luni, 29 septembrie 2014

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


Man who Feeds Stray Cats in Syria

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 01:13 PM PDT

Most people have abandoned this city but hundreds of stray cats still inhabit it. This man is kind enough to make sure that they still eat well.

















Car Lovers Dream Home

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 12:39 PM PDT

This $4,000,000 dollar mansion is a car enthusiasts dream. There's less space to live but more space for the cars. This garage can hold up to twenty cars and you'll never have to be too far away from the things you love the most.

















Lamborghini Diablo Built From Scratch

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 11:26 AM PDT

Wang Yu and Li Lintao spent $228,000 building their own Lamborghini Diablo. From the looks of it, the money was well spent.















Comparing Every iPhone Model Ever

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 11:03 AM PDT

All iPhones are not created equal.


















Occupations with High Rates of Substance Abuse [Infographic]

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 10:12 AM PDT

Construction workers. Food servers. If you have ever been employed in these occupations you probably know that drug and alcohol abuse are a major problem. KLEAN Treatment Centers looks at the top 10 occupations with high rates of substance abuse.

Click on Image to Enlarge.




Why You Shouldn't Have a Mobile Marketing Strategy

Why You Shouldn't Have a Mobile Marketing Strategy


Why You Shouldn't Have a Mobile Marketing Strategy

Posted: 28 Sep 2014 05:16 PM PDT

Posted by willcritchlow

Before I start, I should address the irony of writing this post on a site that isn't yet designed for mobile. I don't make those decisions, nor have the insight into the development backlog. I still think this is the community to have this discussion with, so I'll just have to put up with the irony.

This post isn't really about responsive websites, though. I wanted to address a broader question. There are a few marketing topics that seem to make it into board rooms sooner than others. Social media was one – I've heard a lot of senior people ask "what's our social strategy?" over the years and now I'm hearing "what's our mobile marketing strategy?". That's why I picked mobile as my topic for our upcoming SearchLove conference in London.

But I don't want to give another talk on responsive design, mobile user-agent server headers and googlebot mobile. Those things have their place, but they are inherently tactics. Instead, I want to ask myself the question "what does a true mobile marketing strategy look like?". Before I get to that, some background:

The changing mobile landscape

I've been closely involved in mobile since the early 2000s. Before starting Distilled, I worked for a strategy consultancy called Analysys who specialised in telecoms (and particularly in mobile). I distinctly remember every year back then being hailed as "the year of the mobile" (the earliest reference I can find online was optimistic that 2000 was going to be the year of the mobile).

It's funny because a decade ago, we were doing email on our phones (the iconic Blackberry appeared in 2003), but somehow WAP, GPRS and the Nokia 6600 all failed to achieve ubiquity.

In the end, by 2007, we'd all stopped talking about the year of the mobile, which meant that even the explosive adoption of the iPhone took a while to fully seep into marketers' collective consciousness. At the recent ThoughtWorks ParadigmShift conference, I gave a talk on the three "paradigm shifting" trends I see in marketing at the moment (the other two being what I called "your TV is just another screen" and "robots are filtering everything you see"). I showed these stats:

Mobile tactics

I'm clearly not the first or only person to have noticed this, and it's generated a huge amount of thinking about "mobile friendly" and even " mobile first" design.

Towards the end of this post, I've collected some thoughts and further reading on specific mobile tactics, but before we get into that, I wanted to dive a little deeper into the strategic layer.

You shouldn't have a mobile marketing strategy

There's something going on that I've referred to as there's no such thing as mobile. What I mean by this is that consumers are seeing less and less of a distinction between their devices.


To see this, we first have to realise that 77% of all usage of "mobile" devices is done from home or work where regular computers are available.

graph.png

http://think.withgoogle.com/databoard/#lang=en-us&study=19&topic=54&dp=211

The vast majority of the attraction is not mobility, but a combination of a device that is:

  • Ubiquitous (the same device everywhere)
  • Personal (with your settings, a degree of privacy, etc)
  • Always-on / instant-on
  • Designed for rapid interactions

It's the same set of trends that is driving the "bring your own device" (BYOB) trend that IT departments are having to learn to deal with.

Our computers are fighting back by becoming more like our mobile devices (instant-on, app stores, even touch screens) and our mobile devices are adding to their ubiquity advantages with features previously limited to the desktop (faster processors, larger and brighter screens, faster connections, better keyboards).

