Salmat Pre-Shop® News | May 2009
| Welcome to the May 2009 issue of Salmat Digital Pre-Shop News.
I invite you to join the Australian Multi-Channel Retail forum on LinkedIn – go here for details. This is an opportunity to discuss issues relevant to Australian retailers, read the latest news and participate in events.
Hope your month comp sales are going well! Enjoy the read below.
Kind regards
Paul Marshall
Executive Director
Salmat Digital
Information becomes infotainment
The concept of “infotainment” – when information and entertainment are blended into one – is not a new one, particularly in more traditional media forms, such as television. However recently infotainment has been appearing online, and many believe it is the next step in the evolution of the web.
As ads become more targeted, they become more relevant to the user and more effective for the advertiser. Slowly the advertisement stops being purely an advertisement and becomes relevant information. As the display and delivery of this targeted information seeks to be not just the most relevant, but also the most appealing or entertaining, it then again transforms itself from information to infotainment.
In an online environment, infotainment manifests itself in the form of sophisticated widgets as well as well-produced infomatics (product videos). You might like to check out the likes of CNET for some product videos done well locally.
These pieces of content are more expensive to produce, but they are well worth the investment, if done well. They are more effective in conveying a message, converting a sale and gaining relevance and prominence in search engines and on websites.
Giving users a voice
As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, the current Web 2.0 environment is all about interacting with your customers in new ways and letting them interact with each other. One tool that is well worth discussing in-depth is UserVoice, a customer feedback system that will help you prioritise the implementation of new and updated products, services and features in your business.
Customers can voice their suggestions (and yes, complaints) about your brand, then other users can comment on and vote on the various ideas – it’s effectively an online focus group. Each user is allowed 10 votes, which they can allocate to their favourite ideas as either 1, 2 or 3 votes (with 3 being allocated for must-have ideas and 1 for ideas that they wouldn’t mind seeing at some point in the future, but not urgently). When a user uses their 10 votes but wants to vote on a new suggestion, they can remove votes from another idea they’ve voted on to reallocate to their preferred suggestion.
The features provided by UserVoice vary by package – ranging from the most basic free package right through to gold membership, which will cost you US$589 per month but allows you every feature on offer, including support for unlimited voters, analytics and more.
Some of the world’s leading brands are currently running UserVoice, including Sun Microsystems, Nokia and MySpace. We’ve set up our own UserVoice for Salmat Digital that we’d love our customers and potential customers to use (please add it to your bookmarks). This will help us to structure our products to suit your needs and maximise your brand’s performance online. Feedback and transparency may be scary for some companies, but it is always better to listen, engage and adapt, than to isolate your brand and believe pleasant fictions.
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| Sound bites…
Online ad spending will rise 8.9% in 2009.
- eMarketer
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