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Facebook Gears Up For Major eCommerce Drive (BusinessWeek)

Posted: 03/03/2011

In an effort to convert more of the social network’s 500 million users into regular online shoppers, Facebook is now wooing big business. Facebook has added e-commerce features designed to “attract users, keep them logged-on longer, and generate higher advertising sales,” thereby attracting major brands to sell their products and services through the social networking site. Helping with the effort are companies like Minneapolis-based Alvenda and San Francisco-based Payvment, whose technologies have allowed the company to integrate a retail component into Facebook pages and facilitate payment. David Fisch, who runs the newly formed commerce partnerships group at Facebook, hopes the effort may turn the company into an online shopping alternative. More than half of the top 25 retail sites, including retail competitors like eBay and Amazon, have linked their sites to the social network in the past year, Facebook says.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

J.C. Penney Makes Mobile Holiday Move (Internet Retailer)

Posted: 01/04/2011

J.C. Penney Co. is initiating a major multichannel mobile push with holiday retail plans that include the launch of an m-commerce site, enhancements to its mobile applications, location-based app promotions and an iAd campaign. Along with the full suite of m-commerce functionality such as browsing, searching and buying—the mobile site also includes a Find Near Me button and updated applications for iPhone and Android users that lets shoppers browse the weekend sales circular; create portable shopping lists; find the nearest store to either their current GPS location or to a ZIP code or city name; and sign up for mobile coupons. Location-based services Foursquare, Brightkite and Facebook Deals also play a role, allowing shoppers to cash in for $10 off a $50 purchase when they check in at one of the retailer’s 1,100 stores. In addition to its ongoing mobile coupons program, the campaign will also include mobile display ads on Apple’s iAd network, featuring a treasure hunt through a variety of J.C. Penney gifts as shoppers search for a $10 off $50 coupon.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Content Strategy, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Retailers Dial-In To Smart Phone Shopping Trend (CRM Daily)

Posted: 01/04/2011

With one-third of mobile phone usage to be “smart” this holiday season (Nielsen), retailers are getting dialed-in to e-commerce. The 21 percent increase over last year indicates that retailers can no longer rely on independent strategy for their retail outfits, whether they are bricks-and-mortar stores, Web sites or mobile shopping channels. Heather J. Brunner, chief operating officer of Austin, Texas-based Bazaarvoice, said a phone is "just a mini-computer, and our challenge now is to transfer the Internet experience to a much smaller screen." For instance, outdoor brand Patagonia recently launched a new application that suggests similar items and price ranges while customers browse. In-store, the app will recommend complementary items based on the tag’s bar code. Companies like Neustar are working on types of “second-generation” bar codes for smart phones that are square rather than rectangular while Pronto, a company owned by New York-based IAC, plans to launch a mobile app for product price alerts.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Shoutlet: One-Stop-Shop For Social Media Management (Ecommerce Times)

Posted: 12/16/2010

Shoutlet’s social media management application now features CRM functionality. The app is designed to let customers monitor and manage multiple accounts and brands with additional functionality that eases the process for companies to post and monitor responses to content. Given the number of users that use social media to complain about a service or product, or get help, one of the app’s most powerful features is its collaboration component. One such collaboration feature includes the ability to tag a prospect or commenter and then forwarded it internally for someone within the organization to take care of. "Let's say a company has several customers talking about or complaining about a certain issue," President and COO Aaron Everson said. "Shoutlet can tag all of those commenters and send them to someone for follow-up or assistance." The company intends to enhance functionality even further by increasing its reach to mass influencers and adding a mobile component.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Peer Groups & Communities

Google Goes Fashion Forward (CRM Daily)

Posted: 12/16/2010

Google is going fashion forward with the debut of Boutiques.com, which offers shoppers a personalized shopping experience. The launch is as much about technology as it is e-commerce. Using computer-vision and machine-learning technology, Boutiques.com visually analyzes consumers' fashion tastes in order to match them to other styles they might be drawn to. "These days, bloggers, stylists and everyday fashionistas are expressing their sense of style online. We invited them to create boutiques so people could shop their diverse styles," Google Product Management Director Munjal Shah said. "But you have a unique and independent style, too, so Boutiques also lets you build your own personalized boutique and get recommendations of products that match your taste." The site offers a variety of search options, allowing consumers to filter results by genre, silhouette, pattern, color families, and sizes, or even view matching outfits when they search for specific items.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Digital River Is Getting Social With Ecommerce (Electronic Commerce Guide)

Posted: 12/16/2010

Digital River, a global ecommerce service provider, recently launched SocialStream, a new social media tool. Using the tool, Digital River customers can rapidly set in motion new e-store promotions and then manage them over different Facebook and Twitter accounts. Ecommerce-Guide.com reported Jim Wehmann, senior vice president of global marketing for Digital River saying that “Social Stream lets marketers and e-store owners optimize social media campaigns with just a few clicks from within the standard Digital River interface they already know and use.” While SocialStream is certainly not the first ecommerce service offering of its kind, the package’s most significant advantage is that it provides e-store owners with access to social analytics. The ability to report critical commerce data relating to social media activities like unique clicks, conversions and revenue generated for each social campaign for each social account allows companies to validate the success of each campaign.

