Web Design Company, Creative Digital Agency & Online Marketing Agency - Pod1 London UK, New York USA. : News

Value Retail Signs-up Pod1

2008-07-04

Pod1 has been enlisted by Value Retail to completely overhaul it's online offering from site design to build and online marketing strategy. Value Retail specialises exclusively in the operation of high end outlet shopping Villages serving some of Europe’s largest cities.

Each Village is positioned as an exceptional shopping destination through exclusive partnerships with leading travel industry and media groups including Relais & Châteaux, Orient Express and Condé Nast, and through premium credit card issuers.

Value Retail’s Chic Outlet Shopping® campaign promotes the nine Villages to over 100 million targeted international visitors. Chic Outlet Shopping® targets the travel trade industry worldwide, introducing the Villages as a day out destination and delivering aspirational customers to the brands from as far afield as the United States, Russia, India, the Middle East, China, Japan and South East Asia

Pod1s brief is to capitalise on the existing reach of the current 9 Village sites while bringing the online marketing together under the Chic Outlet Shopping banner, to increase footfall to the individual villages.

This will be a truly international and multilingual project.

Drapers Online Launches Free Ask the Expert Service

2008-06-20

This week Drapers has launched their ‘Ask the Expert’ online forum, which not surprisingly does exactly what it says on the tin. Readers have the opportunity to put their questions to a panel of experts from across the industry, including Pod1’s very own Fadi Shuman. A selection of e-commerce questions currently on the site cover topics from whether online sales will go up or down, how much should you pay for online photography to how do you go about selling ad space on Facebook and MySpace applications.

If you have a question you would like to put to the panel just ‘Ask the Expert’

You can read the article in full on the Drapers website

The Art of Design

2008-06-12

Pod1 has been commissioned to design, build and SEO a ground up online art gallery website for new client Murmur Art.

The aim of Murmur ART is to provide an online platform for new and emerging artists to display and sell their work and increase their individual online exposure. Murmur Art will provide the opportunity for prospective art buyers to view and buy the work of some of the most exciting emerging artists from around the world without leaving home.

The concept is that the artwork will be displayed on a well designed, highly consumer centric website with a sophisticated on site search facility to enable visitors to browse or buy the pieces by artist, colour, materials, style, price etc. Professional art copy text will accompany each picture, coupled with a detailed bio of each artist, which will allow first time and seasoned art buyers alike to make an informed decision on each piece.

SEO will prove to be an essential part of the marketing plan in attracting visitors to the finished Murmur Art site. To aid this process the Murmur Art blog is destined to go live any day soon, this will keep potential artist and buyers up to date on developments while starting to build the first stage of an online presence for this new domain.

Fadi Shuman discusses Single Page Checkout in Admap

2008-06-06

Pod1 founder, Fadi Shuman discusses the changing world of online retailing and ecommerce, with a specific focus on the innovation of the single-page checkout.

The online retail market has grown and become more refined in the last few years and many online retail companies have not adapted to that growth. This has resulted in loss of revenue from a channel that has contributed the majority portion of the £26 billion increase in retail sales over the past 5 years. The acceptance of the need for second generation of e-commerce sites is necessary for offline retail giants to make the most of online retailing.

Fadi focused on the checkout process of e-commerce sites, detailing the problems that many potential customers face when attempting to buy items off the site. This can lead to a 50% drop visitors finalising sales, which equates a potential loss of millions of pounds. This loss can be reduced drastically by just altering the checkout process. Pod1 did a multi-variant testing to determine the formation of a checkout process which was easiest for visitors to complete.

Fadi talked about the results of this testing which lead Pod1 to create the single-page checkout for the fashion retailer UNIQLO. While it may not always be the perfect solution, it has helped to greatly reduce the drop off rate during UNIQLO's checkout process. This checkout format is now being used across multiple online fashion retailers that Pod1 works with.