Posts Tagged ‘UK’

Customer Centricity, Marketing Strategy, Research, Social Commerce Summit

Brant Barton UK Takes Lead in Online Advertising

October 12th, 2009 by Brant Barton Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer

eMarketer reported last week that in the first half of 2009, the UK became the first major economy to see online advertising spending surpass TV ad spending. According to the report, the Internet accounted for 23.5% of UK advertising revenue vs. 21.9% for television. This is big news and not without controversy, as the UK TV lobby is protesting the aggregate number reported for Internet ad revenue, which includes paid search (the largest category by nearly 3X), online classifieds, display media, and other formats.

While the experts argue over the math, I think that UK (and US) advertisers and consumers should celebrate this milestone. While the US Internet-TV ad spending gap is still sizable, the steady migration of dollars over the coming years will drive Internet industry growth and evolution, yes, but also a more customer-centric experience for consumers faced with hard decisions in an increasingly complex economic and marketing environment. Advertiser spending on social marketing/commerce applications is still significantly smaller than the leading categories of Internet ad spending mentioned above. However, as we have witnessed firsthand over the last 4+ years of building Bazaarvoice (and shared on many occasions on Bazaarblog), the social category offers perhaps the greatest opportunity for advertisers to think bigger than clickthroughs and conversion rates and instead focus on wholesale cultural and operational transformation of their businesses using the voice of the customer as a muse.

This news from the UK is timely, as we just wrapped up our second annual Social Commerce Summit in London, the European complement to our US Social Commerce Summit held in Austin every year. We now serve over 120+ customers across Europe, and the London Summit was a sold out event. In the coming days, we will share highlights from the Summit here on Bazaarblog!

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New at Bazaarvoice, Ratings & Reviews

Sam Decker Top online cycling retailer Wiggle launches Ratings & Reviews

July 13th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Wiggle launces Bazaarvoice Ratings & ReviewsThe UK’s most visited online bike shop launched Bazaarvoice social commerce technology today. Wiggle.co.uk has employed Ratings & Reviews in an effort to drive sales and improve natural search rankings.

“Customers already share their experiences around the web, so sharing reviews, photos and videos on our site is a fantastic opportunity to build our own community,” said Steve Mills, Web Manager of Wiggle.co.uk. “We want this service to be integral to our site.”

Monthly promotional emails will encourage cycling enthusiasts to share their experiences of over 250,000 products available on the website. This month’s promotion is a competition offering reviewers the chance to win a Focus bike worth £750.

Read more about the launch in our press release.

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Marketing Strategy, Partners, eCommerce

Sam Decker Econsultancy’s take on social commerce trends

July 10th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

This blog post is guest-written by Jacob Salamon, Bazaarvoice’s European Marketing Manager. lieb_rebecca_2008

This is the final post in our three-part blog series with Rebecca Lieb, Econsultancy’s Vice President of North America. Econsultancy, the UK’s leading source of insight on digital marketing and e-commerce, has been a partner and resource to Bazaarvoice in the UK for over two years and is now launching its US office in New York City. Here, Rebecca shares her thoughts on research and e-commerce trends. Read the first post on growing the new US office and the second post on monetizing Twitter and social media.

Q: What are some of the smartest retailers doing right now to stave off effects of the economy?

A: First and foremost, they’re selling online. E-commerce is suffering as a channel along with the rest of the economy, but it’s not suffering to the extent that offline retail is. They’re getting smarter about search, both SEO and SEM, as well as vertical and local search, and many are having great success with online coupons, which have really taken off in tough times. They’re also building social media components into their efforts, both on-site and off. We’re talking customer reviews, of course, but also using tools like Twitter, blogs, photo-sharing and more to encourage users to do no small part of the online marketing lifting for them.

Q: What are some trends you’ve identified, specifically with regard to social commerce?  As customer reviews are now commonplace, what is Econsultancy’s view on the future of social commerce?

A: People are social by nature, and commerce is an everyday activity. Wikipedia defines social commerce as a type of e-commerce in which “active participation of customers and their personal relationships are at the forefront.” This is nothing new — commerce and social interaction have commingled since the days of the agora. Recommendations, reviews, lists, and other forms of sharing and participating in shopping and commerce are utterly inherent to human nature. Online tools enable extending these very natural impulses and proclivities into the realm of e-commerce. People have always gone shopping, at least in part, to be social.

Q: We advocate embracing customer conversations on your site – to drive social interactions within the purchase path.  How else do you see brands engaging in social initiatives to drive measurable sales?

