Friday, June 3, 2011

Google Wallet Invites you to use your Mobile phones for Offline Payments



This week Google caused quite a stir in the news announcing its new long-waited product: Google Wallet, powered by a nearly Sci-Fi technology - Near Field Communications. What it promisses to do is allow you use your mobile phone as a payment tool offline.

At this point already numerous companies are tempted to participate in what's expected to become a huge market which might lead the brands towards a multi-million revenue nest.

Quite curious to see Google's Vision behind the new product:

"In the past few thousand years, the way we pay has changed just three times—from coins, to paper money, to plastic cards. Now we’re on the brink of the next big shift."

Let's see How it's actually supposed to Work:

Empowering Mobile Phones: Google Wallet will work with the Android Nexus S (via Sprint in the US) — and, through a NFC-enabled sticker, on potentially all smartphones (more on that below).
Payment Cards: The program will work with Citi MasterCard, a pre-loaded Google Prepaid Card (which can be “refilled” from any source of funds) and gift cards from various participating merchants. Google wants all payment, gift and loyalty cards to work with the system
Coverage: The first geo-covered 'beneficiaries' made public to date will be San Francisco and New York areas;
Participating merchants: The first and fairly diverse group of merchants announced include American Eagle Outfitters, Bloomingdale’s, Champs Sports, The Container Store, Duane Reade, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Foot Locker, Guess, Jamba Juice, Macy’s, Noah’s Bagels, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, RadioShack, Subway, Toys“R”Us and Walgreens. However because Google Wallet relies on the MasterCard PayPass infrastructure it will work “at more than 124,000 PayPass-enabled merchants nationally and more than 311,000 globally.” (Google has an interactive map to find PayPass merchants:



What Google Offers are linked to Wallet: The news is that Google Offers are directly integrated into Google Wallet! Consumers will be able to send offers they encounter to Wallet with a single click (if you’re signed in). Redemption will be accomplished with a “SingleTap” at the point of sale or via scanning or keying in a code if the POS system doesn’t support SingleTap.

In the nearest future: Google envisions that “receipts, boarding passes and tickets will all be seamlessly synced to your Google Wallet.”

Quite exciting..

Always positive,
Yours, @Digilunch
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Friday, May 6, 2011

This Week's E-Marketing News Round from Around the Web



In the idea of bringing up fresh and curious E-marketing News worth being aware of, I've listed below a roundup of today's search and new media headlines from around the web. This is a new practice which will be "aired" each Friday. Happy reading!

Search Marketing News (SEO & PPC):

Facebook, Google mull Skype deals (Reuters);

A world of curiosity: a peek at searches around the globe (Official Google Blog);

Fat Pandas and Thin Content (SEOmoz)

Can coding errors affect how a page is indexed? (GoogleWebmasterHelp YouTube Channel) - Recommended Read;

Six Common Mistakes to Avoid with Google AdWords (Capture the Conversation)

Should Your Paid Search Account Care About Bounce Rates? (Certified Knowledge) - Recommended Read

Measure page load time with Google Analytics (Google Analytics)

Google Steps Up Privacy Requirements For AdWords Advertisers (SearchEngineland)


Social Media Marketing News


ComScore reports: Facebook Takes 31.2% of the U.S. Ad Display Market (Mashable)

Twitter Begins Sending @ Replies to Users - Not All of Which Are SFW (ReadWriteWeb)

Still having thirst for news? Find us next week on our next news round. Any further E-marketing Food for Thought is highly welcome!

Best,
@Digilunch
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Monday, March 21, 2011

Mobile Shopping - 5 Major Backbones



When a retailer succeeds to perform well online, seeing conversions growth and a motivational return on investment it's time to check the audience settings, to be able to find out if there're any mobile users browsing your site and even better - becoming your customers? Use your Adwords Stats combined with Google Analytics traffic source data to find out more of..

In the meantime - how can you grab your mobile users' attention and make them stay longer/convert better within your platform? Here're a few check-ups:

1. First & Foremost - your mobile site:

A mobile site could attract customers across a variety of phones, be it mobile searchers or mobile app viewers.What are the obvious benefits: LINKS - to access & share your product pages, generating loads of lead generation data!