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall: Macy’s Magic Fitting Room (CNET News)

Posted: 12/01/2010

Looking for an interactive dress-up experience without actually taking your clothes off? Clothes shoppers had the chance to, quite literally, tap into a 21st-century shopping experience at the new Macy's Magic Fitting Room in the retail chain's New York's Herald Square flagship store. The 72-inch multi-touch screen let shoppers select clothing items like tops, dresses, bottoms, and coats and then superimpose the pieces on their reflection. Macy's hired LBi International to create the interactive mirror, heralding in a new era the company deems as “the future of retail.” The experience becomes even more interactive and social when customers share their new looks on Facebook, or via SMS or e-mail.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

The Wine Connection: iPhone Application Uses Image Recognition (Red Herring)

Posted: 12/01/2010

Intent on increasing consumer interaction Snooth, a social site for all things wine, recently unearthed an iPhone application that gives consumers the low down about bottles of wine. All the consumer needs is a picture of the wine label to find out everything from the nearest place to find a bottle to how much it costs. Other details include reviews, similar products, and food pairing suggestions. The high tech app uses software from Canadian startup TinEye, which allows for a coded image on the wine to be taken by a photograph, despite the curved glass of the wine bottle or the mood lighting of the restaurant or winery. With 820,000 searchable wines and links to 11,000 wine merchants around the globe, the gist behind Snooth's image recognition tool is akin to QR codes, which use matrix codes to effectively marry digital and print information, bringing consumers even closer to information about the goods they consume.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

The Ultimate Question: To Optimize For Mobile Or Build An Application? (Marketing Vox)

Posted: 11/11/2010

A report by Taptu, “The State of the Mobile Touch Web," compares mobile web and applications and reveals upcoming trends business should keep in mind. These days, with so many vendors offering touchscreen devices, it’s not just a matter of optimizing websites or mobile, but determining if the site should also be optimized for nimble navigation and rapid loading pages on mobile touchscreens. While retail and service oriented sites are the most likely to optimize for the mobile touchscreen (20% compared to 3.6%), many consumers are already demanding the technology from the sites they frequent. The report states, "With support for HTML 5 features already being rolled out in these browsers, it's getting easier and easier to create rich touch screen user experiences with the browser without having to create platform-specific apps." Google has integrated mobile browsing into its service offerings. For instance, consumers that conduct searches will now pull up relevant apps accompanying the typical search results that can be downloaded to an iPhone.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Content Strategy, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Clearasil’s Secrets & Science Of Looking Awesome (B&T)

Posted: 11/11/2010

Achieving clear, radiant skin is the ultimate goal from the onset of adolescence into maturity. Now, Reckitt Benckiser’s Clearasil brand has launched a new website to promote its new ‘Secrets & Science of Looking Awesome’ brand positioning. The Website uses an online magazine to offer practical advice based on user generated content and integrates social media into the campaign by prompting users to share links and “iLike” via Facebook. “The 11 - 24 target market for Clearasil is going through life changing landmarks and with the new online platform we’ve designed and developed for them, Clearasil is acknowledging the journey and forming a deeper bond with the brand’s users,” said Tim O’Neill, joint managing director of Reactive, the digital agency that launched the campaign.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Content Strategy, Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: North America, Europe
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Stamped And Delivered: Send Gifts And Goods Using E-Mail Addresses (BBC Business News)

Posted: 11/11/2010

In an age where security and privacy top the list of priorities for most, a new method of sending mail is likely to garner attention. In order to acquire goods through sites like eBay, individuals are required to provide their physical address to a stranger. Now, there are several companies offering services that depend on e-mail addresses alone to deliver the goods. While most of the companies are primarily U.S.-based, gift-giving site Parcel Genie delivers across 40 countries. To send packages, all the sender needs is a username from Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Going beyond gift-giving, the U.K.’s Send Social enables users to send and receive any type of package with a special label only partner delivery companies are capable of reading. "The only piece of information you see is the information you already know - that might be a Facebook name, a Twitter id or e-mail address," says Jonathan Grubin, head of Send Social. One such partner, Bybox, operates a network of locker boxes around the UK, and deliver box-to-box, rather than door-to-door.

Industry: Retail & Products
Topic: E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: North America, Europe
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Filtering The Noise: Discovery Personalizes The Online Experience (Tech News World)

Posted: 11/11/2010

The internet abounds with buzzwords. Now, there’s new buzz about “discovery,” the real-time aggregation and personalization of content as it is applied to an online experience. Take Amazon for example, an online retailer that makes purchasing recommendations based on your past buying behavior and others that match your browsing and purchasing habits. True discovery, however, elevates this concept to the next level: It will tie together what you have liked, purchased, viewed, discussed, and browsed, into a real-time aggregator that provides recommendations on any category of your choosing. For discovery to be completely revolutionary, it must have both an online and mobile interface. From websites like Yelp to smartphone applications like mobile GPS, several discovery platforms are in the works, including Ping, a music discovery engine launched by Steve Jobs in September.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

The Virtual Dressing Room (CNET News)

