Website Reviews 19 Dec

Welcome to the final Digital Strategy Website Reviews of 2008. A bit of a Christmas edition (mostly) looking at how the UK is preparing for Christmas. Very interesting blog included showing how Poles living in Britain are preparing for Christmas away from home and a view on the psychology behind shopping. Finally for this year a bit of fun from Lynx. Hopefully you find these interesting. Thoughts and ideas for inclusion are very welcome.

Nintendo Wii Fit
www.feelgreatbritain.com

By some accounts, this is the UKs number 1 Games Product for Christmas this year. If you are planning on buying one for your family, good luck, they are in very short supply. The site that promotes Wii Fit is a rich engagement destination that trys to get as close as possible to Try Before You Buy. Heavy use is made of video and there is nice linkage to TV ads and Experiential activity. The site makes extensive use of Flash to engage visitors and coupled with the video content goes a long way to giving you the Wii Fit experience online. Some of the audio on the video can be a little ‘boring’, perhaps, but it plays perfectly to Nintendo’s positioning in the market – products for everyone, not just gamers – an example of Blue Ocean strategy. Having personally tried the product I can vouch for it – great fun and enormously addictive.

Nintendo has worked hard at branding and creating separation in the market place, however, no matter how much brands try, today’s wired world allows all sorts of re-interpretation – try searching for Wii Fit on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean. Is this a challenge or an opportunity?

Brands engage in a dialogue with consumers and always have, but consumers are now able to publish and communicate in ways that are beyond the control of brands. And not just with one or two other consumers. Upload yourself and communicate with thousands. A solid Digital Strategy helps, but third party communications are unlikely to be in the brand preferred communication style!

The Economist
www.economist.com

We all like to think we are independent minded and not susceptible to the pressures from advertisers. The evidence, however, suggests otherwise. On Economist.com this week there is a super article looking at what factors influence shopping decisions and what shops do to exploit this. This ranges from the simple – transition zones at the entrance to shops, getting you adjusted to being in the store and getting ready to empty your pockets, all the way to advanced technologies tracking your every move with security cameras, figuring out dwell time in certain locations and cross referencing that with age, race, etc. As you go out to complete your Christmas shopping, and particularly food shopping, be aware that Big Brother is most certainly watching you.

This is another great article (and free to non-subscribers) on the site. One of many, many great articles, a lot of which are available to everyone not just subscribers of the print edition. The economist site uses obvious links to the print edition, such as the same category names, but makes use of the digital environment to add value to the experience. There are typical article tools, like emailing and recommending and there is a good archive search tool. Great content site.

The Polski Blog
www.thepolskiblog.co.uk

This is a great little site. Written by a Pole living and working in London, I found it by looking up a Polish bakery here in Edinburgh. It has lots of content which is fresh and of interest to non-Poles as well. I particularly like the Polish Your Polish section with simple examples of Polish phrases. So I now know that Wigilia means Christmas Eve. The phrases have audio files attached so you can practice pronunciation.

I have to applaud the effort in putting this site together and maintaining it – it looks like a full time job. The articles seem to attract plenty of comments and there is some monetisation through Ads By Google. I was particularly interested in one Ad today which promoted: “Nice women from Ukraine looking for serious relation”. Well, they should meet my Uncle Pete – he’s pretty serious. In fact, he's always serious. The last time I saw him laugh was when my Dad fell from a boat into Portsoy Harbour about twenty five years ago.

This site is an example of how to build a simple but interesting site. The content is fresh and has been nicely organised. Giving different forms to content - polls, guides, quizzes, etc is a neat ways of turning the base site text into interesting content blocks.

Metrotwin
www.metrotwin.com

This is a High Design social networking site from British Airways. It links two of the world’s best cities – London and New York and twins establishments from both cities. It’s a gorgeous site with “Huge Design Co Rate Card” written all over it. BA created the environment and then allowed contributors in both cities to take it forward. Despite BA’s obvious interest in the two cities, flying so often between the two (ten flights a day according to the trusty Skyscanner site for a random day in Feb 09), the site does not suffer from commercial over-promotion and the primary content – establishment reviews and city information is very much the focus of the site.