A: Twitter is the channel most in the news these days. Dell recently attributed over $3 million in sales — $3 million! — to Twitter-generated sales. Certainly tech companies have jumped on that bandwagon, but so have United Airlines, which is offering Twitter-only deals, and Starbucks, which is giving away gift cards in the channel.

I’m also seeing companies use Facebook to generate contests and user-generated content, not to mention bases of fans and loyal supporters. Certainly this drives sales and affinity at least indirectly.

PR is another important tool in social channels. Grasshopper recently sent 5,000 chocolate-covered grasshoppers to influential bloggers, generating mountains of social media coverage. Automotive companies are doing the same, offering loaner vehicles to influentials in exchange for coverage. These initiatives, when properly executed, can generate sales, if not at least consideration — and have the potential of going really viral.

Really, ways to increase sales in social channels are limited only by imagination and proper execution — neither of which is to be taken lightly. This stuff can be hard. But the rewards can make the effort worthwhile, as can the minimal impact on marketing budgets.

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Ratings & Reviews, User-Generated Content, eCommerce

Heather Brunner Reviewed products convert 10% higher for UK retailer Argos

July 6th, 2009 by Heather Brunner Chief Operations Officer

UK retailer Argos

This blog post is guest-written by Anna Skaya, Community Manager – Europe at Bazaarvoice.

When Bazaarvoice partnered with Argos to build and deliver their User Generated Content (UGC) platform, we couldn’t have imagined the kind of impact UGC would have had on Argos’ social marketing strategy, or how this would have a knock-on effect on conversion. As one of our flagship ‘early adopters’ in the UK, our recent Argos case study highlights details of this exciting discovery, and showcases how the Argos eCommerce team is focused on retaining a competitive edge over its rivals along with delivering a consistently great customer experience. Increasingly fundamental to this now is the decision to make UGC a focal point for online strategy planning.

When Argos first launched customer Ratings & Reviews, our challenge was to find a way of utilising Consumer-to-Consumer opportunities in a way that was relevant and complementary to the established customer experience, while demonstrating additional benefit to the business. When doing so, ROI is always king.

The conversion numbers speak for themselves – 10% increase in conversion on products with reviews, across all categories. Customer reviews form a key part of Argos’ continuing website innovation; and with new key functionality supported by technology partners such as Bazaarvoice, these types of results are just the beginning. There is a lot more in store for this leading online retailer!Argos Case Study

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Partners, eCommerce

Sam Decker Econsultancy’s take on monetizing Twitter and social media

July 3rd, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

This blog post is guest-written by Jacob Salamon, Bazaarvoice’s European Marketing Manager. lieb_rebecca_2008

This is the second post in our three-part blog series with Rebecca Lieb, Econsultancy’s Vice President of North America. Econsultancy, the UK’s leading source of insight on digital marketing and e-commerce, has been a partner and resource to Bazaarvoice in the UK for over two years and is now launching its US office in New York City. Here, Rebecca shares her thoughts on monetizing Twitter and social media. Read the first post on growing the new US office, and keep an eye out for the next post in this series.

Q: What has been the biggest surprise in covering digital marketing this year?

A: I don’t know how surprising this is, but it’s been very gratifying to see digital marketing more or less hold its own in a very difficult financial climate. Sure, we’re no longer expecting those previously forecasted double-digit growth numbers for online advertising as we were last year. But it’s heartening to see web-based marketing to more or less maintain through these difficult economic times. Obviously, this is due to economies in the channel that just don’t exist in traditional marketing media. But it’s also due in no small part to the just-in-time rise of social media. More and more, marketers are relying on building their own communications channels, and encouraging users to do so as well, rather than buying ads and plunking them inside someone else’s media. This flexibility and adaptability is what really makes interactive “interactive.” So it’s been surprising, as well as delightful, to see more, not less, innovation in troubled times.

Q: Econsultancy conducts plenty of research throughout the year.  What were some of the most unexpected results you discovered?

A: The extent of Twitter’s exponential growth over the last few months has taken us by surprise. A recent report we published found that 49% of companies are now incorporating Twitter into their marketing efforts, up from a meager 3 percent at the start of 2008.

We’ve benefited ourselves from the Twitter explosion and now have 8,000-plus followers for our @econsultancy account. This sends us a very significant amount of traffic and enables us to communicate and engage with our community in an unprecedented way.

Twitter is a big reason why companies are waking up to the importance of social media. Our recently published Online Measurement and Strategy Report found 40 percent of companies are now measuring online reputation and social media metrics compared to only 21 percent a year ago.

Another pleasant surprise has been the big jump in companies that are effectively measuring return on investment from both paid search and search engine optimization.