Posted: 10/27/2010

Finding the right fit is often one of the most frustrating elements of shopping online. Now, with the help of a new, headless “shape-shifting robot mannequin,” shoppers don’t have to simply leave their purchases to chance. Created by Estonian start-up Fits.me, the virtual fitting room service allows customers to enter their measurements and presto! The “me”-shaped mannequin previews the coveted item in whichever styles and sizes the customer specifies. The service is being tested by retailers across Europe, including Germany's Quelle and U.K.-based Hawes & Curtis. Apparel has potential for huge e-commerce gains. "Only 8 percent of clothing is currently sold online, and Fits.me Virtual Fitting Room is the disruptive technology that will enable online apparel retailers to successfully compete with traditional brick-and-mortar clothing shops," Heikki Haldre, CEO and co-founder of Fits.me said. Initial findings are very positive with a 28 percent reduction in online apparel returns, while sales increased threefold, said Haldre.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global, Europe
Audience: Business to Consumer

Motricity Delivers User-Preferred Content On-the-Go (CIO Magazine)

Posted: 10/27/2010

Motricity recently launched mCore MobileCast, a service that allows wireless carriers and large companies to define content based on their smartphone users’ preferences. Requiring "zero touch" by the users, the cloud-based service takes a user’s location and prior usage into account before delivering audio, video, text and HTML5 content streamlined to the user’s preferences. For instance, a mobile user purchases tickets to a rock concert via a mobile device. Enter mCore MobileCast: The service ingests the concert data in combination with GPS data to disseminate auxillary information to the user, such as the concert's opening act, parking locations and even places to eat nearby. "All that information is in separate places today, but we aggregate it all up," said Jim Ryan, Motricity’s chief strategy and marketing officer. The company provides mobile infrastructure services to "hundreds of enterprises" and 10 major wireless carries, including the top four in the U.S., Ryan said.

InterContinental Hotels Group Offers Hospitality With A Technical Twist (InformationWeek)

Posted: 10/14/2010

It’s easy to chalk IHG's, InterContinental Hotels Group, ubiquitous success up to one thing: customer loyalty. Tom Conophy, IHG's CIO, said the company’s core focus is on making customers "the center of our universe," and customer loyalty is vital to growth in the hospitality industry. The ever-growing hotel group, which owns seven hotel chains, including Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and InterContinental Hotels, keeps its guest doors swinging by making business intelligence one of their core competencies. 200 million guest profiles currently occupy the company’s 25 TB database, with detailed information on 43 million loyalty plan members. The company currently receives 30 million availability requests per day, supported by its own proprietary search technology, the Bottom-Up Optimum Search Strategy(BOSS). "Search is the killer app for us," Conophy says, and with IHG’s iPhone app as the industry’s most downloaded, adding mobility is another success factor with a concept the group has named “Virtually Me.”

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Shazam! How One Company Plans To Change The Advertising Industry (.net)

Posted: 09/30/2010

Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher recently sat down with Oliver Lindberg to discuss why the company chose to charge for the popular mobile music discovery app and how the company plans to change the face of advertising as we know it. While Facebook may be the most downloaded iPhone app in the US, Shazam is Europe’s frontrunner. The app, which identifies a piece of recorded music via a mobile’s mic, tallied 50 million users across all platforms in October with the goal to double that number by the end of the year and reach 300 million users by 2015. Users are apparently willing to pay the price: the London-based start-up introduced a paid-for version of its iPhone app – Shazam Encore – with a limited free version offering five tags per month for new users. The service offers unlimited tagging, faster performance and a range of extra features such as music search and geo-location ticketing.

Video Girl Barbie Goes Viral (Promo Magazine)

Posted: 09/30/2010

In true Barbie fashion, the social girl charged the virtual social world this July to build the buzz for her latest professional stint: videographer. Mattel tapped into social networks Foursquare and Twitter to launch a campaign that criss-crossed the boundaries of traditional marketing. The campaign celebrated the new Video Girl Barbie with a scavenger hunt that had fans scouring San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York to locate Barbie’s real whereabouts. The first follower to find the fashion-forward doll in each city won a Barbie Video Girl doll. “We really embraced social media as a marketing platform a year ago as part of a major campaign in support of Barbie’s 50th anniversary,” says Lauren Dougherty, director of Barbie marketing at Mattel. Barbie currently has 17,600 Twitter followers and about 440,000 likes on Facebook—more than 200,000 of those added since January. Future plans include a promotion that puts the camera in the consumers’ hands with user-generated video, as well as introducing other members of Barbie’s entourage, including Ken, onto the social platforms.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Content Strategy, Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global, North America
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

The Domino Effect: Popular Pizza Company Taps Into Social Marketing (ClickZ)

Posted: 09/16/2010

On the heels of a 61 percent increase in online sales in the UK and Ireland from the same period last year, Domino's is singing the praises of Facebook and Foursquare promotions. The global pizza chain credits growth in web-based sales (jumping from 26 to 33 percent this year) to its social media marketing tactics – which include cultivating a strong presence online with both a global Facebook page and individual local pages, as well as securing 531 Twitter followers and launching Foursquare’s geo-location service. "We've had nearly 10,000 check-ins since it launched from around 3,500 unique visitors," Georgina Wald, spokesperson for the London-based division, said. The company has also enjoyed recent growth in sales by turning their attention to search marketing.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Europe
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Get The Scoop: Ben & Jerry’s Launches Sweet Twitter Campaign (Promo Magazine)