The site does not have an obvious “Christmas” category but it reflects the realities of the contributors, which naturally includes Christmas linked themes – Cozy Holiday Cocktails, for instance. The content is fresh and kept relevant to the community because it comes from the community. Nice job BA.

The Lynx Effect
www.lynxeffect.com

This site does not do subtlety. It’s right out of the Saucy Seaside Postcard school of communications. However, it’s not targeted at Mums with toddlers or Granny’s with spaniels, it’s targeted at teenage and early 20s blokes. And if there’s one thing those clever folks at Unilever know, it’s know your customer! The site contains few surprises but the executions are done well. There is a rather large “skimpy bird” quotient, but again, know your customer.

There are some nicely done videos and if you want to know why the girl in the pic is open-mouthed, check out the site – the Challenge videos are nicely done and good fun. To give the site more reach, the videos are posted on YouTube and get a significant number of views

It need hardly be said that each brand needs its own Digital Strategy. It's not like ripping a Privacy Policy from someone else's website and sticking it on your own - that's sub-optimal at best, dangerous to brand health at worst. As with The Lynx Effect, a good Digital Strategy starts with the customer. Know your customer.

Website Reviews 05 Dec

Welcome to Digital Strategy Website Reviews, showing some interesting things from the world of Digital. Again, these examples are intended to inspire thinking by showing how brands are communicating with their customers. There are many ways of engaging customers in digital media and sometimes other brands from very different sectors may have something new to teach us. Hopefully you find these interesting. Thoughts and ideas for inclusion are very welcome.

Fixture Ferrets
www.fixtureferrets.co.uk

This is a UK site which provides consumers with deals and discounts operating at the main Supermarkets. The site aggregates offers from the various providers and presents the information through one site. So, if you want to know who is offering, for example, 2 for £3 deals on 1 Litre Tropicana, this week, Fixture Ferret can tell you (Asda, by the way). It covers the usual suspects in terms of Supermarkets and also in terms of offer type with Buy One, Get One Free (BOGOF), Three for Two, Two For, Three For, etc all covered. There is a strong incentive to register on the site because the non-registered service provides only a sample of the deals available (those with a saving of £1.00 or less) and makes a strong call to action to register.

So, I now know that Muller Rice is on BOGOF at Sainsbury’s this week. Yum!

Jamie Oliver
www.jamieoliver.com

Two reasons for including Jamie Oliver’s site in this review. Firstly, the site is impressive: great design, loads of content, up to date and personal – it feels like Jamie is talking to me. Of course if you don’t like your copy peppered (see what I did there?) with “chuffed”, “mate” and “splodge” it may not be for you. The second reason for including the site is to note that one of my colleagues from my last job, a really talented Digital Designer – Robbie Lockie has just joined the team at Jamie Oliver and I look forward to seeing his design talents taking this site to the next level.

Back to the site – the content is really superb – rich media, blogs, recent pics (at the time of writing – Thu lunchtime – the site has a pic from Thu morning) and the site works really hard to create subtle commercial angles without spreading (did it again) ads all over the site. As with the Fixture Ferret site, some content (recipes) for all, more for registered users.

Money Supermarket - Shopping
www.moneysupermarket.com/shopping

On one level this is just one more dreary price comparison site with as much content as you can possibly squeeze onto the home page - categories, reviews, hero products, ads, etc. Right out of “White Space is Evil” school of design. But wait, there is something rather interesting about this site. Or rather, the awareness marketing of it. They’ve introduced a 50” touch screen display in a shop window on London’s Oxford Street. This allows harassed consumers to check out which retailer has the best price of more than a million products. Consumer product reviews (where available) and product specs will also be displayed.

Other online brands have experimented with offline displays, for example eBay tested kiosks at railway stations and Shopping Centres. This is a nice idea but I wonder about availability of the service with only one screen and not sure if I fancy queuing to use the service and then the rest of Oxford Street witnessing my results for “Jewellery Boxes” showing Forzieri Horse Shoe Sterling Silver & Wood Jewellery Box in position one.

Debenhams
www.debenhams.com

Right out of the “And you think you’ve got problems” letterbox, comes a report from Internet Retailing which reports on the responsiveness and reliability of top online retailers. With average reliability performance ranging between 97% and 100% for most, Debenhams comes in at a shocking 28%, after the collapse of their site last week. HMV was recorded as the least responsive and House of Fraser as the most responsive (and also the most available).

