the old fashioned way! Also if the gift is for an event and some people are in less of a rush to pay would it still be instock or if one decides not to buy what happens? – though at the same time, good to see new ideas for payment and innovation.
13th June – RT @getelastic A/B and Multivariate Test Validity: Beware of Bad Data! http://bit.ly/kxbgPW
A good top line post of some tips when A/B testing, I would certainly agree with the first, sample size is key, as you will see all the metrics jumping up and down until you have enough traffic to give you statistical relevance and a high confidence level.
15th June – Net-a-Porter innovates with live feed of customer buys – http://www.internetretailing.net/2011/06/net-a-porter-innovates-with-live-feed-of-customer-buys/
A fun integration of add to bag / wishlist data against IP location on the Net a Porter Website. This really shows more than anything else what a global playing field eCommerce is with add to bags popping up from all over the world.
15th June – RT @Econsultancy Starbucks’ Facebook page receives 12X more traffic than Starbucks.com #FODM
I just thought that this was a fun stat, I’m sure anyone would be envious of their 23 million fans, but on first glance it doesn’t look like they are doing a whole lot to leverage their Facebook page. Although they post regularly it is in a very formal company tone of voice and (to me at least) doesn’t feel engaging, also I’m not sure what the purpose is of the facebook page.
15th June – RT @Econsultancy 92:1 marketing’s dirty little statistic http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/7657-92-1-marketings-dirty-little-statistic-5
I found this post very believable, I can’t count the number of times that I have been followed by advertising, PPC or any form of acquisition marketing, but when I come to click, they either don’t sell it or worse never did! Just as much effort should go into personalising the site for customers based on the route they entered and ensuring you meet their expectations.
16th June – RT BBCTech Facebook no-nos http://bbc.in/jI7WRR
In the week when a Juror was sentenced for contacting the accused through Facebook the BBC publishes a list of Facebook No No’s with some memorable examples.
16th June – RT DirectorsOfCOM The term ‘Average conversion rate’ is banded around the eCommerce industry so much these days, but are you… http://drct.co/WYn10
Conversion is such a eCommerce buzzword, even people who don’t work directly in eCommerce want to know “Whats the conversion of” – This is very frustrating as there a so many types of conversion metrics, and so places to apply it to – The landing page, the category, the products etc that you can never understand “the average conversion rate” I believe you should focus on graphing your conversion and tracking its progress, look at the improvements you have made and strive to increase it further rather than worrying about other companies average!
16th June – RT @Econsultancy PR firms need to get hip to the new rules for reviews http://bit.ly/iwWKmn
This week Duke Nukem Forever broke the record for most delayed video game at 14 years and 41 days since its announcement. Obviously expectations were high however the PR Company responsible for sending out review copies of the game publicly tweeted -
#AlwaysBetOnDuke too many went too far with their reviews…we r reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn’t based on today’s venom
They definitely shouldn’t have said that publicly and as a result have lost the contract, however this just goes to highlight what is probably the unspoken rule of review websites or magazines. Flicking my thoughts to onsite reviews, I like Amazon’s take on this – They have a Amazon Vine program whereby they give out free review copies of products, the then clearly mark the review as such. I think this challenges the reviewer in a very positive way to focus on functionality and features rather than just like or dislike.