Pizza Topping…

Ok, so last year saw the domain name “Pizza.com” sell for $2.6m – and it seems that the cheesy-topped meal is worth even more dough online…

Dominos Pizza is literally raking it in, as the recession continues and UK consumers stay at home. According to the pizza chain’s latest full year results, while in-shop sales have grown 10% year-on-year, its web sales have jumped by 74%.

During the whole of 2008, Domino’s generated £58m in online sales – a massive increase on 2007’s figure of £32.2m.

The year was also a record breaking one for the takeaway kings – they reported a number of weekends breaking the £1m barrier for web sales. Seems that they really are topping the online takeaway stakes.

Post-Christmas Frenzy

According to most national newspapers, everyone and anyone was shopping online during Christmas Day, hitting the sales in search of a bargain; especially as the likes of Marks and Spencers started their online sale at 12:01am that day, and John Lewis began theirs at 6pm on xmas eve.

Whilst brick ‘n mortar shops are panicking and feel they need to carry out this sort of crazy behaviour, in reality, internet shopping was fairly quiet over these two days.

Plusnet did a quick web-survey and found that the number one site on Christmas Day was Google, as usual. But a close second was Facebook, steadily increasing in numbers as the day wore on (and the boredom set in). Incidentally, did anyone leave a message on the Queens Facebook page following the Christmas speech?

Boxing Day saw the biggest boost: Amazon, iTunes and Play.com all saw massive amounts of traffic over the 24hr period. Even eBay proved very popular – perhaps as people needed to get rid of unwanted gifts without offending anyone?

Missing Tricks – No Analytics

“UK online retailers are disturbingly uninformed about the effectiveness of their digital marketing mix, despite facing one of the most frugal consumer Christmases on record, research from Coremetrics has revealed.

Coremetrics commissioned the survey to investigate the dynamics of European digital marketing, as seen through retailers’ own eyes, as well as the customers they target. 

 The survey found that 94% of UK e-retailers take a multi-channel approach, using five or more digital marketing elements, but of these, 74% do not measure Return On Investment (ROI). 

 Search, renowned as one of the most measurable techniques proved to be a ’shot in the dark’ activity – with 80% of natural search and 66% of Pay Per Click (PPC) activities not measured for ROI. 

 The Coremetrics’ survey also examined consumer-spending habits, unsurprisingly finding that price-cutting was the biggest priority for 92% of consumers this Christmas.  Encouraging friends and family to cap spending on gifts (55 per cent), buying cheaper gifts (32 per cent) and stalling shopping until the January sales (16 per cent), were the most popular Christmas cost-cutting strategies for consumers.

 However, Coremetrics’ research showed more effective ways of targeting to gain a competitive edge in tough times. Chief channels identified by consumers for driving their buying decisions were price comparison websites (61%), online reviews (53%) and brand recognition (44%). Yet, of those marketers that do not already carry out these tactics, just 17% plan to introduce email promotions, and 23% special offers, suggesting a disparity in understanding between marketers and their audiences.

‘The Eyes & Ears of Digital Marketing Survey’ was conducted by Dynamic Markets, on behalf of Coremetrics in November 2008.  The digital marketing survey was conducted amongst middle and senior marketing managers responsible for e-commerce sites of large retail and wholesale companies with more than 250 employees.  100 respondents were surveyed in the UK, France and Germany, totalling 300 respondents.  The consumer survey was conducted among 1,000 adult consumers, aged 18+, in the UK, France & Germany, totalling 3,000 respondents.”

Straight from direct source: © Netimperative

… Just another manic Monday…

Monday 8th December is set to be the biggest day of online retail for the UK.

According to our friends e-Digital, who have been researching for the IMRG e-Customer Service Index (quite a name, by any standards), around £320m will be spent during the course of the day.

This ties in pretty neatly with a different blog I wrote this week, where I explained that although the growth of online spending will not be as large as previous years, it’s still very much overshadowing offline retail.

That aside, with this research comes the surprising insight that people will be springing out of bed and rushing to their computers on Monday… Whereas I will have done my online shopping over weekend and will be having a lie-in before work.

Offline Bites Online

Offline, Woolworths and Entertainment UK have gone into administration. Online, Zavvi’s website has ceased trading as a knock-on effect of this.

It couldn’t have really come a worse time for Zavvi, as the traditional double-bonus of an increase in entertainment and online sales has now been kicked out from underneath them. But I guess it’s the price you pay when you have an “exclusive agreeement”….