So, when you realise that all our data is in the cloud and our connection to the physical device is only sentimentality (and the cost of replacement), and you consider the range of screen resolutions that can be considered "mobile", you realise that unless you mean to target customers who are literally walking around at the time, mobile marketing isn't really a distinct thing – it's just the future of digital marketing.

Every marketing strategy should be mobile

You only have to watch a user who's never built their own website, and therefore can't empathise with the technical difficulties, try to use a website that doesn't work on their iPhone or iPad. They swear at the device. They swear at the brand. They wonder if they're doing it wrong or if their connection has dropped. They abuse the "idiots who built this website" without realising the difficulty of what they're asking for.

There's no such thing as mobile as far as the user is concerned. Which means you, as marketers, have to work exceptionally hard to play nicely with ubiquity.

Fundamentally, people use their devices for:

  • communicating with other people (1-1 and 1-many)
  • consuming media (text, images, video)
  • searching for answers

As a marketer, you can see the opportunities to be available, be found, be recommended in any of these uses. To improve your chances, you will need to consider:

  • Your platform – the CMS you use, the outputs it's capable of
  • Your content – the strategy of what to create and the tactical execution
  • Your audience – where are they and how can you reach them?
  • Your conversion paths – what do you want people to do and what would encourage them to do that?
  • Your measurement abilities – how are you going to quantify and demonstrate success, and how are you going to refine your approach in light of new data?

So, what does that sound like? It sounds a lot like the approach we take for every client who comes to us for digital marketing.

And that's what I mean when I say that every marketing strategy should be a mobile marketing strategy. Through every single step of that process, you can (and should) append "on mobile" to the question.

How might I be wrong?

What if apps beat the mobile web? That's the biggest threat to web marketers right now in my opinion. Clearly this is a threat to Google as well (how do you index the app ecosystem?). So it's interesting to look at their response because they're also embracing it. Think about:

  • The pace of innovation in, for example, mobile gmail apps versus desktop gmail
  • How Chrome is sneaking an operating system onto every device you own and can now run Android apps
  • How much a search in Chrome looks increasingly like a search in the Google app - with features moving from the app to mobile Chrome in a similar way to the way features move from mobile to desktop
  • The trend towards app constellations for most of the major mobile players – taking a slice not only from the monolithic apps, but also from the regular mobile web ("there's an app for that")

I don't think the pendulum is going to swing too far this way, however. Turns out that it's not only Google that relies on indexing the sum of published human knowledge. Can you imagine going back to a world where you can't Google for an answer? I can't.

So, I think that even in this situation, "content" remains something resembling the mobile web – as does much of ecommerce away from perhaps Amazon. The long tail of providers simply works against "an app for everything". You might have an app for your favourite store and your favourite newspaper, but you're not going to have 15 of each (in my opinion).

So where do we focus our marketing? In my opinion, we focus on search, social and content. Those are the fundamental human activities which are enhanced by ubiquitous computing devices, and they're ones we understand deeply. The future looks like brands as publisher like never before.

So, should I build an app?

I don't believe this is a marketing question. It's a product and business question. I think the answer could well be "yes" for many businesses if you have elements that can be improved by:

  • Native APIs (camera, coarse or fine-grained location, etc)
  • Game-engine-style graphics abilities
  • Offline functionality
  • Lock-in that actually benefits your users somehow

But it's not a marketing question. Aside from a small number of communication tools that can grow via viral loops (think: whatsapp), apps are not a discovery mechanism. The vast majority of app store searches are navigational (i.e. people searching for apps they've already heard of) and I don't see that changing any time soon – an app store search isn't going to replace a general web search for knowledge and so it's not going to add people into the top of your funnel.

It's also such a hugely fragmented market that – from conversations with developers who've seen their apps sitting at #1 in moderate-sized categories – I know that even success doesn't inherently drive more downloads and more success.

Tactical recommendations for mobile

Apart from repeating the advice to think about how your site appears on mobile, I wanted to end with some positive recommendations – i.e. what should you do tactically?

The key lesson here? We need to stop focussing on mobile as a device we use when 'on the go'. Mobile is no longer a distinct thing but, rather, simply the future of digital marketing. It must inform every strategy we devise as marketers, and at every step of the way. 


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Aspirational brands: Is magazine content the future for online retailers?

