http://shinemarketing.com/blog en mailbox@shinemarketing.com Copyright 2012 2012-05-14T12:52:09+00:00 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/tackling-the-european-cookie-law-a-practical-guide http://shinemarketing.com/blog/tackling-the-european-cookie-law-a-practical-guide#When:12:52:09Z Guidance for website owners ahead of the May 26th Deadline On the 26th May 2011 the law was changed relating to the storing of personal information on users equipment such as their computer or mobile device. In a nutshell most websites use cookies and other files (we will use the term cookies for the remainder of this article for ease) to track users, help the user experience and ensure the website actually works. This therefore means most website owners are affected by the law change. This is a European law and so comes under the remit of the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) and here are the basic details from them. Cookies and similar devices must not be used unless the subscriber or user of the relevant terminal equipment is provided with clear and comprehensive information about the purposes of the storage of, or access to, that information; and has given his or her consent. The regulations are not prescriptive about the sort of information that should be provided, but the text should be sufficiently full and intelligible to allow individuals to clearly understand the potential consequences of allowing storage and access to the information collect by the device should they wish to do so. This is comparable with the transparency requirements of the first data protection principle. You can read the remainder of the guidance here http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/cookies.aspx Now what happened last May was that the ICO released there was a problem with so many websites using cookies that it provided a 12 month grace period and that no action would be taken on the subject for those 12 months which brings us through to the 26th May 2012. This has allowed various industry bodies to lobby the ICO on the matter as most of you will realise that asking for consent on a website impacts on the user experience, you can see the implementation on the ICO website as a prime example. Secondly by asking for consent for something will mean that many people will never actually consent and so will render many websites useless and impacting on the revenue of sites. We all agree that privacy is something that needs to be respected and are happy that steps are being taken. What many people don't realise is that cookies can contain many different bits of information and in the majority of cases there are no personal pieces of information stored in them. Many of your visitors will not even now what a cookie is, let alone what it does. So we are running into a slightly strange situation of the law on privacy being enforced on some technology that doesn't actually impact on people's privacy. The law is however law and the two points above will be enforced from the 26th May 2012. Now over the last year the lobbying has meant that some guidance has been issued from the ICO about the situation much of it quite sensible. Here are some sample's from the ICO: 'Someone may complain about a cookie placed without their consent, but if it was just used to remember essential details rather than to gather information to be used for marketing purposes, then it may not be appropriate to act.' 'The first question we will ask is: have you tried to sort this out yourself? If they don’t want a particular cookie, then they could use browser settings or security software to get rid of it.' 'It’s highly unlikely that organisations will get into trouble because of one cookie or just a few complaints, but we would seek to address any potential issues with the company concerned.' There has been lots of talk of implied consent, for example your browser contains settings that allow you to block cookies being set. Is this implied consent when the user allows cookies? There has been lots of talk about where implied consent stands but this does tie in closely to informing your users about your cookies. Here is how BT have implemented their solution. This is the comments from the ICO about the BT implementation 'It looks perfectly fine, though I’ll hold back on passing judgement as it has only just been rolled out. We know how much time and effort BT has put in though, and we also appreciate that this is beyond the capabilities and resources of some companies.' At Shine we have been helping a number of clients understand their obligations and help to implement solutions where appropriate. The first stage of this is a cookie audit, so you can understand exactly what cookies are used by your website and what they do. Secondly we can help you implement your privacy options which may be one of the following: 1) An opt-in to cookies as in the ICO website 2) An opt-out to cookies as on the BT website 3) A mixture of the above if your site has a mix of essential end non-essential cookies The above should be actioned after taking your own legal advice on the subject which is, it has to be said, extremely vague. Our recommendations to clients at the moment is to take steps to understand how the law affects your site, and show you are taking steps to comply. This may be as simple as updating your privacy policy and making it more prominent in some cases. Shine have also adopted new technology for clients running ExpressionEngine 2.5 and above that will allow yor users to control the selective opt-in and out  of cookies. If you believe your business can make use of this you can request a demo by emailing sales@shinemarketing.com.   