Posted: 09/16/2010

This summer there was a new way to get the latest scoop, and this time it wasn’t breaking news – it was free samples of ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s. Led from destination to destination by consumer tweets via Twitter, the “Scoop Truck” went on a sampling tour of New York City in June and July. While the initial campaign plan left one weekday open to a virtual “see-which-way-the-tweets-blow-the-truck” kind of spontaneity, by the end of the nearly two-month tour nearly half of the sweet stops were those requested by the 3,000 local followers the tour handle @benjerrytruck amassed. Responses to outgoing tweets yielded anywhere from five to 100 responses. Although followers will still be able to get the latest scoop through Twitter and view images of the happy samplers on Flickr, the next tour is aimed Boston, where stops will be announced primarily via Facebook.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Business Intelligence, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Social Sampling: The Campbell Brand Joins Facebook (BrandWeek)

Posted: 08/19/2010

In an effort to grow sales of its healthy beverages and baked snacks, Campbell Soup Co. has launched a Facebook campaign to promote its new V8 V-Fusion + Tea line via social sampling. Each week through September 30, the Camden, N.J.-based maker of Chunky and Select Harvest soups will give away 1,000 free samples. Another Campbell brand, Pepperidge Farm, also launched a page to promote its new strawberry flavored Milano cookies, gaining nearly 9,000 fans in the month since its launch. Taking a cue from other big name brands – like Ford and P&G's Gillette – Campbell is incorporating more social media marketing into its overall marketing plan to drive consumption. The strategy to connect with consumers online seems to be working: In the first 24 hours, all 1,000 samples of V8 V-Fusion + Tea were gone, Campbell rep Juli Mandel Sloves said.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

New Old Spice Campaign Aims To Go Viral With A Little Mystery (Fast Company)

Posted: 08/19/2010

Ad firm Wieden+Kennedy has taken a successful “Old” television ad concept viral. Old Spice, owned by Procter and Gamble, is leveraging the appeal of its TV spot star, Isaiah Mustafa, by taping 30-second YouTube videos in response to Twitter feeds. The team behind the campaign works in conjunction with technology to scan responses and identify the social influence of those responders to choose messages that will create a wow factor and perpetuate themselves throughout “virally-relevant” communities. Wieden's global interactive creative director Iain Tait asserts that rather than using a dedicated proprietary site, the campaign gets maximum exposure on YouTube, especially since the current spots are being watched and re-tweeted extensively. The ability of embedded material on YouTube to be liked, shared, favored and dispersed quickly factored into the decision for which social medium to use. Heeding the nature of the ‘want it new, want it now” internet culture, the company strives to produce the video responses in real time to the keep the content fresh, relevant to the brand and newsworthy. The content goes successfully beyond pure entertainment value to make “the connection between the content, the product and the experience of the product.”

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Content Strategy, Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Pulling Klout: Website Helps Users Measure Their Social Influence (CNN Money)

Posted: 08/19/2010

Users can now discover their social “Klout” by numerical rank by inputting their Twitter name into Klout.com. The San Francisco-based social media start-up is shoring up its position to become the online standard for measuring social impact by partnering with Virgin America to offer a hand-picked group of “influencers” a free flight from San Francisco or Los Angeles to Virgin America's newest destination, Toronto. Here’s how the new type of marketing campaigns (implemented by brands like Starbucks and Cover Girl) work: (1) Users accept product offers; (2) In return, Klout requests for disclosure of the freebie; (3) Klout measures some two dozen variables, including the number of times their comments are retweeted, the size of their Twitter audience, and the influence of those followers, to come up with a numerical value and ranking on a 0-to-100 scale.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Text-Happy In 2G:GupShup Offers Simple Texting Service To Millions (Forbes)

Posted: 08/19/2010

With 1.8 billion global Web users and 4.6 billion mobile phone subscribers, including multiple SIM cardholders, the reach of social media is hard to ignore. Beerud Sheth, cofounder of Webaroo, gets the message loud and clear. Text messaging via basic handset and SMS opens up a path to reach an overwhelming market of hundreds of millions, particularly in India and other parts of Asia. UK’s Portio Research expects the $100 billion market of simple texting to grow by 20% by 2014. Taking text messaging social through a service called SMS GupShup, Sheth aims to enlarge the social scope of interaction from one to one to one to many, or even many to many. Much of GupShup’s (Hindi for "chitchat") revenue comes from a feature that allows users, called publishers, to send messages to users signed up for a group. Another feature targets smaller groups for more personal communication. GupShup makes ideal sense for mass consumer products – Webaroo suggests that as many as 150 brand advertisers like Pepsico and 10,000 smaller-size enterprises like Mumbai Traffic Police are using the platform.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Asia Pacific
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Fuel Your Facebook Fan Page In 4 Easy Steps (Ecommerce Times)