The proportion of company respondents who say that they are tracking PPC ROI effectively has increased from 33 percent last year to 45 percent in 2009. For SEO, there has been an even bigger increase (in those tracking ROI effectively), from 20 percent to 35 percent.

The recession has obviously focused minds on measurement and optimization, but even so, this was a really big jump. But having said that, there are still far too few companies out there that are measuring and optimizing properly.

Q: Your founder & CEO, Ashley Friedlein, has recently mentioned that Twitter has become the fourth-largest referrer of traffic to the Econsultancy site.  How are you leveraging Twitter, and how would you recommend other brands make use of it?

A: Amazing, isn’t it, that something as new as Twitter could have this much of an impact on site traffic so quickly? As publishers, we’re naturally pushing our RSS feed headlines into Twitter, and everyone associated with the company tweets as well. We were also the first company I’m aware of — certainly weeks before Skittles’ experiment — to feature a live, unfiltered Twitter feed on our homepage for all mentions of “Econsultancy.” And to encourage tweets about our content, we’ve added a prominent “tweet this” chicklet on our content pages. It’s much more visible than our other social media links for Digg, StumbleUpon or Delicious because Twitter simply confers that much more value.

While it’s difficult to make a blanket recommendation as to how all businesses might leverage Twitter, because there is never a one-size-fits-all solution for all businesses and all business goals, it does make sense to consider how Twitter can help, and then work to leverage that benefit. In our case, as publishers, we’re capitalizing on traffic. Other businesses have used Twitter to support customer service, e.g. @comcastcares, or sales. Check out @Zappos_Service for a good example of that latter category.

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Partners, eCommerce

Sam Decker Econsultancy conquers America

June 29th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

This blog post is guest-written by Jacob Salamon, Bazaarvoice’s European Marketing Manager.
lieb_rebecca_2008
Econsultancy, the UK’s leading source of insight on digital marketing and e-commerce, has been a partner and resource to Bazaarvoice in the UK for over two years and is now launching its US office in New York City, so we sat down with Rebecca Lieb, Econsultancy’s Vice President of North America. Look for more insights in the coming weeks in this three-part blog series.

Q: I understand Econsultancy has recently opened a New York office to service e-commerce professionals in the United States.  Tell us more about your plans for the US market, and about any upcoming events or opportunities our readers should know about.

A: In the US, Econsultancy is oxymoronic: a 10 year-old start-up. In the UK, we’re by far the leading source of information on digital marketing and e-commerce, but as a brand on this side of the pond, we’re much less well-known. Nevertheless, without any effort, a significant and growing number of users and subscribers began coming to us from the US, logical, given our content is in English and our search rankings are good. The goal of having a US presence is to expand everything into North America: our publications, research, events, training and membership.

Already we’ve had strong success with expanding our coverage of the US market, content-wise. We’ve just run our first training course on social media, and we’re planning some smaller, informal roundtable events in the coming week. In October, we’re really ratcheting things up with our Peer Summit,  a larger and very networking-focused event in New York. I’ve been producing conferences for years and am personally very excited about the format of this event, which focuses much more on interaction and knowledge exchange, and much less on PowerPoint.

Q: Tell us about your recent rebranding, the success you’ve had with it, and some of the learning you’ve uncovered along the way.

A: The redesigned Econsultancy website soft-launched just as I joined the company early this year, so I wasn’t part of the rather onerous 18 or so month slog toward its completion. Basically, a 10-year-old site couldn’t keep up with our growth, or with the new products and services we offer — and plan to offer — our members. We needed new technological underpinnings, a better taxonomy, APIs and a whole host of functionalities that just weren’t possible with the old site. So, as an exception to the rule, the cobbler’s children actually got new shoes.

It was certainly a process, considering everything from URL structure to metadata and international functionality. Very fortunately, we have seen an increase in conversions. We don’t just function as a publisher, of course, but also as an e-commerce play in terms of sales of memberships, conferences and training — all important metrics that we track. The most difficult part of the rebranding – at least, the one I experienced, was the precipitous, if temporary, drop in our search rankings once the new site went live. We expected that to happen, of course, but we didn’t know how severely or for how long we’d be affected. Fortunately, after a month or so, we fully recovered. During that period, it was critical to get the 301 redirects right, not just to ensure users landed on the desired pages, but also to maintain the authority of our inbound links.

Q: What’s next for Econsultancy?

A: Why, we conquer America of course! At least our target slice of America, which are this country’s interactive marketers and online retailers. Our short-term goal is to deliver both the quality and quantity of great content to our readers and members here as we do in the UK. But it’s also to help build community and forums, both online and off, where people can share ideas and best practices that will help them to succeed with their businesses online.