Aspirational brands: Is magazine content the future for online retailers?

Link to White.net

Aspirational brands: Is magazine content the future for online retailers?

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 01:51 AM PDT

We’ve known for some time now that the hard-sell doesn’t really work online. So what strategies are brands in 2014 using to urge browsers to buy online?

They’re using magazine content.

What is magazine content?

Well you can call it visual content marketing, editorial content, lookbook content or whatever you like.

Essentially, it’s content that has an editorial look, and that presents features, information, advice and inspiration alongside products on-sale in an integrated fashion.

The likes of Liberty, Harrods and other luxury brands and retailers have been embracing this kind of content to drive their eCommerce sales for a while, and it’s a strategy that looks like it’s here to stay. Let’s look at a brand that was early to the magazine content party…

The Net-A-Porter Example

Net-A-Porter.com was a relatively early adopter of this kind of content, re-launching their weekly on-site magazine, The Edit, in early 2013. Described as 30 pages of fashion shoots that allow readers to buy directly from the pages, as well as news, features and interviews with women from around the world.

NAP’s editor-in-chief, Lucy Yeomans, said ahead of the re-launch:

“We have an extraordinary customer base and we have to make sure we are looking after their needs, and that means bringing in the best of everything out there.”

The ambition of this new content focus, according to Tess Macleod Smith at Net A Porter, was to create a more in-depth customer experience:

“The aim is to inspire the consumer from the very beginning of her journey — and follow her all the way to the end.”

The-edit-by-net-a-porter

 

The approach appears to have worked brilliantly well for the brand in the last eighteen months, with the company seeing 18% growth in the year to February 2014. This success also means that the company has taken the decision recently to produce its own glossy magazine, to link the offline and online browsing experience.

It has been a commerce/content hybrid from the beginning. The website opens with a magazine-like "Edit". Readers can become shoppers by clicking on images in both articles and adverts. The new paper magazine extends that idea into print.” says Schumpeter in The Economist. “There is no disguising that Porter [the new print magazine] will help blur boundaries between writing about goods and services…and selling them”

They key term here for me is ‘blurring boundaries’. Magazine content, when executed well, can have a startling effect on our willingness to purchase. What’s more, the ‘shopability’ of products featured in magazine content is made more natural.

So for fashion forward brands, magazine style content is working supremely well and is therefore, presumably, here to stay.

But what about more traditional brands? Are they embracing this new marketing approach?

I’m taking a look at some traditional British retailers, known for their quality and brand, but not necessarily their forward-thinking attitude to marketing, and discovering how they are approaching magazine-style selling to consumers  online.

Marks and Spencer

The launch of Marks & Spencer’s sleek new magine-style website in February (below) was followed swiftly in July this year with news that the retailer had suffered an 8% fall in online sales. So what was the problem? Was the move too revolutionary for a brand that targets such a wide age-range and demographic? Going shopping on websites means "reading a magazine", says M&S's online chief, Laura Wade-Gery. So was the fact that a large percentage of their target audience are more likely to be reading Gardeners’ World or Home and Garden than Vogue the big problem?

According to The Economist, they wanted to ‘weave stories around their products’; let’s take a look at how they achieved that…

The Key Elements of the magazine-style page

Weaving a story means creating looks, inspiration, ideas and desire for a product.

marks-and-spencer-a and b

a.  Authorship and editorial authority

Adding simple elements such as an author bi-line or image help to reinforce the concept of editorial authority and objectivity. Net-A-Porter calls it "enhancing its online experience to its customers and providing compelling content and an authoritative editorial voice on its websites." (Drapers)

b.  Social sharing buttons

Integrating share buttons reduces the burden of sharing content socially and encourages multiple shares across platforms.

marks-and-spencer-the-new-workwear-c and d

c.  Product link buttons – start the purchasing cycle

Facilitating a move to a product purchase with ease by using ‘Shop the look’ or ‘get the product’ buttons – this may be a good element to A/B test – your customers may not respond to your language in the way you think.

marks-and-spencer-the-new-workwear--d

d. Upselling – lower cost products as add-ons

Ecommerce sites have been offering us ‘add-on’ products during the checkout process for years. Lower price point items work well as they are ‘impulse buy products’ Here, tempting add-ons or complimentary accessories are integrated within the content.

marks-and-spencer-the-new-workwear--e

e. Encouraging further exploration of magazine-style content

Browsing online is no different to flicking through a traditional glossy magazine. Sometimes you want to read more, sometimes you’re selective in the articles you read. Giving online browsers the options to continue their browsing journey on your website is key – keeping them on your site is better than letting them leave without making a purchase.