Posted: 07/22/2010

Marketers may successfully be racking up the fan numbers on their Facebook Fan Pages, but they are ultimately failing to establish long-term relationships with customers in the process. Companies shouldn’t lose hope, however, because the code to successfully reaping rewards on Facebook lies in four critical steps. According to an E-Commerce News article, in order to retain customers, marketers need to “1) develop a strategy; 2) create a solid presence; 3) motivate [their] fans to take action; and 4) use Facebook to amplify other campaigns, promotions and marketing activities.” Committing to the management of their Facebook walls after business hours, considering brand contribution cadence, and asking if they are doing what their fans want will also aide companies in amping up their fan totals.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products
Topic: Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly: Crowdsourcing Provides Answers For Online Marketers (Marketing Vox)

Posted: 07/22/2010

For marketers looking for solutions to a plethora of problems, crowdsourcing could be the answer. Marketers gain key insight while spending minimal dollars to survey the expertise of entire online communities. Still, crowdsourcing is not without limitations. Primarily, crowdsourcing is dogged by knowing how to separate the great ideas from the bad ones. To illustrate, Jez Frampton, CEO of Interbrand, tells of a creative director who tried crowdsourcing for a campaign and within 48 hours received hundreds of ideas, leaving him with the even bigger problem of how to sift through the crowd’s offerings. (via Forbes). Marketers should not be deterred, as crowdsourcing has a number of advantages, including web usability testing sites like UserTesting.com and Feedback Army, where companies post questions about their websites and testers choose which questions to answer.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Content Strategy, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Get The Most Out Of User Experience On Your Website (New Media Knowledge)

Posted: 07/22/2010

Are you aware of what users really experience on your website? Monitoring your website performance has hit a new level of complexity since Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are more frequently being incorporated into Web pages. Knowing how your browser interacts with RIAs is crucial to discovering how fast your Web page renders. To get an accurate result, use a real browser. Why is this important? Browser emulators are far less sophisticated at interacting with Web pages than real browsers and only real browsers can accurately track information in various situations. Real browsers also accurately capture client time – when actual page element execution is taking place. Ultimately, using a real browser with RIAs lets you know that your end-user is getting the best experience possible on your Web page.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Procter & Gamble Seeks E-Commerce Innovation (Internet Retailer)

Posted: 07/08/2010

Consumer favorites manufactured by Procter & Gamble are now even more available. P&G’s new retail web site offers 52 products (with more coming) for consumer purchase, including Tide detergent, Oral-B toothbrushes, and Gillette razors. Though P&G made $76.7 billion in sales in 2009, increasing those sales is not the Web site’s main goal. According to the manufacturer, the site will provide a “living learning lab for developing e-commerce innovation.” Data gathered about P&G’s online consumers will provide a better understanding of various shopping behaviors and preferences. “As big and influential as Procter & Gamble is, there is no doubt this is a sign of a broad trend with consumer goods manufacturers,” says Jim Okamura, senior partner with consulting firm J.C. Williams Group.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Consumer

Filling The Gap With Enterprise-Wide Business Intelligence (CIO Magazine)

Posted: 04/29/2010

With multiple clothing brands to manage, including Old Navy, Banana Republic, The Gap and online retailer Piper-Lime, senior vice president of IT for The Gap, Michael Jones understands what it takes to operate a successful business intelligence project. Jones recommends that organizations adopt a single enterprise-wide data warehouse rather than operating separate data marts for each individual project. With one single system, Gap managers can mine data and reports across all of its brands and 3,100 globally dispersed stores. "Our challenge is to try to provide information across an entire enterprise," Jones said. With ten years of experience in enterprise-wide BI, the company has aligned data from all of its units into one data warehouse which allows it to answer a total of 96 questions, significantly more than if it operated single silos. While the cost of setting up a comprehensive data warehouse is higher, Jones claims the added flexibility is well worth the extra cost.

Industry: Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

Zappos Implements “Video Experience” (CIO Magazine)

Posted: 04/15/2010

Zappos recently launched interactive videos detailing Nike products, one of the shoe and clothing company’s largest brands. Initiated from customer queries that were best addressed visually, Zappos used software from Overlay.tv to link videos about various Nike items to its supply-chain system. Among the perks: shoppers can click on featured items to view any current promotions and find out if the product is available in stock. Customers can post video links on Facebook, upload their own videos to Zappos.com and post comments. Zappos objective is not necessarily the bottom line, but it will track stats on customer click-thrus and purchases. "The goal is to create a more pleasurable experience on our site," Kalma says. "The general philosophy is that will lead to purchases."

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Mastering The Whole Customer Experience (.net)

Posted: 04/15/2010

In a recent interview, Oliver Lindberg caught up with Paul Dawson, EMC Conchango’s experience director, to discuss the company’s methodology. EMC Conchango concentrates on what it calls “total experience design,” taking a comprehensive look at the customer journey from beginning to end, and all the points in between. EMC Conchango operates as the European arm of EMC Consulting, allowing it to leverage its global reach and cast a wider net to capture more global business. Based on fact, the experience planning process incorporates Agile methodology, regularly released software and eye tracking to analyze how people interact with the content of a page. The agency is also experimenting with electroencephalograms that are literally wired to reveal what consumer’s brains are thinking and feeling. The agency also partners with Microsoft to adopt new user-facing technology to better understand customer behavior and devise ways to prolong consumer interactions with brands and products.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Content Strategy, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global, Europe
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Turning a New Page: Penguin Demos Interactive Books For The iPad (Digital Arts)

Posted: 04/01/2010

Imagine pointing on an interactive screen to accurately reveal constellations lighting up the night sky. Penguin Books recently unveiled fantastically interactive books like this one, which uses iPad’s compass app, at the Financial Times Digital Media and Broadcasting Conference in London. Taking Apple’s ePub application beyond the traditional narrative text it is designed to support, CEO John Makinson demoed how a number of titles ranging from popular children's literature to medical textbooks could be ported for the iPad. Makinson views the iPad as an out-of-the-box approach for e-book publishers, saying that "the definition of a book itself, as we can see, is up for grabs." Extended capabilities include embedded audio, video and streaming for both “learning and leisure apps” to further strengthen “Pearson’s, the publishing powerhouse that owns both Penguin Books and The Financial Times, push into digital and online education.”