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Social Commerce Summit

Sam Decker 2009 Social Commerce Summit London

June 25th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Building on the explosive success of last year’s first Social Commerce Summit in London hosted at The Magic Circle Headquarters and world-famous ABSOLUT ICEBAR, Bazaarvoice is excited to announce the launch of our second-annual UK Social Commerce Summit. The 2009 Social Commerce Summit London event will be hosted on 7 October at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, followed by a champagne boat ride down the River Thames to our illustrious after-party at Buddha Bar London.

We’re bringing the best in Social Commerce! From notable keynotes and client presentations, to real-world training and roundtable discussions, Bazaarvoice’s Social Commerce Summit London is the definitive event for driving social commerce strategy and ROI.

Our keynote speakers include:jamescaan-01

You’ll also experience engaging seminars on customer-centricity, measuring ROI, breathing “Customer Oxygen,” and the Bazaarvoice product roadmap. View the full agenda online.

The Bard once asked: “Can one desire too much of a good thing?” We hope not. With a day full of informative and entertaining keynotes, real-world training and sessions, and plenty of time to network with peers, this year’s Social Commerce Summit in London is sure to be a hit. Brush up on your Shakespeare, because the social commerce event of the year doth cometh in October!

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Marketing Strategy, User-Generated Content, Word of Mouth

Sam Decker UK Webinar: Selling Social to Your Boss

May 12th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

User-generated content and social site elements are the most-requested site features from customers, and some of the most successful brands online are already making great business cases for Soci76052852569438142al Commerce initiatives. But “Social” can seem difficult to measure and difficult to sell internally to senior management.

In our first UK Webinar of the year, you will hear real-world results and behind-the-scenes ways Social Commerce is championed internally – to great success. We’re thrilled to partner with B&Q, the largest home improvement and garden centre retailer in the UK and Europe and the third largest in the world.

Topics include:

  • What is Social Commerce?
  • How will “Social” benefit my business?
  • What ROI can I expect from my social initiatives?
  • How do I sell the benefits of Social Commerce internally?
  • How can I leverage user-generated content for e-commerce?

Join Bazaarvoice, ATG, and B&Q for this exclusive webinar event:

Thursday 21 May
12:00-13:00 UK Time

REGISTER HERE
Space is limited.

Learn from E-Commerce Leaders, including:

To learn more about this Webinar, visit: http://budurl.com/ee7v/.

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Ask & Answer, Case Studies, Interviews, Marketing Strategy, Research, User-Generated Content

Heather Brunner Halfords Drives ROI and Increase in Sales from Ask & Answer

April 28th, 2009 by Heather Brunner Chief Operations Officer

This blog post is guest-written by Anna Skaya, Bazaarvoice Community Manager in the UK. This is part of a series of blogs on building and sustaining healthy Q&A communities.

Spring is here, and every respectful Brit is heading into the country, armed with a bike, tent and Sat Nav in hand. Of course, the best place to go for all your spring gear needs is Halfords, the UK’s leading travel solutions and in car technology retailer, and one of Bazaarvoice’s most mature and successful retail clients. With both Ratings & Reviews and Ask & Answer, Halfords is optimizing UGC to give their customers the information they need to make the best purchase decision, from your first bike to your first Sat Nav.

Bazaarvoice teamed up with Halfords for some initial analysis to see the kinds of benefits Ask & Answer is driving for the business. Working with Coremetrics, Halfords showed an increase in Average Order Value, Buyer/Visitor Ratio, and a double-digit increase in page views per session for users that have interacted with Ask &Answer. Not surprising, since with over 12,000+ questions and answers on the site – most answered by the dedicated Halfords Web team — Halfords is off to a fantastic start and sees a great opportunity to get their community experts more involved in contributing answers.

This week I sat down with Jon Asbury, Channel Development Manager at Halfords, to talk about the value and need for user-generated content on the site.

1. What made you decide to add Ask & Answer to your site?

Halfords provide great expertise from colleagues in our stores and we wanted to provide a similar customer-focused experience online. Ask & Answer offered us a way to do that and harness the user community without significant investment in internal resource. Plus we were convinced that it would drive additional value in upsells and conversion.

2. What has surprised you the most about participation?

Very surprised at the volume of questions (Which begs the question what customers would have done if they couldn’t ask the question!) and the range of products queried. I am happy to see that our teams are so engaged with this product – we are building a community online, and Ask & Answer is one of the best ways for us to get to know our customers, and their needs.