Lets look at another example…

Clarks

clarks-biker-boot-headerClarks has jumped on the magazine format bandwagon and produced some great content for its site this autumn, such as this Biker Boot page. This page comes just in time for the explosion of autumn/winter collections that appear every year around the time of London Fashion Week.

Clarks has clearly taken cues from the likes of Net-A-Porter and other high-end brands and the result is slick pages that look like they would fit nicely in Vogue.

movie-retro

Clarks has included classic magazine elements such as imagery around inspiration for the collection, images of well-known stars wearing a similar look, and ideas of how to wear the biker boots with different outfits. What’s great about this page, and others like it on the Clarks site, is that they have taken advantage of third party products (as examples of how to style the footwear) to make the page seem more objective.

This page has also included a high-quality video, which backs up the look ideas and helps visitors imagine how the looks could be realised in real life, and facilitates the easy purchase of these accessories.

Not only has Clarks done a great job in creating engaging and readable magazine content, these pages are great landing pages for web users searching Google for ‘Biker Boots’ as they are both engaging and highly relevant.

And so on to our final brand….

The Body Shop

This brand always seemed to me to be a divisive one; you were either a Body Shop customer or you weren’t, and I always was. So how are The Body Shop going about capturing new customers?

Take their new Argan oil range for example. Argan oil has been a buzzword in the fashion and beauty industry for the past few years (see Google trends graph below), but The Body Shop has moved beyond its use as solely a product for hair to create a range of skincare using Argan oil.

argan-oil-moroccan-oil-search-trends

Because this product has been a hot trend over the past few years, all of the top beauty and women’s magazines have produced features and reviewed argan oil products, so how has The Body Shop compete and introduce itself to new customers in this space?

By answering their questions!

Research based queries around argan oil, its benefits and advantages are growing:

What is argan oil? Monthly Keyword volume: 590 (and growing)

Argan oil research informational query keyword universe: 3,150 (and growing)

So The Body Shop has created an information hub to capture consumers in the research stage of the buying process and introduce them to their new product range.

What-is-argan-oil-organic-listing

 

What-is-argan-oil

The Body Shop’s What is Argan Oil? page is targeting the web users who are seeking out information, ie, they are in research mode so therefore the purpose of the page is to convert researchers into potential purchasers.

The Body Shop has created some visually engaging content about this topic, which means it is more likely to be seen as an authority by search engines and visitors. However, I think this landing page would benefit from a less sales-y approach, incorporating more objective content and trust factors such as quotes from magazines or bloggers.

This content is split across two pages, though I think it would make more sense as one single, longer page. I think longer form is more appealing these days and visitors are likely to miss out if they are required to click through to a second page.

I would have included some trust factors on these pages, such as reviews from magazines or online publications. There’s no shortage of blogger reviews of this product range (for example: here and here, especially from their in-store showcase events.)

 

Alex’s closing thoughts

Is the key to this kind of content, as Business of Fashion says, ‘shortening the path between inspiration and transaction’?

Is it all about creating a story and inspiring browsers with ideas?

  • Does viewing this type of content increase our willingness to buy or the amount we are willing to spend in once transaction?
  • Does it make us more likely to re-visit a site, either to browse or make a transaction?
  • Does magazine-style content evoke luxury and quality?
  • Does magazine style content feel more authoritative and impartial?

What do you think are the key elements of magazine content that create the desire to buy? Do you find this type of content more authoritative or objective (in spite of your marketing knowledge)?

Further reading:

Video: Inside Net-a-Porter’s Strategy for ‘Porter’ Magazine (here)

M&S launches new website, focuses on curation, clustering and content (here)

Main image credit: Kampoli

The post Aspirational brands: Is magazine content the future for online retailers? appeared first on White.net.

Seth's Blog : Wishing vs. doing

 

Wishing vs. doing

By giving people more ways to speak up and more tools to take action, we keep decreasing the gap between what we wish for and what we can do about it.

If you're not willing to do anything about it, best not to waste the energy wishing about it.

       

 

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