Tesco launches virtual fitting room

Online clothing retail is big business, there’s no doubt about that, but there are some things where even the convenience of online shopping can’t beat being in the store and tying the products on yourself... or can it?

Back at the tail end of February this year, Tesco launched a Facebook based virtual fitting room, with the intention of helping customers find the perfect fit for the brand's F&F clothing online. Of course this is by no means the first venture of its type; it’s been over a year now since eBay did a similar foray into augmented reality themselves.

Similar to the eBay Fashion mobile app, Tesco’s virtual fitting room uses a photo of yourself and your body measurements to try on various clothing from their range, much like a figurative paper doll. Though unlike eBay, rather than a stand-alone mobile app, Tesco instead opted for a Facebook app, linked in directly with their social media strategy. Incorporated in this is the ability to easily share content via Facebook.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there is any statistics currently available, but there are some other similar ventures we can look at. Fits.me launched their virtual fitting room in 2010 and currently reports to have a 57% increase in sales and a 28% reduction in returns and associated costs. Whether these augmented reality fitting rooms for the will prove to be useful or just another modern technology gimmick remains to be seen.

Of course, bespoke software and applications doesn’t have to be all about fitting rooms and augmented reality! Why not look at what we’ve done here at Rocktime and get in contact with our sales team.  


Author: Alice Cheetham

Geek Video of the Month

The GPU Technology Conference (or GTC12 for short), which ran in California last month, aims to highlight advances in computing advances and their importance to the future of science and innovation.

With an agenda like that, it's no wonder we're finding technology that looks like it's straight from a science fiction film!

This month's Geek video courtesy of Andy, our Technical Manager, feels very Minority Report. Built by Eyesight Mobile Technologies, the firm's software uses a regular web camera and allows you to control a laptop with hand gestures. The software works regardless of the camera hardware, computer power and light; maybe before long we'll be seeing this Touch Free user interface technology.


Author: Alice Cheetham, Andy Clarke

Dealing with the new cookie directive

A year after it was first announced and this weekend sees the deadline for businesses to implement the new law governing use of cookies on their websites. From Sunday onwards, all sites will be required to obtain informed consent from visitors before saving cookies onto a machine.

Just to refresh our memories, what exactly is a cookie? To put it simply, they’re pieces of personal data that are stored when users browse the internet. They’re often used for the sakes of remembering user names and passwords, targeted advertising or analytics and so on. The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) breaks them down into three categories;

Session Cookies

These are short term cookies, usually only lasting during a single browser setting, they might be used for example by an online bank, and then forgotten when the browser is closed and the session ended. These are deemed to be less intrusive as they are only stored for a short period.

Persistent Cookies

These last much longer, and are remembered between sessions. They might be used by a browser to remember login details for a website, or by marketers to make use of target advertising.

First &Third Party Cookies

First party cookies are set by a site being visited and usually relate to web analytics. Third party cookies are issued by a server different to the website currently being visited, for example it might be used in third party advertising to target advertise through banners or adspace on a site.

The new legislation is aimed at tackling privacy issues, which relate to the growing use of cookies by websites without the user realising it. As briefly summed up by our Technical Director last year when the legislation first came out;

• Tracking cookies need permission before they can be used. 
• Session cookies and “remember my login” cookies are okay. 
• So basically, consent is required when the cookie is not required for a service.

The ICO has been decidedly vague about how exactly businesses should go about informing their visitors about cookies. On the plus side, this means that businesses are free to analyse their site and look at how best to interpret the new regulations to suit their audience and website. However on the negative side, it also means that some businesses are throwing themselves into it in such a way that it might have a negative knock on effect.

Many sites still have yet to adopt the new ruling; even the government has admitted it won’t be up to speed by the time the deadline ticks over. Fortunately it seems the ICO has no plans to chase rogues straight away, instead they are hoping companies will become more focused finding the most suitable form of implementation.