Ecommerce Tips, New Services, What we're up to, 2012-05-14T12:52:09+00:00 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/meet-shine-at-the-business-startup-show-this-thursday-friday http://shinemarketing.com/blog/meet-shine-at-the-business-startup-show-this-thursday-friday#When:12:12:04Z Valuable advice to launch your new business online Shine Marketing will be exhibiting at this years Business Start-Up show at Excel on the 17th and 18th May 2012. Business Startup is free for anyone thinking about starting a business or expanding a business. With over 250 seminars, over 350 exhibitors, advice, opportunities, and much more is an event well worth attending. Keynote speakers include James Caan of Dragons Den and David Gold (chairman of West Ham United Football Club and Gold Group International). You can visit us on stand 720 where Managing Director Stephen Pratley and Business Development Director Peter Dickenson will be available with other Shine team members. Come and have a chat about your website, online marketing or brand plans, and get the chance to win a professionally designed & managed email campaign to launch your new business. http://www.bstartup.com/ 2012-05-14T12:12:04+00:00 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/websites-that-sell-workshop-may-3rd-2012 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/websites-that-sell-workshop-may-3rd-2012#When:09:00:52Z Over 30 years of experience, delivered in just one day This May, Shine are re-introducing our successful series of training seminars aimed at helping website managers get more out of their marketing efforts. In one day, our two most experienced consultants will give you the highlights of over 30 years experience in building and marketing online businesses. Book online for just £20 Summary A one day course in the fundamentals of acquiring customers, converting them to leads and sales, and measuring the return on your investment. By the end of the day you will have a list of actions which you can take away and immediately start improving the volume and value of leads and sales through your website. Course Contents Bringing the right visitors to your site A run-down of the most popular marketing techniques including SEP, PPC, Email Marketing and Social Media, and how each one impacts on the design of your website. Getting your message across Choosing words and images to get your company's benefits across in seconds, and convince your visitors to stay longer Converting more visitors to customers How to increase trust and reduce barriers to customers takin the next step. Being clear about the next action you want visitors to take Taking payments online How online payments can be used whether you are selling services or products, and how to get started. Measuring your success - using Google Analytics What numbers are really important for you to track, and what they really mean. Who Should attend Business owners wanting to get more  leads and sales from their websites Marketing managers tasked with making thier online strategies more effective Web designers who want to make their sites more effective for clients Marketing agencies who need to make their campaigns more effective for clients About the course tutors: Stephen Pratley - Managing Director - Shine Marketing Stephen has been creating and promoting ecommerce websites since 2000, experiencing the entire scale of clients from start-ups to high street names. After taking his own ecommerce operation from start-up to success, Stephen founded Shine Marketing to share his experience with other online-driven businesses. Peter Dickenson - Business Development Director - Shine Marketing Peter's experience of ecommerce spans more than a decade, managing performance marketing programmes for clients in the retail, travel and telecoms industry. As former MD of Affiliate Future - one of the UK's leading performance marketing specialists - Peter has an unrivalled knowledge of the marketing tactics that bring high converting customers to your website.   Book online for just £20 2012-04-11T09:00:52+00:00 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/7-ways-to-make-google-analytics-more-valuable http://shinemarketing.com/blog/7-ways-to-make-google-analytics-more-valuable#When:09:54:35Z Getting under the hood of Google Analytics reveals some powerful tweaks For an online-driven business, Google Analytics doesn’t offer a huge amount of value out of the box. There are some interesting tools to see where your traffic is coming from, but to get real value from the tool, you need to make a fair few tweaks. Below, you’ll find 7 critical enhancements that will help you get more valuable insight out of Google Analytics, and how they will benefit your business. 1) Goals Goals are specific actions you want people to carry out on your site. Signing up to a newsletter, completing an enquiry form, completing a sale are all examples of goals you could be tracking. You can tag just about anything you want as a goal. But why are they important? Because they’re how Google Analytics tracks conversions. And conversions lead to sales. To figure out what you should mark as goals tracking, start with the most critical aim  of your site. Just one. No pandering to secondary aims here. Are you looking for leads? What about newsletter signups? Do you have a site that sells ad space? Whatever keeps the roof over your head on is what you want to measure. Types of goals you might want want Google Analytics to track include: URL Destination: Tracks a goal when people visit a specific URL. Visit Duration: Tick off a goal every time someone spends a certain amount of time on your site. Pages/Visit: Set a threshold for a number of page views that will set off a goal during a visit. Event: You’ll need to define an event by getting your developer to add a bit of extra code to your site. Once Google Analytics is tracking the event, then you can set it as a goal. If there are several steps leading up to your goal (e.g. a checkout, or a lead form over more than 1 page) you can also track the “funnel” of pages before you reach your final destination. 