Back to the Debenhams site, and whilst they are lying on the ground, how about we give them a kick? Well, the site just screams DISCOUNT and it seems no point size is too large for a 20% off signal. Seems the designers played the “How many text styles can we fit on one page” game.

Once you get away from the promotions, the shopping cart element is nicely designed (not in John Lewis league, perhaps, but nicely done) with clear information, alternatives, customer reviews and clear product specs. Overall a comprehensive site with a nice cart application but the home page is a mess and the category master pages uninspiring.

Website Reviews 21 Nov

Welcome to the first set of Digital Strategy Website Reviews. This is a (mostly) weekly view on what’s happening in the world of Digital. The examples are intended to inspire thinking by showing how brands are communicating with their customers. The objective is to examine issues in digital communications and discover how some brands solve those issues and engage customers in digital media.

Got Your Price Check
www.gotyourpricecheck.com

This is a service that works in a similar way to conventional price comparison websites — but it allows people to compare prices for electrical products and gadgets on their mobile phones, online and in-store at nearby retailers.

The service is quick and easy to use. Potential users would text the word 'price', plus the make and model of the item they want, along with a location, to 60706. Pretty straightforward. About a minute later (hopefully less) the shopper gets an SMS message listing two local stores with the cheapest prices, plus the best price found on the web. If the shopper's mobile device supported decent web browsing, you could even open that site right on your device (assuming the site formats correctly on the phone's browser).

The service is free of charge for retailers but shoppers have to pay 35p plus their standard network charges, per search. GotYourPriceCheck will launch within the M25 in December and a nationwide rollout is planned for 2009.

Zazzle
www.zazzle.co.uk

The new Zazzle.co.uk website lets customers create, buy and sell customised t-shirts, shoes, skateboards, hats, greeting cards, bags, ties, mugs, stickers and more. Note the variety of ways to engage with the site – today’s best, staff picks, start from scratch, etc.

Users in the UK, says the company, "can now take control of their own version of Zazzle, and will determine the most popular products on the site, Today's Best, and more." Personally, I dislike 'and more' as an ending to a PR pitch or as web copy. It's a lazy way to close off a statement and would be better to give readers a fuller explanation and a stronger call to action, but 'and more' is shorter.

There is a “Name-Your-Royalty program”, which gives sellers control over how much money they earn on each sale, and its Volume Bonus program, which enables sellers and other community members to earn money through sales and referrals to the Zazzle marketplace.

Zazzle was brought into the UK market via the Global Entrepreneur Programme, a government-backed project that aims to identify stellar global companies and bring them to the UK with the aim of getting them to choose the UK as their European or international headquarters. "Zazzle's unique model and investor portfolio was very impressive, and a lure for us to have them join the programme," said Charles Seely, a dealmaker for the Global Entrepreneur Programme. "We are excited to have Zazzle in the UK now and look forward to continuing to work closely together to further expand Zazzle's presence." Typical blah blah PR text, but an interesting initiative. Not sure what kind of person describes themselves as a “dealmaker” – modesty check, please!

YAPTA – Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant
www.yapta.com

Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant - is a travel shopping website delivering a unique combination of price assurance and transparency to consumers who have purchased air travel online. It also alerts customers of price changes and changes to rewards redemption values. If a price changes after you buy, you get a refund, which is a strong assurance that you’re getting a good deal.

The founders claim there is no other travel website which automatically and continuously checks flight-specific prices – well, they would, wouldn’t they, but still a great proposition. Great use of their Data Assets to display total savings made to date. Nice clear design.

Vodafone – Meet Live Guy
http://liveguy.vodafone.co.uk/

Great promotion site to drive traffic and create interest around the brand. Check out the blog, follow twitter, watch videos, view pics, to keep people engaged. Nicely promotes Vodafone mobile solutions without ramming it down your throat in a “here’s a list of products we sell” kind of way. Nice co-promo with Dell, again in a relevant way. Finally great leverage of global sponsorship (F1) to create unique content.

As always with Vodafone, very high quality design and production has gone into the micro-site. The project itself would require good logistics and fair amount of planning to get right. Be interesting to know the level of consumer engagement during the promotion and the results afterwards, but in terms of execution, it's to be admired. Awesome.