September 18, 2008

RedBubble - Mixing Art with Social Commerce

Over at Australian Anthill is a list of finalists for their Cool Company Awards 2008 – RedBubble, an online community and marketplace for creative works, caught my eye as I’ve been following their progress since they launched in Australia early last year.

Visits to RedBubble have climbed steadily, increasing in market share by 97.8% comparing week ending 13 September 2008 against the same week last year. RedBubble ranked as the 2nd most visited website in the Hitwise Entertainment - Arts category for the week ending 13 September 2008, following the much longer established deviantART.

While Google Australia remains the key traffic driver to RedBubble, accounting for 27.8% in upstream visits for the week ending 13 September 2008, Google Australia Image Search has more than tripled its referrals to RedBubble in the past four weeks - the surge in visits to RedBubble week ending 6 September 2008 in the chart above was pushed by Google Australia Image Search referrals. Google Australia Image Search also sent a high percentage of repeat visits to RedBubble, with 98% of its referrals comprised of returning visitors. This stresses the importance of vertical search for sustaining interest in niche content websites.

Commercialising an Online Art Community

Membership to RedBubble is free, where artists retain their copyright, set their own prices and choose which products they want to sell. RedBubble charges a base production cost and handles manufacturing, shipping and payment for the artists. The website features tools that support social commerce including user comments, groups and 'favourite feeds'; as well as allowing artists to track their sales. Against retail websites, RedBubble is faring strongly, climbing from a ranking of #54 in the Hitwise - Shopping & Classifieds industry week ending 13 September 2008, compared to a ranking of #113 the same time last year.

Given RedBubble's increasing visibility amongst Australian users, it has a massive opportunity to leverage sales on its 'unique' products leading up to the Christmas shopping period. Hitwise Lifestyle Demographics data indicates the RedBubble attracts a high representation of visits from households in Mosaic Group, "Learners and Earners" - Students and professionals living in high density, lower cost suburbs. The challenge for RedBubble for successfully monetising the community will be to widen its audience base to groups with high discretionary spend, while maintaining the cultural identity of the website.

Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to Art | Social Commerce

September 16, 2008

Maximising Search During an Economic Downturn

This week we've launched our new Hitwise Australia search report, Maximising Search During an Economic Downturn. We cover Australian consumer search trends in tight economic conditions across three key industries: financial services, travel and retail. My co-author on the report, Search Marketing Product Director, Stuart McKeown also offers best practice solutions in SEO, PPC and Landing Page Optimisation for marketers operating in this environment.

One of the interesting findings in the report was the substantial online interest in term deposits by Australian consumers. Major financial institutions in Australia have been active in promoting deposits in response to the global credit crunch; in turn we've witnessed a 150% increase in searches for 'term deposit' related terms, comparing weeks ending 5 January 2008 and 2 August 2008 (also see Robin's note on deposits in the UK).

From a search marketing perspective, we identified that financial services websites are highly dependent on brand-driven traffic; there are however significant advantages in adopting a SEO strategy that focuses on generic terms for lead generation. Some of the implementation topics covered include; building portfolios with core search terms, affiliate marketing with credit comparison websites, and creative link building.

Clients can obtain a copy via Hitwise University, or you can register here for a copy. We'll also be holding a webinar on September 24th based on this report.

Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 05:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to Credit Crunch | Search

September 12, 2008

Innovation Review – Uptake of Knowledge Management Websites

Terry Cutler's Innovation Review was released in Australia this week, containing a "blueprint for a remodelling of Australia's innovation system". The report alludes to the value of collaboration to Australian productivity, in particular "the 'mass collaboration' that is being increasingly enabled through advances in internet and broadband technology".

There are certainly numerous websites that enable user collaboration. I thought I'd take a look at the uptake of websites that allow consumers (versus enterprises) to share their professional knowledge through document sharing. Here's how they tracked in Australia:

You'll see that Google Docs has maintained significant growth in the past year, increasing 213.7% in visits by Australian users comparing August 2007 and August 2008. Google's recently launched browser, Chrome, with its advancements in processing speeds is likely to help foster document sharing online.

Following Google Docs in share of visits was Scribd. While Google Docs attracted nearly double the share of visits to Scribd in August 2008, Scribd grew at a faster rate over the year, increasing 342.3% comparing August 2007 and August 2008. Scribd's information paradigm allows users to, "Publish to millions. Share with friends. Search billions of words". There is an interesting corollary in the travel agency industry where users are encouraged to, "Search, Compare, Book". Knowledge management websites should consider what action they enable consumers to complete, analogous to 'book'.

Education - Reference Websites Up 13.6% Year-on-Year in August 2008

Another indication that Australian users are increasingly turning to the Internet as a research tool is the strong growth in visits to the online Education - Reference industry:

While Wikipedia continues to dominate the Education - Reference industry with 25.42% share of visits in August 2008, websites that helped push growth in the category during the past year included, Yahoo! Answers (as well as the Australian version), WikiAnswers, and Google Scholar Australia.

Australian organisations, including publicly-owned resources such as libraries, should consider the information-sharing features of successful web 2.0 properties. Effective search engine optimisation, integration with web-based email, tagging and user-favourite lists are some examples that help enable consumer uptake.

What do you think are examples of consumer-led innovation online that can help bolster national productivity?

Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 04:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
Posted to Innovation

September 10, 2008

NZ Election: Prediction Markets, Policy Comparison and Flickr

While we've focused on the upcoming US election, New Zealand will also be holding a general election later this year. NZ users appear to have squared their attention on both the NZ and US elections, with significant search volumes querying the respective dates for each ballot.

As Palin attracts substantial online attention in the US, there has been a sharp increase in searches by NZ users for New Zealand First leader, Winston Peters. Peters has stepped down as Foreign Minister while donations to his party are under investigation. Searches for NZ Prime Minister, Helen Clark and Opposition Leader, John Key were neck-in-neck week ending 6 September 2008.

What's the most accurate method of predicting elections?

We've made the caveat previously that a search or visit is not equal to a vote, but rather indicates who or what is top-of-mind. There are other predictive methods for elections, such as traditional polling, but we're also seeing the emergence of online prediction markets. Recently launched NZ website, iPredict is a money prediction market that allows users to make 'bets' on who they think will win the election. Tapping into the 'wisdom of crowds', proponents of prediction markets argue they are more accurate given that users are incentivised to get it right. We'll be keeping track of visits to iPredict as the election nears.

What makes a policy comparison website objective?

Another interesting website that has appeared recently is Policy.net.nz. Built on a comparison model, it allows users to view policies from the major political parties in detailed and concise summaries. As an independent website, Policy.net.nz offers users an objective resource in deciding how they vote. Policy.net.nz shot up to 10th position in the Hitwise Lifestyle - Politics category during the week ending 6 September 2008. It ranked ahead of the websites of major political parties, including Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand at 12th position, National Party of New Zealand at 13th, New Zealand Labour Party at 16th, and New Zealand First at 84th, for the week ending 6 September 2008. We'll take a look at a later date at how downstream visits from Policy.net.nz are disbursed to the major political parties.

Using Flickr for your online PR strategy

It's interesting to note that Opposition Leader, John Key, has taken an interactive approach to building an online support network. Users are given a variety of options to 'connect' with him via links to PR on Flickr, YouTube and Facebook. Flickr attracted the most downstream visits from John Key's website, accounting for 32.43% of traffic for the week ending 6 September 2008. This enforces that candidates should be including photo-sharing tools in their communications strategy.

What do you think are the most effective tactics for engaging voters online?

Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 04:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to NZ Election | Politics