Clive Portman: linked

Why people share less on mobile

Original article from Moovweb blog:

At Moovweb, we power over 250 mobile experiences. Many of our customers are in the eCommerce space. We studied a subsection of our customers' data and discovered mobile sharing buttons aren’t getting much use: Only0.2% of users ever click on a mobile sharing button. Mobile users click the sharing buttons 35% less often than they do on the desktop.

I've linked to this article before, as I think they're asking the wrong question, but I do think lower share rates on mobile are to be expected.

The trouble with sharing on mobile is most people use native apps for their social accounts on mobile devices. Click a share link in a mobile browser and because you aren't logged-in in the browser, it's not worth the hassle. The answer would be for share buttons to open up the relevant native app.

Great customer service shining through in reviews

Original article from The Fabulous Fleece Company:

Thanks to superb attention to detail from Lucy the rug is amazing - the size is just right, the fleece colours complement the colours of my hearth around my wood burner and the pile is lovely and soft. I live in the USA and Lucy spent a considerable amount of time sending photos of the fleeces, and then sent the rug to my husband's hotel in the UK.

And:

I was unsure what to buy initially and it was due to Lucy's fab customer service, which went above and beyond - including photos, phone calls and several emails, which helped me with my purchase.

I don't often link to my own clients' sites but while working on some updates I couldn't help reading these comments. Customer service goes such a long way - there's no wonder her customers keep coming back.

John Lewis to charge for Click & Collect

Original article from BBC News:

John Lewis announced this week that it would start charging a £2 fee for click-and-collect purchases costing less than £30, after finding that its current free model was unsustainable.

Click-and-collect demand has boomed for the department store. It now processes more than six million click-and-collect orders per year, compared with just 350,000 in 2008, and moves tens of thousands of parcels every night.

A spokeswoman said John Lewis had seen a 32% growth in demand for the service so far this year. And the seemingly effortless method of shopping is anything but for retailers as it needs an army of behind-the-scenes pickers and delivery staff.

I'm concerned for smaller retailers who can't cover free delivery and can't offer Click & Collect, but this is good news. If the larger retailers decide they're no longer going to suck these costs up, that should make the smaller retailers more competitive.

PayPal’s One Touch for Web expands to the UK

Original article from Ecommerce News:

With One Touch for Web consumers just need to enter their ID and password once per device, rather than once per app. When they make another payment in the future, PayPal has remembered the details, so the consumer only needs to confirm the payment.

The One Touch feature can be used on any site that accepts PayPal. Consumers also don’t need to change anything in the settings of their PayPal account. According to the payment company, companies like Airbnb, Lyft, YPlan and Boxed have adopted the feature and saw their sales increase noticeably.

Worth keeping an eye on now it's available in the UK.

Tesco and Sainsbury’s quit click & collect experiment at London tubes

Original article from Ecommerce News:

Tesco and Sainsbury’s are no longer offering a click & collect service for their customers at Tube stations in London. The two major supermarket chains have withdrawn from the tie-up with Transport for London (TfL) because too few customers used the service.
But this doesn’t mean the two major UK groceries don’t have faith in click & collect services at all. It’s just that too few customers used the pickup points that were located at Tube stations. “Our London customers have told us they prefer the click & collect service at our stores and online grocery shopping”

Note this is only for grocery shopping. I suspect it's different if you're wanting to pick up a parcel on the way home from work


Shopify's lack of API support

Original article from Shopify:

I was wondering if anyone knows how to grab the new cart token used in the responsive checkout. The cart token used to be what's in the 'cart' cookie, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. The token in the 'cart' cookie does not match what you see in the URL for the responsive checkout. The /cart.js seems to also have the old cart token.

There's a lot going for Shopify but I wish they'd improve their API and start supporting it better. I encountered this bug nearly a month ago and there's no indication anyone from Shopify has even looked at it. If you contact support they aren't interested because it's to do with the API. How the hell do we get this fixed, then?

My workaround on http://thefabulousfleececompany.co.uk is to host the cart on Shopify but we'd prefer to host it with the rest of the site and only use Shopify for the checkout. This bug stops us doing that because you can't generate a checkout URL using the API's cart.json since we upgraded to responsive checkout.

New in Craft CMS 2.4

Original article from Craft CMS:

Assets, Categories, Entries, Tags, and Users fields now make it possible to customize their selection button/input labels.

A nice touch.

Each section of user permissions now has a “Select All” button which will immediately select all of the permissions in that group.

Oh, hallelujah! Had been hoping for this. Great job, again.

European Commission's consultation on cross-border delivery services questionnaire

Original article from Ecommerce News:

With the online survey, the European Commission wants to consult all interested parties on the main issues and possible areas of improvement for cross-border delivery services. It’s an important issue for the executive body of the European Union, as deliveries are a major part of ecommerce.

Completing the questionnaire as a consumer it's about much more than cross-border delivery. It asks questions about common delivery problems and how delivery impacts on purchasing decisions, for example. I'll be very interested to see the results when it's finished.

Retailers and consumers can complete the questionnaire here.

The Financial Times rolls out cost per hour advertising metric

Original article from Financial Times:

The Financial Times today announces the launch of a new digital advertising metric, ‘cost per hour’ (CPH). Working closely with Chartbeat on the new time-based system, the FT is able to increase marketing effectiveness by measuring not just whether an ad is seen or not, but for how long.

Particularly important for brand-awareness ads.

While CPM values every impression the same, CPH uses time to measure value. The FT has shown through extensive testing that brand familiarity and recollection among readers increases significantly the longer an ad is in view. Adverts seen for five seconds or more on FT.com show up to 50% higher brand recall and familiarity than ads that are visible for a shorter period of time.

The ads-model is becoming less and less attractive for publishers, so it's nice to see some innovation. But, impressions are not the same as 'seen'. Just because an ad is on screen doesn't mean anyone is looking at it.

That said, it has to be good for advertisers if they pay less for ad when it's on-screen for 0.5 seconds than when it's on-screen for 5 seconds. Which should give the FT and anyone in that group a reason to attract advertisers more than those not offering this (for a short while until everybody else offers it, of course).

On the Primacy of Search Ads

Original article from John Gruber, Daring Fireball:

WSJ: If you were only allowed to use one advertising vehicle, which would it be and why?

MR. ST. GEORGE: Search ads — because they fill seats. I can find people in one location who are searching for information about another city and then serve them an ad that gives them an offer to get to that city.

A great example of superb targeting using search ads.

Domino's to roll out tweet-a-pizza

Original article from Bruce Horovitz (HT John Gruber):

Domino's will be the first major player in the restaurant industry to use Twitter on an ongoing basis to place and complete an order.Even wackier: Domino's regulars will be able to order by tweeting only the pizza emoji to @Dominos.

"It's the epitome of convenience," says CEO Patrick Doyle, in a phone interview. "We've got this down to a five-second exchange." It's
all about attracting busy, younger consumers. For Domino's it was a no-brainer, with upward of 50% of its sales already taking place digitally.

I love this. Will it work? Are enough of their audience already using Twitter? Or will they be rolling this out across to other social networks?

Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions

Original article from BBC Technology (HT John Gruber):

Jerry Nixon, a Microsoft development executive, said in a conference speech this week that Windows 10 would be the "last version" of the dominant desktop software.

His comments were echoed by Microsoft which said it would update Windows in future in an "ongoing manner". Instead of new stand-alone versions, Windows 10 would be improved in regular instalments, the firm said.

Presumably once we've bought Windows 10, then, we'll never have to pay again. How awesome would it be if Windows 10 were available for free in the first place? That'd be a sure way to get even more people using Microsoft's services again.