I’m not talking in code here. Basically, Zavvi has stopped online in the key pre-Christmas trading period, because its supplier, Woolworths’ entertainment wholesaler EUK has recently died a very public death.

Still, at least they’re thoughtfully warning customers and trying to plug their high-street shops.

Shopping, anyone?

It seems that the next level of interactive shopping has arrived.

As if Amazon’s window-shop wasn’t enough, we now have the arrival of Mallplace.

It’s truly great; a virtual, interactive shopping mall – and just in time for Christmas! So instead of fighting over carparking spaces, wrestling in the shops and stressing over time, you can now just sit at home, chill-out and shop online.

Mallplace also has integrated other important online elements for users: you can access the latest news or browse the video offerings of Youtube, for example. A great concept and one that works extremely well – although it can’t ever replace that magical christmas feeling of late-night shopping – it will still fair extremely well in the long term, I imagine.

Economic Highs, Not Lows

The wonderful thing about the digital world is that everything can be recorded. Inevitably, the usual privacy/infringement issues arise, but for marketing-men (and women) , this is brilliant. By recording user information, patterns, online data etc. almost instantly, advertisers can see if a campaign is working or not. Following the entire process from start to finish in such detail, they can indentify where users become disinterested or excited, they can tell how users react to specific offers, products, services and websites, they can collect and assess and conclude data like you wouldn’t believe.

Actually, that’s the theory. I’ve seen quite a lot of poorly-run campaigns over time (I’m not the only one); doesn’t matter what they are: PPC, Affiliate, SEO, Display… You could have the best campaign idea ever, but if the strategy isn’t right, I can assure you that it won’t achieve it’s full potential. Digital is about quick response – in this sense, it’s direct marketing at it’s finest: Ads targeted at relevent users, responses that can be traced and assessed, strategies that can be tweaked and fine-tuned for maximum effect. Because of this, it’s a total no-brainer that whilst the economy is down, digital is on the up.

From a marketing perspective, digital is inexpensive, trackable, changeable and direct. Far cheaper than TV, Radio, Press or Outdoor, in the current economic climate, it will practically guarantee money well-spent and yeild a return on investment. (Providing any campaign is well-run). It even enables SME’s to successfully compete with bigger players (all the more important right now). From a user’s perspective, the internet can provide more services, information and products than they would find offline – usually at cheap, comparable prices.

It’s a win-win situation for everyone and, with the slump we’re seeing offline, where people are opting to try and save money, it’s no suprise that the digital world has grown enormously these past few months. I’m seeing it everyday and I imagine that it’ll soon be pretty apparent to even the most digital-shy technophobes.

As an addendum, I found this. It pretty much proves my point.

E-confusion

I find it quite surprising the number of people who still get their E-terminologies mixed up. I’m talking here about the difference between E-business, E-commerce and E-marketing. Three very different things.  

Yet despite this, I meet people every day of the week who either genuinely don’t know the difference, or pretend that they do, use it in an incorrect way whilst talking to me and then get exceedingly embarrassed when I correct them. The latter often irrates me, because I’m very much of the opinion that unless you understand what you’re saying, most of the time you shouldn’t be trying to say it… It’s like watching some politicians trying to seem intelligent. There’s no shame in not understanding an increasingly complex area, which is why specialist agencies, consultants and companies successfully exist, actively helping to place businesses and the commerical world in general into cyberspace. That in itself is a seperate issue, so to return to the basis of my rant; to define some of the big “E’s” of the internet world:

E-commerce
Generally seen by most to be the term related to selling a product or service online. This includes online banking and online shopping – although some view the term to encompass online transactions; eg. user’s responses to an online equiry (or a search) that results in either an online or offline sale. E-commerce does NOT include any aspect of online marketing or administration/usabilty processes.

E-business
Exactly like the dictionary definition of “Business”, except in an online sense. The term encompasses all aspects of business processes, from purchasing stock to producing a service. It covers a vast range of business fundamentals: sales, marketing, distibution, logistics, customer service etc. E-business defines the entire platform needed to run a business online and uses E-commerce and E-marketing within it’s structure.

E-marketing
This is at the very heart of any successful E-business. It is about being closer to the user and understanding them, as well as understanding how a product or service sits within the marketplace and the best means to successfully sell online. As a whole, E-marketing can easily add value to a company by boosting sales and widening distribution channels. It is constantly evolving, as technology advances and user-trends shift; profitable online companies or agencies recognise this and quickly adapt their strategies to meet these challenges.

Great, hopefully no more confusion. (Except possibly from people who aren’t reading this blog).