2) AdWords If you’re using AdWords, you’ll need to link it to your Google Analytics account. AdWords has a mass of data that you’re paying for and you need to make use of it. If you don’t set everything up correctly, your AdWords search traffic can be reported as organic search traffic. 3) Site Search Site search is not the same as SEO. While SEO gets your site found in Google, site search is how people look for products or information on your site once they get there. It’s a critical insight into what your users are expecting to find on your website and how well your site is matching their wants. Just imagine if you could find out what people think is missing from your site! Once it’s set up, all you have to do is wait for the data to come in, find the trends, and fix what your customers have trouble with. 4) Campaigns Measuring the ROI of visitors from Google is great. But it’s important to measure the ROI of all your marketing campaigns. After all, you’re spending money or time on them. You need to know if it’s worth it. Google Analytics will track any URL that you have control over. Email campaigns, Facebook ads, affiliate links, banner ads, you can track them all. It’s also easy to set campaigns up without needing your developers to get involved. All you have to do is start building campaign URLs via Google’s URL Builder tool. Google URL Builder Enter in your domain and some basic info about the link so you can keep track of it in your Campaign reports: Source – What domain are you placing the link on? Which email list? Medium – Use things like banner ad, PPC, affiliate, email etc.  – the different types of marketing you use. Term – This is for paid keywords so in general, you won’t need it. Content – Use this to separate different versions of the same advert or email campaign. Name – This is how you’ll easily differentiate groups of ads in your reports. Google groups campaigns by name so this is the first item you’ll see in your reports, make sure you can tell what the link is from here without having to look at any of the other data. Type everything in, grab your new link, and place it wherever you want. When people use the link to get to your site, it’ll come up under the campaign you created. Don’t worry about adding campaign URLs to AdWords, your ads get tagged automatically if you’ve enable auto-tagging and connected AdWords to Analytics. ShineEmail also automatically adds the links for you, even including different A/B test versions so you can send the winner based on sales, and not just clicks! 5) Filters that Exclude Internal Traffic Google Analytics collects data on every visitor as long as they have cookies and javascript enabled and that includes you. If you’re constantly checking your site, tweaking details, and updating content, a big chunk of your overall traffic could be you and your colleagues. This will skew every figure in your data. Instead of gaining insights about your customers, you’ll learn how you behave on your own site. And the way you use your site is going to be very different than how your customers use your site. 6) SEO Reports via Google Webmaster Tools Google recently added a set of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) reports for Google Analytics based on data already existing within Google Webmaster Tools. Which keywords deliver results which are seen most by browsers (impressions) What percentage of people actually click on your listing (click through rates) Where you rank for individual keywords Click through rates to your top landing pages This data can help you find quick wins for your SEO strategy, and identify areas where you might want to examine your page titles and descriptions to get a better click-through rate. 7) Ecommerce Tracking Ecommerce success depends on knowing the real value of each sale, not just how many sales were made. This is like Goals but on steroids! With ecommerce tracking, you’ll know where each sale came from so you can target your best channels with more budget. For an online store manager, if there’s only one tip you follow in this article it’s this one. For many sites it can be a tricky business as it means following your customer away from your site to your payment provider , and back again, but it’s well worth the effort. Summary: Hopefully this post has shown there’s more to Analytics than just page views and visitors. If your website doesn’t already have these advanced reports turned on, we’d love to hear from you. Shine Marketing is driven by results and these are essential tools for measuring success.. 