2. When is best to launch a mobile app for your business?

Are your stats showing high percentage of mobile visits from iPhones? Is the time spend on your site compelling enough? What's the percentage of returning visits versus new ones? What's your bounce rate ratio? Tagging your Mobile Site for Google analytics is here essential.. So if your data is motivational enough - time to consider diving in!

Some successful examples among e-tailers:

Debenhams app:



Debenhams launched its mobile app back in October 2010, having already generated over £1 million in sales! The retailer claimed that its iPhone app has clocked up 360,000 downloads, 2.4m unique shopping sessions, that 110,000 users have purchased items via the app more than five times and that sales on its website have increased 82.4% since October. Shall we witness anytime in future severe competition between app-based shopping experience vs. "traditional" online one? We'll have to wait & see..

3. Redirecting your mobile users to the mobile version of your site:

Since the majority of your mobile users will be arriving on your site via search engines it's a must redirecting them to a more optimised, easy-to-use platform, which will both save their time & prevent them from a quick abandon of your home page.

4. Search box - makes it a lot easier

Without any doubts - the searchbox is a useful tool for mobile users: and again - a time-saver and a bonus to your usability functions.

4. Why registration is not compulsory?

Simply because it can create annoyance and thus drive your potential customers away from your product-page - and that's a shame (given their purchase path so far). Think of abandon rates. You may be surprised to see how well your check-out pages excel at: make your purchase available within a distance of a couple of clicks.

5. Product filters - are a must!



The product pages which provide further details and reviews via links on the page, displaying delivery charges / timescales and the returns policy would be nice usability bonus, prompting users to move further down the purchase path. This information can become key to purchase decisions, and so should be available on the product page.

A few take-aways:

1. Mobile site is a must! Don't send users to non-mobile pages;
2. Registration can be a barrier to purchase;
3. Get listed on mobile comparison sites - exchange webliks and build some rapport!;
4. Get Product filters and show delivery details on product pages;
5. Provide alternatives to mobile check-out (out of security reason): collect in store, phone contact option, cash on delivery & save items to a wishlist.

Hope this was useful.

Yours,

Digilunch
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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Orkut Pushed via PPC - the war against Facebook goes on...



You might have heard about Orkut, which is a social network owned and operated by Google since 2004. If you haven't heard of it so far it might be because its main users are in Brazil - 48.0%, followed by India - 39.2% and United States with 2.2%.

As of February 2011, Alexa traffic ranked Orkut 102nd in the world, so that the website currently has more than 100 million active users worldwide. So how is Google competing with Facebook on social networking ground? Here's a useful example spotted today while checking on "gifts" keyword on google.co.in (india), where Orkut is still having a fair slice of market share:



Also, it's quite interesting to see that Google doesn't bid on its own Brand term (Orkut), choosing to target high visibility generics (such as "gifts" on St. Valentine's Day, etc).

Does Google need to use its own Adwords platform as to promote its social networking services? Apparently yes since social networking continues to be a highly competitive area, especially when considering geographical targeting.

Yours,
@Digilunch
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Monday, February 14, 2011

Google Proof of Love: Map your Valentine!



How does Google prove its Love? By setting up a Map for your Valentine.

The idea behind this special occasion tool (click to follow the link) is to help you map your Valentine so that you can send your special someone a note about that utterly special place you've shared a memory, which actually can be anything you fancy reminding him/her about, even if this wasn't your best shot, - so here it is your chance to say it in a rather "creative" way!:) Anyway, who can now claim you're not offering at least that bit of attention on your beloved - The Day?

Always positive,
@Digilunch
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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

5 Most Innovative Search Engines of 2010



Search has become more diversified these days, since getting search results became an indispensable part of the overall daily web experience and it's getting more & more complex, due to a plethora of innovative technologies which just about yesterday seemed a matter of SF..

Today we can use search engines that are able to understand our voice commands, by employing voice recognition tools; that can identify objects from a photograph we've taken or from a barcode via our all-mighty phones; that can use geo-location to point at where we are in the world to find relevant results; that can find the right slot in a TV programme just by saying a quote from it, etc.

The below search engines may have been part of a wish-list yesterday while today they're fighting to become the next big thing in search:

1. TinEye - Reverse image search : www.tineye.com



The website and phone app TinEye allows you to upload an image and find where else it's used on the web. The search engine is using the image itself, instead of "keywords, metadata or watermarks", claimimg to be the 1st search engine of its kind to use solely image identification technology.

