Agency to support car brand in new digital and web strategies

Audi UK has appointed Salmon as its new strategic digital and web partner. The main brief is to work with the premium car brand’s in-house team to develop and implement new digital strategies focusing on the management of its website.

The appointment, made after Audi conducted its overall strategic review for 2013, will see Salmon assist Audi in creating digital marketing solutions across a variety of platforms including the hugely successful audi.co.uk website, which has over one million unique visitors per month.

Hugh Fletcher, National Digital Manager for Audi UK, explains: “The exciting partnership with Salmon will help place the brand at the forefront of digital marketing. The agency’s experience and expertise in e-commerce, both in terms of creative front-end solutions and outstanding technical expertise, will help us achieve our goal of giving Audi customers the online experience they want and deserve in this constantly evolving digital world.”

Andy Jones, Head of Customer Experience at Salmon, adds: “We fully appreciate the ever-expanding importance of providing innovative digital solutions and bring to the table nearly 25 years of knowledge and expertise in consulting, design, delivery and support services to leading premium brands.”

MorrisonsCellar Home Page

Salmon, has helped Morrisons to launch its first transactional eCommerce site, MorrisonsCellar.com, which focuses on selling a comprehensive range of wines and offers customers a unique, personalised and enjoyable shopping experience, including:

An interactive Taste Test allowing customers to discover those wines most likely to suit their palate via three simple questions

The case builder tool giving customers the ability to build and keep track of a mixed case of wine

Integration with Facebook allowing customers to share information with their friends

The new site is built on the same infrastructure as Kiddicare.com, (part of the Morrisons family) using WebSphere Commerce, Coremetrics, Endeca and advanced content management functionality developed by Salmon.

Since the site went live:

• Repeat customers average 15 percent
• All KPIs have been greatly exceeded – visitors, conversion and sales
• Conversion is above expectation, due to the success of the taste test and the depth of the product range

Discussing Morrisons first venture into eCommerce, Scott Weavers-Wright, Kiddicare CEO and Kiddicare and Morrisons.co.uk General Merchandise Managing Director said; “This is the first step in Morrisons branded eCommerce and will enhance the overall wine offering for Morrisons. It will also provide valuable lessons on business processes and systems which will support the launch of other web sites and multi channel services. We knew that the underlying platform, WebSphere Commerce, and functionality would enable us to deliver the new site quickly and yet be scalable for the future.”

Ken Platt, Head of Multi Channel eCommerce Delivery for Morrisons.co.uk, added: “Morrisons has a late mover advantage. By creating a scalable platform, focussed on user experience, the rapid roll out of further categories is certain and promises to set Morrisons.co.uk apart from its competitors.”

Salmon has provided a wide range of eCommerce services to design and implement the site and will provide 24/7 application support. Salmon used innovative working practices and approaches which combined Morrisons’ deep understanding of wine and customer behaviour with Salmon’s extensive eCommerce expertise. These enabled Salmon to deliver an innovative and functionally-rich site in a short period of time, which not only matched Morrisons business vision but also enhanced it.

Craig Harper-Ashton, Director of eCommerce at Salmon said; “Salmon played a key role in making MorrisonsCellar.com a reality. We are delighted to see Morrisons realise the benefits of the new working practices adopted for this project.”

About MorrisonsCellar.com Taste Test
A clever, interactive test to help guide consumers through the mystery of wine, the Taste Test is based on a scientific principle relating to the number of taste buds any one person possesses. Consumers will be asked three simple, non-wine related questions, the answers to which are then converted by a complex algorithm and a piece of clever technology to reveal a score and flavour profile. The four profiles are sweet (0-3), fresh (4-6), smooth (7-9), intense (10-12).

The entire range of Morrisons’ wines has been tasted by a six-strong team with calibrated palates and awarded a score against agreed criteria to enable it to fit within one of the four profiles. Red, whites, sparking and fortified have all been judged using the same scale so if a customer is a score 4 it is expected that wines within the fresh category of all colours will appeal to them.

Stop

When was the last time you watched an actual customer (not part of your team) use your web site? It’s important to remember who your web site is for. It’s easy to forget or lose sight of the views of real customers. You may have too much knowledge around the difficulties and constraints of a system or industry which means that online experiences are bent to fit these restrictions. Or you may just be busy doing other stuff.

Look

Often the way you think your customers use your web site is different from the way they actually use it. And often what they do and what they say they do are very different things. Watch the mouse.  Very often this indicates which part of the site they are focusing on and what they are looking at. Read more »

* Update 30/05/2012 The ICO’s latest guidance is here and provides additional information around the issue of implied consent.

* Update 22/05/2012 Econsultancy post on  ‘EU cookie law: ICO to contact 50 UK websites about compliance’ is ‘ here and link to their guide to compliance is here.  The Direct Marketing Association and Interent Advertising Bureau’s how to guide on email and cookie legislation  is here.

In principle the regulations are right but how practical are they?  Remember back to when 3D Secure came about, originally this was seen as an inhibitor to online shopping but is now seen as a necessary evil. Although, by comparison, the cookies compliancy will have a much bigger impact.

On May 26^th 2011, the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 came into force.  Under the new Regulations a subscriber or user has to give consent to the use of cookies, having been given clear and comprehensive information about the purpose of them.  Under the previous law, organisations only had to inform users how they used cookies and how the user could “opt out” if they objected to their use.   The aim of the Regulations is to increase transparency for consumers.

So what do you need to know?

Read more »

Groupon made it’s first deal in late 2008 with a half-price pizza offer.  Today Goupon is offering deals in 43 countries with an estimated revenue of around $2 billion.  Andy Jones, Director of Customer Experience at Salmon takes a look at their site and gives his take on eight things he believes they do well, leading to a design that is not only compelling and visually coherent but also very persuasive.

Read more »

With the impressive returns apparent for those retailers who have optimised their web sites for access by smartphones and the inexorable rise in smartphone adoption, the debate has moved beyond the ‘why’ and ‘when’.**   The question now is ‘how to optimise your web site for mobile devices’.  Here’s a summary of the pros and cons of the main options to help you navigate your way through this key decision.

Option 1.  Building a mobile store – developing a set of pages specifically optimised for mobile devices

Pros:  Fancy something (relatively) quick to market and with easy access?  Then a mobile store could be just what you are looking for.  No snazzy touch screen smart phone needed, even if your customers have a Nokia e71 they can shop on your mobile store, plus with auto detection and re-direction, accessing your store couldn’t be simpler.

Read more »

Tesco Video

Tesco: Homeplus in South Korea offer customers a new way of shopping via their SmartPhone and QR Code technology.  It’s proving popular with customers there.  I’m not sure we have the same issues in the UK as Korea do to warrant this here, they are quite a unique market, but this does offer customers an alternative shopping method and is a great visual reminder.  See for yourself here.

Microcopy might be just a small part of the online experience but it’s vitally important to customer experience and conversion and often overlooked.

So when you are designing for the web, take a minute to stand back and think about the microcopy, as ironically the smallest bits of copy can have the biggest impact on business and be the cause of a great or ghastly online customer experience.

Microcopy refers to the little instructions and phrases used on web pages to guide and reassure customers and can make the difference between someone signing up for something, or entering their credit card details or not.

Read more »