2012-04-10T09:54:35+00:00 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/welcome-pete-dickenson http://shinemarketing.com/blog/welcome-pete-dickenson#When:16:35:17Z Performance marketing expert joins the Shine team We are pleased to welcome Peter Dickenson to Shine Marketing, where he joins as the Interim Business Development Director. Peter spent 8.5 very successful years at AffiliateFuture leading the affiliate network from it's start-up years through to becoming one of the market leaders in the performance marketing space. As Managing Director he had the network delivering over £200m in sales for 1,000 advertisers via a base of 280,000 website publishers per year. The network won a number of awards during this time including the A4U Innovation Award for it's travel technology and the IMA award for Best Use of Affiliate Marketing. Since leaving the network last summer Peter led an investment project for a media owner to design and build a loyalty website. The project, MoneybackMonster launched in the run up-to Christmas. One of Peter's primary tasks will be to build on the launch of ShineEcommerce.com. The new proposition fills a hole in the market for companies to drive their first million in online sales.  Shine Marketing have invested heavily in the platform which brings together a solid technology and the stunning design skills of the team. This gives retailers the chance to launch a fully customised and designed e-commerce site but at a far more attractive total cost than comparable systems. Through Peter's partnership relations he will be opening a number of new channels not only for fresh business  but to drive current clients forward with new marketing initiatives. Peter is a course tutor at The Institute of Direct Marketing and has extensive knowledge of combining marketing channels together to give results which are greater than the sum of thier parts.   To discuss new opportunities with Pete, call 0208 973 4637 or email sales@shinemarketing.com 2012-04-03T16:35:17+00:00 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/giving-your-brand-a-voice http://shinemarketing.com/blog/giving-your-brand-a-voice#When:11:24:37Z A business’s voice enables it to stand out from the crowd and keep its message consistent. We talk you through finding your own. A business’s voice enables it to stand out from the crowd and keep its message consistent. We talk you through finding your own... Your brand’s tone of voice decides how you can expect your message to be received and - like every other use of content made to promote your business - it should encourage customers to decide to do business with you. When we talk about brands, we tend to focus on the visual elements: logos; colours; typography and photography. Tone of voice is often an afterthought, yet written and verbal communication form the majority of the messages we send out. There is an old marketing saying, “six ‘til it clicks.” which suggests that people need around six contacts with your brand before they believe in your promises and are prepared to take the next step towards doing business with you. Keeping your tone of voice consistent across these messages is as important as keeping your logo the same colour. It’s just a lot harder to judge when you’re doing it right. The benefits of a clearly defined tone of voice are manifold: It makes your online communications more usable. A clear, informative voice will help people navigate your website and get the most from your online content. It will set you apart from the competition: having a distinctive manner of talking will help users and customers remember you for the right reasons. A consistent tone of voice creates an emotional bond with your brand, giving your customers a more enjoyable experience and making people more likely to recommend you. That doesn’t necessarily mean using humour. Honesty and clarity are good enough. It helps you deliver great service: making your website content informative and helpful will cut call centre traffic, help people get more from your products and enhance your reputation for customer service. It helps you to sell more, by emphasising benefits and painting pictures with words that encourage your customers to buy. Developing tone of voice guidelines Always remember the aim of your content is to make it easier for a customer or prospect to make the decision to buy from you. A universal rule is to extract any jargon from your writing. Have someone external to the business review your content, and if they come across something they don’t understand, rewrite it. Don’t shirk this responsibility by saying “our customers will know what that means”. Chances are they won’t. The next step is to start to develop a short set of adjectives, to define the tone of voice. Try to avoid hackneyed phrases like ’simple’, ’dynamic’ and ’fresh’. These crop up in the brand guidelines of businesses which are anything but. Be realistic: if your most persistent company spokesperson is a middle-aged financial director, don’t expect your brand to be ‚’funky’ just because that’s what the guidelines say. Your brand is what you are - not what you hope it will become. Again, having an independent party judge how you are perceived and pulling out the positives of their analysis is a good place to start. It’s not all about you and what you want your company to be. A brand’s tone of voice is most effective when it conveys the values your customers want to buy into. For example, an organic food company might want to be perceived as honest, friendly and principled. An IT business might be knowledgeable, reliable and proactive. A children’s clothes brand might want to be seen as fun, practical and economical. Note that in the last case, the company has two customer groups - the child and parent - that both need to be satisfied: not an easy balance to strike in a single message. What to do with your voice once you have it Make sure you use it! Firstly, make sure the guidelines are used in every briefing for any forthcoming