A new report launched today, reveals ten online retailing trends for the 2010s and the most important actions online retailers should take to grow their business post-recession. The findings forecast that monetisation of online retail sites could be worth up to £949m by 2013.
See http://tiny.cc/jafmb
Facebook accounts for 6% of all US internet traffic and is far ahead of rival Twitter, which seems to have stopped growing, according to Hitwise data. The research firm says Facebook is on its way to becoming ubiquitous, while traffic to Twitter is falling. Facebook’s share of US traffic has risen steadily from little more than 1% this time last year to 6.1% in October. Traffic to Twitter peaked at just over 0.2% in July this year, but its share of US internet visits has since dropped to 0.14%.
See http://tiny.cc/uq1Ln
The Internet will now allow users to create web and e-mail-addresses using non-Latin characters, opening up the Web to billions of people around the world. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) has given the green light to the change at its board meeting taking place in Seoul, South Korea. This would include characters as diverse as Arabic, Korean, Hebrew, Chinese, Greek, Hindi and Cyrillic (Russian). Until now, anyone wanting to set up a website has been forced to include a few characters of Latin script in the address, or domain name, that they choose.
See http://tiny.cc/puEY7
As a number of usability studies have shown recently, the fold on a webpage doesn't have to be a barrier to users, and people are willing to scroll down to see more. However, the area above the fold is the first thing visitors to your website will see, so what should be above the fold? Here are a few suggestions, with e-commerce sites in mind...
Two new pieces of research show the importance which UK consumers ascribe to checking online reviews before making product purchases. A survey by PR agency Weber Shandwick of 1,021 UK consumers found that 26% cited online advocacy as having the most influence on their purchase decisions, above friends and family at 20%. Older media was cited by 23%, combining 12% for newspapers and magazines and 11% for TV and radio.
Choosing paint colors can be an enterprise fraught with significant (other) danger and considerable expense. (Need proof? Consider the pyramid of too-bold, not-bold-enough, not-quite-right, paint cans stacked in my basement.) Two new iPhone apps, one from Benjamin Moore and the other from Sherwin-Williams, give you tools to ease your color choice quandaries.
Both Benjamin Moore’s Ben Color Capture and Sherwin-Williams’ ColorSnap work on the same principal: Take a picture with your iPhone or select a photo from your the photo library on your iPhone or iPod touch, crop the photo for the best color selection, then touch or drag your finger across the screen to choose the color you’d like to match. Each program can also locate your nearest authorized dealer. While there are similarities to these apps, what happens when you choose a color to match varies slightly between programs.
After you choose a photo and select a color to match, Ben Color Capture displays a virtual paint strip across the bottom of the screen, showing the name and associated Benjamin Moore paint color that’s the best possible match. Just like a real paint strip, this strip displays six other colors in the same color family as the one you’ve selected. Tapping any of these colors once displays a larger paint strip; double-tapping adds it to your favorites. You can add notes to any of your saved favorites, and double tapping any saved paint color expands it to fill your whole screen.
Ben Color Capture also has a Harmony button that shows you related, but extremely different colors from the one that you’ve selected. I also like that when I closed and reopened ColorCapture it remembered the last photo I’d chosen and the the associated paint strip for my last selected color.
Unlike Ben Color Capture, Sherwin-Williams’ ColorSnap selects a new picture every time you open the app. I found this to be a real hassle, especially when I received a phone call before I’d saved a color selection.
As with Color Capture, you can touch or drag your finger anywhere on your selected image to choose a color to match, but ColorSnap also displays a small square swatch of color right above where your finger is touching the screen. This made choosing colors easier in ColorSnap than it was with Color Capture because my hand wasn’t obscuring the swatch as I moved it around the screen.
Once you select a color, you then touch the swatch displayed at the bottom of the screen to see the primary color you’ve selected alongside two complementary secondary colors. Clicking this colorful triad displays larger swatches, which include Sherwin-Williams color codes and let you save your selection as a favorite. ColorSnap has no notes option.
Both programs have some limitations, chief of which is that the app you choose depends entirely on the brand of paint you’re using. ColorSnap only works for Sherwin-Williams paints, Ben Color Capture only works for Benjamin Moore. Want to use Home Depot’s Behr paint? Sorry, you’ll have to run to Home Depot to get a color match.
Also, when you’re taking a picture with the iPhone’s camera lighting is key. Too little light, and your color selection ends up dull and faded; too much, and your colors end up washed out and flat. Strangely, neither app lets you search for a paint color by its name or associated number.
While both these apps work quite well, in the end I would have preferred a marriage between the two. An app with ColorSnap’s complementary color matching and chip at your fingertip combined with Ben Color Capture’s paint swatches and the ability to remember what I was doing the last time I used the app. Thankfully, both apps have kept my wife from thinking I’m crazy when I say that the Red Prairie I’ve chosen for the walls goes great with the Ecru and Tiki Hut she’s chosen for the trim.
Halifax has launched Home Matters, an information and advice site for its home insurance customers. In its first social media activity online, it hopes to generate a community within the site by encouraging conversations and interaction around content. The site will feature blogs, competitions, facts and articles about common issues, video vox pops and an ‘ask the expert’ section for customer queries about home security and domestic accidents.
See - http://tiny.cc/wOZqU
First Direct has launched a site aggregating live comments about the brand from social networks. Firstdirect.com/live pulls in comments, good and bad, about the brand in real time from millions of social media sites, including Twitter. Visitors can see how many comments are positive, negative or mixed through graphs, while the most commonly used words are also displayed. The bank says the site plays on its ‘Banking’s better in black and white’ slogan by honestly displaying what people think of it.
See - http://tiny.cc/jJyZQ and interview with First Direct’s Head of Marketing - http://tiny.cc/CV45C
Chart of the Day - iPhone Has 30% Of Smartphone Market (AAPL) - RBC Capital Markets performed a survey of smartphone users, asking 4,200 people what kind of phone they owned. According to their data, the iPhone is now at 30% marketshare, up from 25% in June. New iPhone buyers were "surprisingly strong at 81% of respondents." This, in part, explains why Apple (AAPL) is expected to deliver a blow-out September quarter. http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-iphone-share-in-smartphones-2009-10