How it works?

As soon as you enter a URL of an image or upload one, TinEye creates a unique fingerprint based on its composition, and then searches within its 1.5 billion image database for others with the same or a partial fingerprint match. This would be a useful tool to find out if people are using your images without permission. Btw, the mobile app is now in beta version and it's free at the moment!

2. Siri - Voice-based personal assistant : www.siri.com



Imagine waking up one morning and receiving a handy little advice "Better wear a raincoat today!" This can now come in a message on your iPhone from a dutiful new virtual personal assistant Siri. Siri is a great cute planner and it's off to a very promising start. Shout out, "I need a taxi" and Siri will oblige with nearby options. You can ask it to remind you to send flowers to your second half on Valentine's Day, and the app will make sure to send an email to jog your memory. Try and ask where you could get your car fixed and Siri will come up with several suggestions "within walking distance" of up to two miles (on Avg.) from your current location. (As with numerous other iPhone apps it takes advantage of GPS.)

How it works?

Answers arrive within the Siri app from various Web partners. TrueKnowledge.com tackles the general knowledge queries, for example, and the weather forecast comes from WeatherBug. Other partners include Citisearch, OpenTable, Taxi Magic, Rotten Tomatoes, Yahoo Local, and Yelp. Voice recognition is handled by Nuance, the same techies behind the well-known Dragon speech recognition software.

3. Mobile Concierge - Your Personal Shopping Assistant :www.bit.ly/mobileconcierge

A different type of product search comes from Mobile Concierge, developed by Cisco Systems and IBM. By means of precise geolocation it's able to pop up on your mobile with info and offers on the products around you while you shop.

How it works?

Once connected to the store’s wireless network, Mobile Concierge will be able to deliver coupons, make product suggestions, allow shoppers to organize shopping lists, receive unique digital signage based on shopping preferences, and more. Integration at checkout ensures all coupons and promotions are properly credited so that you can get through checkout quickly and packed with your up-to-date in-store promotions/discounts!

4. Klout - Social media authority search:www.klout.com



Klout is a measurement tool that gives an idea of your social web influence with Twitter. Their data is used by applications such as Co-Tweet, HootSuite and others.

It's made its mission "to accurately measure and provide context around who a person influences and the specific topics they are most influential on".
Since Google already offers social search by integrating real-time Twitter feeds, wouldn't it make sense to order posts based on your perceived authority in the subject?

How it works?
Klout takes all the data they’ve processes and gives you a Klout score, based on actual reach and engagement and influence of your followers and network.
A similar well-renowned tool is Twitalyzer, providing statistics on your Twitter usage, displaying 15 key metrics on an easy-to-use dashboard:



5.
Haika - Semantic search
: http://www.hakia.com/

How about a search engine delivering results based exclusively on relevance rather than website popularity? You'll be surprised to find out, but Haika is a search engine built from scratch using laws of ontological semantics, mathematics, computational linguistics, and fuzzy logic.

How it works?

It pulls in results from the general web, news sites, blogs, Hakia Galleries, something it calls 'credible sources' (typically Wikipedia), video and images.Finally, you'll get some kind of a "hub" of various search sources to choose from.

Other great tools worth inserting into your favs list are:

Wikitude - Augmented reality encyclopaedia :www.wikitude.org. That's pretty handy when you arrive into a new country/city and point your mobile toward a building you'd like to find more of (history,location)- augmented reality here is key!

Blinkx - Video search : www.blinkx.com You'll get results based on speech recognition, visual analysis and facial analysis - and all that coming from a filter of over 35 million hours of video!

Hope this journey was a useful one. If you've got other handy tools you're quite fond of, just drop a line and share it further!

Always positive,
Yours,
@Digilunch
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Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Is Google Launching a New "Facebook" alike Site?




The below screen shot was taken today while accessing the new Google blog post regarding Google eBooks application :



Would that be a testing of the new social networking "wizardry" crafted by Google for the nearest future? Or it's an "accidental error" on Official Google blog page, which was updated in real-time?

I'll leave it to your own judgement - but if anybody can explain this I'd be eager to find out.

Yours,

@Digilunch
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