written or spoken work the company produces. A great example is your choice of brand spokesperson. Is it still appropriate simply to use the most senior person in the business? They may be great at talking to the city and investors, but how do they communicate with your customers? Google appointed Matt Cutts - the head of their Web Spam team - to be the face that talks to the SEO industry. Incredibly helpful, knowledgeable and not afraid to poke fun at himself on occasion, Matt effectively maintains Google’s jovial tone, in a professional environment. Other businesses may hire famous actors for their adverts, endorsements and voice overs. BUPA health insurance chose Matt Smith, of Doctor Who. Aside from the obvious Doctor pun, his calm reassuring voice is just what health insurance patients want to hear. What can you do to control your brand Not everyone is a professional writer, of course, and tone of voice guidelines sometimes fail in large businesses due to the number of people who need to use them. Any group of people may encompass the full range of writing ability - from the barely literate to the wannabe novelist. “It’s formidably difficult” admits Jon Simmons, former director of verbal identity at Interbrand. “And I don’t think you get around it by saying this is our tone of voice and we’re going to make sure that absolutely everyone follows it, as that’s doomed to failure. If you try to regiment a brand’s language you’re stifling its development”. The best way to tackle this is by training staff to be able to recognise when a piece of writing is in line with the brand’s values. Rather than needing to edit every piece produced by the organisation (who does that already?), highlight the exceptionally good pieces. Reward the positive and give others something to reference, and to which they can aspire. Conclusion If you review all of the content that has been released by your business in the last year, and gauge how much of that is visual or verbal, the importance of your brand’s tone of voice should strike you as being as important as the colour of your logo. Think about the ways in which you measure whether those words are ‚’on brand’, and how you can brief employees and suppliers to be more consistent in their tone. Ensure that your tone makes your customers comfortable to buy from you and you will soon start to see the benefits.   This article was first published in issue 1 of Shine Magazine Shine Magazine is available in print, as a free PDF download or via the MagCloud iPad app   2012-02-13T11:24:37+00:00 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/planning-user-journeys http://shinemarketing.com/blog/planning-user-journeys#When:10:56:39Z Exploring the whole path for website visitors, from awareness to attitudes and repeat purchases Much discussion around web design centres on how shoppers progress from your homepage, through the product catalogue; basket and checkout processes. But look at your website stats, and you’ll see that this linear path is only covered by a minority of your website visitors. Visitors arrive from all directions and land not only your homepage, but also on product pages; category pages; blog pages and information pages - your store’s opening timetable, for example. A customer’s journey begins well away from your website, and by the time they reach you, a lot of their decisions may already have been made. Their ‘path to purchase’ may include several visits to your site; each spent finding and assimilating new pieces of information until a final purchase is made. Buying decisions are complex processes with many external influences, but the AIUAPR model provides a useful method by which to begin to understand the path leading to an ecommerce sale: Awareness Interest Understanding Attitudes Purchase Repeat Purchase Let’s look at each step in detail... Awareness Online awareness can be created by traditional advertising as well as a vast number of online channels, including banner advertising and search marketing. One of the key drivers of awareness within an effective online marketing strategy is visibility: your offering needs to utilise appropriate channels. These include (but are not limited to) organic & paid search; display advertising; email; blogosphere linkbacks; social networks and social bookmarking. Having an integrated campaign that is recognised across all your channels is important, as it ensures brand awareness and eventual loyalty. Interest Why you? What makes you special? Why should I buy your product? Why should I buy this product from you? Simple questions, but it is amazing how often answers to them are overlooked in the rush to take customers straight to the sale. Benefits should be expressed in a clear, understandable way to users, as early as possible in their journey. This forms their important first impression of your brand. Your unique selling points (USPs) need to be presented clearly in promotional banners; search advertising copy; product copy; and throughout the shopping experience. Understanding Users need to understand the benefits of a product or service in order to buy it. A common assumption is that users need just an essential amount of information, and that providing too much detail will only confuse them; however, the problem often lies in the execution of copy, rather than in its length. Certainly, if users are presented with a massive chunk of copy or data to read, they will quickly tire and find easier solutions, sometimes on other sites. Plan your information carefully: define the greatest benefits first, and provide an easy method to navigate