Industry: Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Rice University Study: Facebook Fan Pages Excel at Niche Marketing (ClickZ)

Posted: 04/01/2010

The results are in for Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business study to determine how creating a presence on Facebook impacts businesses. The study incited an article in the March issue of the Harvard Business Review, with the study authors calling the Facebook page a qualified success for niche marketing. Rice professors collaborated with social media virgin Dessert Gallery, a local bakery and café chain in Houston. The study revealed fan pages have impact; however, mostly when targeting niche groups. First, after taking a preliminary survey, 75 out of 700 loyal customers accepted the invitation to fan Dessert Gallery’s Facebook page. Three months later, respondents completed another survey that revealed Facebook had a significant impact on their interaction with the brand. The bakery’s fans stopped by the cafe 20% more than non-fans, spending 33% more. The fan page also seemed to cultivate brand affection and loyalty.

Industry: Retail & Products
Topic: Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

On-the-Go with Target’s Mobile Gift Cards (Promo Magazine)

Posted: 03/18/2010

Now, with its mobile gift card option, Target, the second-largest U.S. discount chain, makes paying with plastic old school. The retailer is letting customers use mobile phones to redeem gift cards as more consumers use phones with Internet access. Shoppers simply save the account numbers for their Target GiftCards to a PIN-protected area at either online or at the retailer's mobile-optimized site. Customers access the mobile site on their phones, enter the login and PIN for the card and complete the purchase when the cashier scans the unique 2D barcode on the display screen into Target’s P-O-S system, which has been outfitted across all 1740 Target stores nation wide. Customers can also access the mobile site to view merchandise, check product availability, manage gift registries and find locations, among other things. Other retailers like Starbucks and 7-Eleven are testing similar barcode technology to incorporate into their mobile business strategies.

Industry: Retail & Products
Topic: E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Consumer

iPhone App Enables Paying with Plastic (CNN Money)

Posted: 03/18/2010

Operating businesses remotely just got even better. While credit card transactions were standardized in traditional business settings long ago, paying with plastic was only a pipe dream for those conducting business on the road. Now, a host of software is on the market allowing mobile businesses to process credit card payments on their cell phones. From Apple's iPhone applications to Inner Fence, which developed the first iPhone app for processing credit cards, there are a slew of applications out there that allow proprietors to issue refunds, review sales, and email electronic receipts for transactions.

Industry: Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: E-Commerce, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Where New Technologies Emerge: The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (New Media Knowledge)

Posted: 03/18/2010

Driven by innovation, the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas again brought hot products to the forefront. A traditional showcase for new and emerging technologies and gadgets, the show provides an interactive forum for companies to reveal their latest and greatest products and services. This year, Yahoo announced a host of new partners for its Connected TV project, which aims to provide Internet service to televisions. In addition, Panasonic TV’s new built-in video camera allows customers to make Skype video calls. Andrew Lim, editor of mobile reviews site Recombu, told NMK, “It's about giving consumers better access to existing services….” Car manufacturer Ford is integrating social media into their services with its Sync MyTouch in-car Internet system, which allows on-the-go drivers to access the Web via WiFi or 3G mobile connection. CES 2010 demonstrated that once-complex technology continues to become more user-friendly.

Industry: Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Market Intelligence the Smartphone Way (CRM Daily)

Posted: 02/04/2010

Context-aware software tries to connect the real world with the vast stores of information about places in a virtual world: the Internet. The technology channels the knowledge amassed to provide useful tools to the smartphone user. Consumers gain more control over their buying experiences and save time when they purchase from vendors who have critical insight into their shopping habits. The software’s diverse industry applications include retail, business management, hospitality, and food and beverage. Research firm Gartner projects the market for this technology will grow to $12 billion by 2012, with Google standing in prime position to address and profit from the new wave of demand. Other companies that stand to benefit are Nokia, Cisco Systems, Avaya, large telcos like China Telecom or potentially even social networks such as Facebook, Gartner says.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

New Runa Software Helps Convert Customers Into Sales (Electronic Commerce Guide)

Posted: 02/04/2010

A huge challenge for e-commerce retailers is getting visitors to actually click through to purchase items. Runa, a company specializing in conversion marketing, is helping companies capture and convert Website vistors into paying customers before they abandon the process entirely. After tracking a variety of “actionable analytics” including key words, transaction history, profile information, products viewed and search patterns, Runa drums up a new dynamic sale price that evolves from the merchant’s criteria and shopper’s preferences. Price is typically the deciding factor for whether consumers follow through with transactions, so the new deal is only revealed once the shopping cart has been abandoned. Retailers can then expect to turn up to 15% of “recapture” offers into sales. Since the dynamic special offers are only revealed to visitors that abandon their carts, those paying full price from the get-go never even get wind of the deals.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

