An interview with Matt Lawson of ao.com on their ecommerce strategy

Matt Lawson is Head of Conversion at ao.com.

In this interview he describes how they have  grown their business through keeping the web experience focused on the customer through constant feedback, review and testing. Today ao.com are the UK's largest online kitchen retailer with over 4000 large appliances ready for Next Day Delivery.

Their About page is one of the best we've seen for showcasing the proposition and integrating customer feedback and social networking. Taking such care with the About page may not be essential for established high-street retailers, but is important for online pureplays and startups. We also like the way their masthead below the navigation showcases their proposition.

Not that ao.com can be called a startup…

Creating Custom Audiences, Lookalikes on Facebook, relaxed rules on cover images and nested replies

There has been (yet another) exciting new development rolled out by Facebook for advertisers recently - the Lookalike audience targeting feature. As you may have read in the many announcements, Lookalikes are a way of you targeting audiences similar to your current customer database (or existing Facebook fans). In this post I thought I'd go beyond a summary of the features and show what's involved in setting it up. Here are my experiences, do share yours!

A short guide to setting up Facebook Lookalike targeting

To access the facility you need to be using Power Editor to create your ads and manage your target audiences. Power Editor is a free Chrome plugin. It's not the most user-friendly plugin out there but without it (or a third-party app which uses the Facebook API) you won't be able to access…

Signs that you need an integrated social media strategy...

The CEO wants 'a Facebook', 'a Twitter' and 'a blog'? The reason? Because they saw competitor becoming more active. Sound familiar? This request is perhaps less common than it was 5 years ago, but on the whole there is still a distinct lack of social media marketing strategy with plenty of examples of under-resourced social network pages or poor customer service delivery by social media - a problem when nearly half of adults now use the web to share grievances with brands. The key to social media success is understanding the full scope and impact of social media, defining exactly what you are looking to achieve and then creating an integrated social media strategy to maximise results.  In this blog post, I review some of these issues which are covered in more detail in our Social media marketing strategy – 7 Steps to Success Guide which I…

Definition, frameworks and best practice advice from Accenture and Altimeter analysts

In October 2010 Accenture published a useful new guide to social CRM summarising the transformation required in organisations by the advent of Social CRM. This is useful addition to the framework of 18 CRM processes of Social CRM covered in the Altimeter Social CRM report from earlier in 2010 covered later in this briefing. We think Social CRM and Social Business are still useful concepts to explain the changes to a business needed for the transformation to make full use of social media - the 18 Use cases of Social CRM for example really shows the scope of social media is much more than posting updates on social networks.  The Accenture report summarises the transformation as follows:

Old world

This seems to be the situation c2000. Here a combination of outbound and inbound marketing occurs through a…

The development of Facebook's strategy including business and revenue model

You use Facebook, but have you ever wondered about its business model and how it has evolved? In my E-business and E-commerce Management book we have reviewed the development of Facebook for over six years now. I think it's still a great case study for both students and professionals to learn from, since it shows many of the success factors needed for a new start-up, including the risks of alienating users when their privacy needs are not listened to.

It’s incredible that Facebook now has more than a billion monthly active users worldwide, yet has fewer than 5,000 employees.

In this case study which we aim to keep up-to-date between the new editions of my books, I have structured the review of Facebook strategy using some of the customer-related aspects of the Business Model Canvas.

Facebook's value proposition

In 2013, the Facebook mission is simply to 'make…

An example showing how to set up an AB test on Wordpress

What is A/B testing?

You'll probably be aware of the approach, I'm sure. A/B testing, also called split testing, involves your site serving  one of several versions of a page to show to a site visitor. The aim is to usually find a better approach to converting your visitors. [caption id="attachment_344" align="aligncenter" width="300"] What is A/B Testing?[/caption]

Why do you need it?

Put simply, how do you know if the changes you made to a page are working better than the earlier version unless you can compare them side by side? A/B testing allows you to make changes from a position of intelligence - knowing the impact of the changes you make allows you to learn what works and what doesn't, and make sure that you repeat the successes and not the failures.

A/B testing in WordPress

My…

Paid search marketing - impact on consumer purchasing?

We are highlighting this Infographic as it gives some good tips on how to reach your consumers, their buying process and the mobile devices which they prefer to use. It's from iAcquire who are looking to show the impact of search advertising on the consumer, demographic influences and use of mobile devices. Did you know that the 'likelihood of visiting the second page increases with age' and '70% of mobile searches lead to an action on a website within an hour'. Results are collated from resources including Nielsen, Experian and Pingdom.

You can read further results of the survey in their video.

…

Clickthroughs vs View-throughs - when do consumers interact and purchase?

Steelhouse carried out a research study, looking at various sources, to address the myth on ' view-through attribution'. Asked yourself the questions about the attribution of your digital marketing campaigns and which advertising resulted in the sale:  How many users who clicked on the ad actually made a purchase? Did our advertising impact the on-site purchase later via my website?  Through their research, they have shown the importance of reviewing attribution and how you measure the impact of display ads beyond direct clickthroughs. …

Interview with Paul Cotton from K2uno on Tealeaf solutions

We recently interviewed Paul Cotton, Managing Director of K2uno who are an advanced Business partner of IBM, specialising in applying Tealeaf CEM solutions to optimise the customer experience. One of their solutions is aimed at improving online customer experiences, by providing companies with real-time video information on customer interaction and user journeys; increasing conversion rates, customer retention and ROI for many of its clients. Find out more from Paul's interview, how this type of approach is helping companies and his tips on improving the customer experiences.

Q. How can a solution such as Tealeaf improve online customer experiences.

Tealeaf improves online experience in a number of ways. Almost anyone who has transacted online can recite stories of frustration, where they weren’t able to do what they set out to do. Page errors, navigation issues, slow responses and payment failure are just a…

Merchants Double Google Shopping Traffic between Q4 2012 and Q1 2013

May 2013 Update - continued growth in Google Shopping Traffic in the US

Each quarter, CPC Strategy rates the top comparison shopping engines including Google Shopping, based on seller metrics such as traffic and revenue. Contrary to the traditional seasonal trend of increased volume on Google Shopping during Q4, followed by a decrease in volume for Q1, Google Shopping traffic has not slowed into Q1 2013. Instead... Google Product Listing Ads flipped the typical seasonal trend on its head for Q1 2013, with an increase in traffic which nearly doubled from Q4 to Q1.  Merchants double up on Google Shopping Traffic Between Q4 2012 And Q1 2013 This continues a trend from Q3 to Q4 where we saw an 87% increase in traffic which was to be expected given the progression of the new program in conjunction…