to a more detailed description. Those who need the extra information will dig deeper, while those who don’t will move straight to the purchase. Be aware of the fact that different users will require different levels of detail. The ease with which shoppers are able to hone the amount of information presented to them is crucial to keeping them moving towards the checkout. Attitudes Psychological factors have a strong effect on users’ behaviour. These are called attitudes, and relate to each user’s motivation; personality; values and lifestyle. When designing the purchase decision, it is highly important to focus on user experience: how the user encounters the website. There are many ’soft’ issues related to aesthetics and visual cues that should be considered, with the target audience in mind. The website’s look and feel will influence factors such as trust in and comfort with your brand, on both logical and emotional levels. It is important that your website be in tune with your target audience through good design, layout and copy. These elements compose your website’s look and feel, which influences user attitudes. What gives your website the appearance of being friendly/cool/open/professional/edgy/helpful will ultimately decide whether someone feels comfortable buying from you, so think carefully about who you are and what your brand represents. If you portray the wrong character and users think you represent a customer group to which they do not belong, they might believe your website is not for them. People become anxious about a lot of things, but wherever money is concerned, anxiety levels rise. This anxiety manifests itself as trust issues., so before you can close a sale you need to address these needs - think of them as sales objections that need to be handled. Issues that can help or hinder trust include: Brand awareness Design and aesthetic qualities Content quality (copy and images) Usability Functionality Contact details & company registration/VAT numbers About us/company history Prominent customer service User reviews and ratings Security issues (SSL certificates, security and card verification) Inbound links (who links to you) Domain name Trust is one of the major factors in making a purchase, so it is highly important to ensure all basic trust signals are present. Purchase If you have managed to get this far, your user should be on the cusp of becoming a consumer. But we’re not there yet... Typical stores lose over 50% of their shoppers between the basket and final checkout phases, as customers’ trust can diminish due to the tiniest of factors. Common checkout problems include: Unnecessary personal information being requested Forms being too long and/or showing no visible signs of progress Poor handling of user errors Ambiguous labelling Inconsistent security - SSL is required throughout the checkout; not just on card detail pages Unnecessary navigation, distractions and pre-sales cross sell Appearance of hidden costs Limited payment and delivery options Obscure returns policy Our advice is to scrutinise your checkout in detail, to ensure none of the above undermine your ability to make a sale. Repeat Purchase The AIUAPR model is commercially useful, in that it assumes that the first purchase is essentially a trial purchase. If the consumer’s experience is good and their expectations are met, there is a good chance they will buy again. If, however, the consumer’s experience is poor or below their expectation, they will be much less likely to come back. Thus, the key to building a solid business that drives online sales, is to establish a customer base, and subsequently to communicate and sell to these customers over a lifetime. Regular and relevant communications (emails, blog posts, SMS, etc) are an integral part of the strategy of selling into your customer base... but you need more. How are you going to make visiting your website worth your customers’ time? What are you going to offer them: discounts; special offers; information; prizes; exclusives? What’s your story? Brand loyalty involves engagement and community. How do you plan to influence your relationship with your customers, so that they shift from just being loyal to acting as your advocates? Having a raft of ‚’fans’ across social media gives you a small marketing army that will act on your behalf, provided you show them a little love every now and then. Two final pieces of advice when introducing any changes are: 1. Always keep the user in mind; and 2. Always test, to make sure your new solution is better than the existing one. Wherever possible, run both solutions in parallel until you are sure that your new version is beneficial to your customers, and adds to the bottom line. We hope this has whetted your appetite for taking a fresh look at how customers move through your website, and peaked your curiosity to see where you can tweak or optimise your customers’ journeys for the better.   