Opening the Line of Communication with Feedback-Form Analytics (Electronic Commerce Guide)

Posted: 02/04/2010

We’ve all heard of shopping cart abandonment. Until now, companies have had no way of knowing if this so-called digital window shopper’s syndrome was due to Web glitches or other, more personal, reasons. Kampyle is changing that by offering on-demand feedback-form analytics so companies can improve their turnover rates by learning more about their customers. The customizable forms promote open communication between customer and company by directly asking customers relevant questions to reveal why they chose not follow through with their purchases. The software also features “smart pop-ups” that can be personalized to appear when the visitor clicks off the site. Easy to implement, companies can have the service converting clicks into sales in as little as five minutes.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

On-Demand Software Adds Flexibility to Direct Digital Marketers (Ecommerce Times)

Posted: 01/21/2010

The robustness of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products positions them to effectively tackle emerging trends in direct digital marketing. The secret to their success? They share the same “it” factor ideals that often boost the best new businesses to the top of the rung: they are cost-effective, easy to implement and inherently scalable. On-demand products must seamlessly integrate between the three primary channels of direct digital marketing–email, mobile and Web–meaning developers must create software that is simultaneously heightened in usability and simple to implement. The bottom line is that the functionality and flexibility of SaaS and universal profile management systems enhance direct digital marketers’ own flexibility and success in their drive to leverage customer information and boost sales.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Silk Drinks Up New Media for YouTube Campaign (Strategy Magazine)

Posted: 01/06/2010

Silk Soy Milk is milking a new interactive-rich media campaign to boost public perception about its products. The natural strength of the campaign centers around a newly branded YouTube channel which houses “deep link annotation,” a first for YouTube worldwide. Users stay tuned to the Silk-branded and skinned channel while they play the game, “Bust it or Believe it”. The campaign also takes advantage of a QR code-enabled print buy with Metro commuter newspaper, which gives users the opportunity to believe or bust the facts presented when they activate the embedded codes on their phones. "The whole goal here was to use new and innovative technology to engage the consumer," Robin Hassan, digital director, Starcom Mediavest Group, told MiC.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Consumer

New AT&T Applications Target Enterprise (Info World)

Posted: 12/03/2009

AT&T, the nation’s 2nd largest wireless carrier, launched new hosted applications for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile targeting the merchandising and hospitality industries: AT&T MEAP: Merchandising for the Consumer Goods Industry and AT&T MEAP: Maintenance and Repair for Hospitality. Built on its Mobile Enterprise Applications Platform, the vendor is leading the trend of offering new apps that encourage enterprises to entrench smartphone usage in their daily operations. The merchandising app allows product distributors to submit delivery data in real-time for better tracking, smarter stocking and faster billing. The hospitality app allows hotel maintenance crews to access and update work orders and service requests, report incidents and receive alerts, resulting in quicker response times and more workflow.

Industry: Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Google and Bing Prepare Real-Time Searches to Compete with Social Media (BusinessWeek)

Posted: 12/03/2009

In a socially-driven market it’s tough even for the big dogs like Google and Microsoft to stay relevant. Harder still when Web surfers turn first for information to the sites they spend the most time on like Twitter and Facebook. Google and Microsoft will soon feature information plucked from social media sites on search pages. Microsoft users can perform searches for tweets and eventually status updates posted to Facebook. Google will add Twitter updates in search results and offer a search tool that delivers feeds posted by the searcher’s friends on social sites. Traffic to U.S. search engines grew 15% in the past year while traffic to Twitter exploded tenfold and tripled on Facebook. Considering those stats, Microsoft and Google are hoping to diversify their offerings by adding the new features and functionality searchers expect and capitalize on new ad revenue generated through targeted advertising.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Jruby is a Gem for Gilt.com (CNET News)

Posted: 12/03/2009

In a conversation with the Gilt Groupe’s CTO and co-founder Michael Bryzek, Software, Interrupted’s Dave Rosenberg unearths how Jruby powers the luxury shopping site. JRuby’s ability to seamlessly integrate and leverage mature libraries entices Java developers seeking additional productive frameworks to turn to the high-performance platform. Because Gilt.com deals with spikes in traffic when new items are released and items surge in popularity, the IT infrastructure must have the capability to scale and burst in order to meet customer demands. The company is gearing up to deploy Ruby on Rails 3.0, which offers great performance, scalability and the ability to write and expose elegant APIs written in the Ruby language.

Industry: Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: E-Commerce, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

BI, Best-of-Breed Web Tactics Broaden Scope for Consumer Goods Companies (InformationWeek)

Posted: 11/08/2009

An InformationWeek 500 survey shows that consumer goods companies like Herbalife and E&J Gallo Winery are banking on business intelligence to control cost and boost Internet and mobile sales channels. The study reports that as many as 68% of consumer goods companies plan to make BI readily accessible to employees, compared to 37% for all InformationWeek 500 respondents. Gallo, the largest family-owned winery in the world, optimizes its product packaging, pricing, and channel strategies with SOA architecture, SaaS, and its BI repository. 32% of respondents consider improving Web operations critical to boosting their business globally compared to 26% from other groups. Herbalife, a company that dominates domestically, only attributes 10-15% of their global business to internet sales.