3. What internal changes have you seen with the introduction of user-generated content?

Questions quickly flagged deficiencies in product descriptions and data, which were quickly filled and informed plans for next season. Colleagues in category teams help with really technical questions that the community couldn’t answer, which in turn informs POS and leaflet content.

The Product Quality team also help with technical questions and follow up issues raised (particularly from rejected questions) with suppliers. Going full circle on many of their processes is showing additional value for us and our suppliers. True win-win!

4. What can you recommend to other retailers who have A&A on the site to drive success? What are your top best practices?

Keep on top of questions — if it isn’t answered within a few days by the community, make sure an official answer is given. Make sure there is a team able to pick up routine answers who are knowledgeable in their area and set up daily workbench alerts for them. We see that this initial investment is paying off greatly in sales!

When investing in Ask & Answer, it is important to consider having a comprehensive plan to drive the best results and highest community and internal participation. The accomplishments Halfords has seen, both in terms of volume and sales, is due to their wide-ranging approach to make this successful. A strong branding campaign as well as the implementation of our best practices makes for a success story, as well as plans to integrate A&A into their new Post Purchase email, and to add Social Alerts and additional top-rated email marketing to promote the feature.

From a general volume perspective, Halford’s answer-to-question ratio is 85%, with 82% of their questions showing at least one answer.  This ranks them among the most successful Ask & Answer clients.  They have strong cross-departmental participation and the whole business is plugged in.  In aggregate, this places them between a level 3 and a level 4 on the Ask & Answer maturity scale.   Engaging manufacturers and more of the community to answer questions would put them solidly in level 4 status.

For details of your nearest Halfords store telephone 08457 626625 or visit www.halfords.com.

Stay tuned for more real world tips from clients who are getting the most out of Ask & Answer, including our blog post about “How to Build and Sustain and Healthy Q&A Community.”

For more information, request “Harnessing the Power of Community Q&A.” And stay tuned to our blog for examples of clients who are making the most of their online Q&A.

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Ask & Answer, Bazaarvoice Stories, Marketing Strategy, New at Bazaarvoice, User-Generated Content

Michael Osborne Bazaarvoice Talks Multi-Channel Marketing Over Lunch

March 5th, 2009 by Michael Osborne Chief Revenue Officer

Bazaarvoice not only has the best solutions in the social commerce industry – it presents them in style.

A couple of weeks ago, Bazaarvoice hosted a business luncheon for 40 attendees from companies such as M and M Direct, Hamleys, and Lands’ End at the Century Club, an exclusive central London media club in the Soho district. Opening speaker Justin Crandall, Managing Director of Bazaarvoice, emphasized the importance of optimizing user-generated content through four phases of maturity:

  • Content Generation
  • Online Amplification
  • Multi-Channel Diversification
  • Business Transformation

Ashley Friedlein, CEO and co-founder of Econsultancy, elaborated further on multi-channel marketing and business structure transformation in his keynote presentation. 

“The battle [for credibility] has already been won,” Friedlein said. Consumer feedback has become the norm, not a novelty. Seventy-eight percent of consumers believe that customer recommendations – whether in review, Q&A, or story form – are the most credible form of advertising, according to a 2007 study conducted by Nielsen Media Research. Products with 20+ reviews lead to nearly 84 percent higher conversion rates, on average. Bazaarvoice Ask & Answer clients saw a 22 percent increase in conversion for products with more than two answered questions, as well as a 28-81 percent decrease in call center volume. 

Yet with 92 percent of the UK’s Top 25 online retailers implementing ratings and reviews for their products, forward-thinking companies must set their content apart by innovative means. 

“Most interactions with your brand online aren’t on your main site,” Friedlein said. “Can you take your shop to them?” After retailers have maximized their online usage of their consumers’ feedback, the next step is to take that content offline and into stores to deliver further value. The implications for marketing, positioning, and packaging are endless. Friedlein cited Sephora’s sales spikes in its most reviewed beauty products as an example; other companies are using reviews in direct advertising, call centers, public relations, catalogues, in-store displays and mobile media. 

Some brands have gone one step further to collaborate with other companies for user-generated designs. H&M allowed Sims 2 players to design their own H&M-inspired outfits; the winner’s creation was made available for purchase in nearly 1,000 H&M retail locations for $14.90. Other retail sites have implemented federated commerce, linking up products to social networks, allowing customers access to their products from anywhere – Facebook to Paypal, eBay to widgets customizable for different Web sites, Dell to Twitter. 

The key to the final phase of social commerce lies in brands utilizing their content for business insight —what’s known as “operationalizing user-generated content.” Smart companies use their product feedback not only to drive sales, but also to make merchandising decisions, improve product functionality, and drive business intelligence. 

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