This article was first published in issue 1 of Shine Magazine Shine Magazine is available in print, as a free PDF download or via the MagCloud iPad app 2012-02-13T10:56:39+00:00 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/shine-magazine-issue-1 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/shine-magazine-issue-1#When:08:00:03Z Content is King, the first issue of our house magazine tells you how to create it. We're delighted to finally unveil the first edition of Shine Magazine, our first publication aimed at helping you get more out of your ecommerce website and content management system. Download the free PDF or purchase a printed copy at MagCloud Read Shine Magazine on your iPad using the MagCloud App Vistors to our stand at ECMOD at the start of the month may already have picked up an early printed copy, and now anyone can order their own copy online through HP's print-on-demand service at MagCloud. The magazine is also available as a free download in PDF format or can be found in the MagCloud iPad app (also free), a really excellent way to read the great features we've prepared. Issue 1 is all about creating content which suits your brand and contains articles on developing a "tone of voice" for your content, on copywriting and planning content to suit each stage of the user journey. Tierney Fox - a great PR for some of our clients - gives some tips on planning to promote your brand and content, and Tony Bryant has provided some excellent tips aimed at multi-channel retailers. We'd love to hear your feedback on the first issue. We're compiling the contents for the next one as you read this so any ideas and comments are gratefully received at info@shinemarketing.com. 2011-12-09T08:00:03+00:00 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/meet-shine-and-k3-at-ecmod-2011 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/meet-shine-and-k3-at-ecmod-2011#When:09:50:02Z Discover our multi-channel ecommerce partnership at the Business Design Centre London, Weds 30th November and Thurs 1st December Shine Marketing and K3 Retail are exhibiting together at this year's ECMOD Direct Commerce Show. Come along to stand 38 to discover how our new partnership can help advance your retail ecommerce business through better marketing, design and multi-channel management. From 12:30 on Thursday we'll be hosting drinks and canapes on the stand to celebrate the new venture. You're welcome to join us. 2011-11-29T09:50:02+00:00 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/press-release-shine-marketing-acquired-by-k3 http://shinemarketing.com/blog/press-release-shine-marketing-acquired-by-k3#When:14:38:33Z Ecommerce design specialists combine forces with multi-channel technology supplier. Shine Marketing UK Limited ("Shine Marketing") is pleased to announce its acquisition by K3, which supplies enterprise resource planning ("ERP") software, hosting and managed services to the retail industry. The two businesses are an excellent complement to each other, providing expertise and technology to ecommerce clients in a range of business sectors from fashion through to professional services. The businesses have worked closely together on retail ecommerce projects since early 2009 and the acquisition cements Shine’s relationship as preferred supplier of web design and user experience consultancy services to K3’s customer base of multi-channel retailers. Stephen Pratley, Managing Director of Shine Marketing commented: “Having worked with K3 Retail over a number of years, we know the two businesses have a common belief that an exceptional customer experience in ecommerce is an essential part of a multi-channel retail strategy. The relationship between our businesses allows us to benefit further from each other’s skills and resources, bringing a superior ecommerce product to our clients, and importantly to their customers.” Colin Bain, Managing Director of K3 Retail & Business Solutions commented “This acquisition strengthens the very creative relationship we already have with Shine Marketing. Ecommerce is an essential part of the multi-channel mix and it demands constant innovation to meet customers’ expectations. Working together to deliver an exceptional customer experience, the team at Shine will strengthen K3’s position as the leading Microsoft Dynamics partner, helping multi-channel retailers deliver joined up shopping experiences for their customers whether they chose to buy online, direct, in-store or through their mobile.” -ends- For more information please contact: Laura Sloan, Fieldworks Tel: 01435 873080 laura@fieldworksmarketing.co.uk www.fieldworksmarketing.co.uk Notes for editors: About Shine Marketing Shine Marketing is a leading web design agency for ecommerce retailers and brand owners, providing marketing-led web projects that deliver both superior ROI on marketing budgets and an exceptional brand experience. Since 2006 Shine have provided marketing and design services for a range of national and international brands including Amtico, SKY, Hotpoint, Marston and Langinger and Sahara. About K3 K3 Retail deliver multi-channel solutions that enable retailers to create joined up shopping experiences for their customers whether they choose to buy online, direct or in-store. 18 years experience delivering award winning solutions, to more than 100 internationally recognised retail brands, has helped our experienced team of retail consultants develop the most complete range of multi-channel retail solutions available to Microsoft Dynamics AX or NAV users. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, member of Microsoft's Partner Advisory Council for Retail, invited member of Microsoft's Inner Circle and Presidents Club, we offer a clearly defined roadmap and proven products backed up by Microsoft's $2billion investment in the Dynamics platform. Our ability to translate thought leadership and multi-channel experience into innovative and effective retail solutions has benefited customers including: Agent Provocateur, American Golf, Beales Department Stores, Booths Supermarkets, Carpetright, Clinton Cards, Dobbies Garden Centres, Dreams, Gamestation, GameStop, Jigsaw, Kiddicare, Ryman's, Smyths Toys, SpaceNK, and The White Company. 2011-11-21T14:38:33+00:00