Industry: Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, E-Commerce, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

SaaS Hits the Sweet Spot for Business Intelligence (Intelligent Enterprise)

Posted: 10/22/2009

You’d be hard-pressed to describe a major business intelligence deployment as fast, flexible, and affordable. Which is exactly why BI service software (SaaS) is primed to change business intelligence. SaaS-based BI vendors aim to get the implementation process off the ground in days rather than the months it usually takes. Shaklee CIO, Ken Harris, views SaaS as more than a stopgap to on-premises BI software deployments. Harris deploys SaaS to stretch his small IT staff and budget by storing data in a PivotLink-hosted data warehouse and using report and query tools to evaluate the data across a network that has expanded from 50 employees to as many as 5,000 independent business people who sell Shaklee products. The cost is perfectly reasonable for small to mid-size companies with limited IT resources.

Industry: Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

Doritos iD3: Unveils the Mysterious Flavor of London’s Underworld (Digital Arts)

Posted: 10/08/2009

Dubbed iD3, Doritos’ newest flavor plays on the mysteriously hard-to-identify flavors often found in packaged foods. To launch the savory snack, Doritos tapped rehabstudio to build an interactive advergame set among the grit and grime of London’s seedy crime world. The hook? Identify the exact flavor for the chance to win £20,000. Rather than going straight to the masses, Doritos engaged rehabstudio to design an interactive experience using elements of film and narrative to lead gamers through a suite of ‘choose your own adventure’ options. Utilizing a sophisticated back end system, the game pushes its cutting-edge technology to the max and extends beyond Doritos’ website. The 3D game uses the Facebook Connect app, allowing developers to create a personalized advergame that draws content from and links back to a user’s Facebook profile.

Figuring Out the Tools of the Social Trade: How Intuit Benefits from Social Media (BusinessWeek)

Posted: 09/11/2009

For many companies it may seem impossible to get measurable results from social media campaigns, but Intuit (INTU) appears to be profiting from its new social community, Quickbooks Live Community. Intuit’s secret to success? The accounting software maker aggregates tried-and-true users into a live community where they can exchange meaningful information. For customers, that means quicker responses to troubleshooting while the company is relieved of providing more paid technicians. The live community is immediately accessible to users opening QuickBooks 2009 on a PC or Mac. Since launching the new social element, the company has enjoyed multiple benefits from decreasing costs for tech support and enhancing customer service to tripling its channel traffic and increasing market share by 4 points, to 94%.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Business Intelligence, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Maximize your Web Site’s Mobilization with CSS (Practical eCommerce)

Posted: 09/11/2009

With mobile internet use and mobile-friendly browsing on the rise, expert Armando Roggio is encouraging businesses to consider his “Web Design Tips” before redesigning their e-commerce sites to address their mobilization. Simple techniques such as adding a second style sheet or slightly revising a page’s HTML can enhance mobile shopping experiences without wasting time to register new mobile domains or create mobile-specific styles. The best solution? According to Roggio, it’s more efficient to redesign your current site to render well across multiple platforms including mobile, desktop, RSS, and more, using CSS. To illustrate his advice, Roggio creates a home page for an e-commerce comic book store with an instructional video demonstrating how to create mobile-friendly background images.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Shopping-enabled Display Ads are Blooming Success for 1-800-Flowers.com (Internet Retailer)

Posted: 08/27/2009

Success bloomed for 1-800-Flowers.com during its 2009 Mother’s Day e-commerce campaign, resulting in a 41% spike in sales per impression compared to traditional display ads. The campaign enabled consumers to purchase directly from “buy” buttons planted into display ads powered by Alvenda. According to Alvenda, consumer interaction among the ads, called Shoplets, flourished at more than 10.5 times greater than traditional banner ads. To accommodate the traffic spike and speed up response times, Alvenda shifted the bulk of the floral Shoplet campaign content over to Akamai Technologies Inc’s content management server. “We believe the majority of future online sales will happen offsite. Customers will be able to shop with brands wherever they happen to be, whether they’re on YouTube, a favorite blogger web site, or on Facebook,” says Wade Gerten, CEO of Alvenda.

Blazing the Broadband Trail Along the East Coast (Internet Retailer)

Posted: 08/27/2009

Akamai Technologies Inc.’s “State of the Internet Report” revealed that U.S. broadband adoption is on the rise, with East coast states tallying the most broadband Internet connections for the first quarter of 2009. Eastern states garnered eight of the top ten slots, topped by Delaware, where 62% of households have high-speed broadband web access, a 6.7% year over-year increase. Based on results from data collected from Akamai’s global server network, the study examined countries and U.S. states that averaged over 1,000 unique monthly IP addresses. The report also states that one-fifth of global internet connections operate at speeds greater than 5 Mbps, up significantly from the previous year. “The implication… is that Internet retailers can continue to add more rich media content to their site... to bring buyers and keep them on the site longer,” says David Belson, editor of the report.

Industry: Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services
Topic: Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Technology Implementation
Region: North America
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

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