We’re already helping our clients with work on meeting the new cookie legislation, so if it’s something your business is keen to look into, why not come in for a consultation or talk to our Sales Team about how we can help you out.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Geek Video of the Month

 It's early days yet, but last month, Google released this video of Project Glass, perhaps showing a taste of things to come?

Looking like they've come straight from a science fiction flick, the concept of these augmented reality specs show us a wire-framed glass with a small display over the right eye. Also included is a camera, microphone, GPS and one would assume a wireless connector to make the whole thing work.

Project Glass emerged from the Google X Lab, responsible for other interesting technologies such as Google's self-driving car. Apparently, the glasses are rumoured to cost around the price of a top range smart-phone and hope to be out by the end of 2012.

Whilst I think the idea behind it is great, I'm not sure our current hardware is quite up to it! But fingers crossed!


Author: Alice Cheetham, Andy Clarke

Optimising landing pages

First impressions are important; as the quote goes “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”. The first impression a potential user has with your website could decide whether they stay and look around or dive straight for that backwards arrow on their browser window.

Your sites landing pages could be one of, if not the, most important page of your site. Here’s a few simple Do’s and Don’ts with the aim of helping lower bounce rates and up returning visitors.

 Do: 

Have a clear call to action:
The aim of a landing page is to clearly prompt towards a certain action or results. Whether it’s purchasing an item, registering or signing up for a newsletter or even simply encouraging visitors to explore your site more, it’s important to stay focused on that goal.

Your aim is to make the trip for your visitor as simple as possible, the easier or more enjoyable you make it for your customer to get to the end of their user journey through your site, the more likely they are to stick to it.

Use brand validation:
If you’ve got some big clients on your list, don’t be afraid to name drop and put their logos out there. Association can be a powerful tool and increase trust in a company, and as we mentioned when looking at site usability, trust can be a very important factor online.

Share!
Most people are familiar with social media, the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and such. Based from the common mantra that the easier something is to do, the more likely people are to do it, putting in social share icons will help spread your site around. Statistics dictates that more likely than not, the more visitors to your site then the more conversions you’ll make!

Optimise!
Keep coming back to your analytics and looking at your sales conversions, you might find that certain keywords are pulling in customers and others less so. Of course these can change constantly, so it’s important to keep doing it! After a while you’re sure to find the combinations that work best for your market, so keep reviewing.

Be design and user conscious: 
Of course, with scroll bars on windows, your site can technically be as ‘long’ as you want it, but resist the temptation to go crazy! It’s fairly well acknowledged that most people don’t pay much attention to content ‘below the fold’ (anything that users have to scroll down to view). So don’t hang around and get straight to the point at the top of your page.

Keeping basic aesthetics and consistency is important throughout your site. A design that looks cheap and obnoxious doesn’t help a company’s credibility, and a poorly built site will not encourage users to stay and look around.

Cater for different platforms:
Smart-phones are everywhere, and now tablets too! Of course this can depend on your target audience or what your aim is for your landing page, but with more and more people browsing through their mobile devices, it’s something many companies need to take into account. There are plenty of different approaches you can take with this; from responsive design to a completely optimised website, or even a mobile application.

Don’t: 

Go overboard:
Simple designs are best; furthermore make sure your page loads quickly. An image heavy landing page may look great on paper, but in practice anything that takes longer than a few seconds to load is going to lose visitors.

Whilst we’re on the topic of design, try and keep a smooth consistent flow from page to page on your site, whether its colour palette or visual elements, you don’t want to confuse your visitor by convincing them they’ve stumbled into something entirely new the moment they stray away from your landing page.

Make it too complex:
Depending on the aim of your landing page, you might have some kind of simple functionality on it, such as a form to sign up for a newsletter and so on. Keep it simple! The quicker and easier it is the better, let the user tab between fields, use check boxes rather then drop down menus and auto-populate where you can. Avoid asking for too much detail if you can, it might be a deal killer.

Misrepresent:
People love kittens (or puppies, if you prefer) but you don’t need one on your landing page (unless maybe you’re selling kittens? In which case I guess you could get away with it...), a bit of creativity isn’t a bad thing, but you don’t need to distract your customers from their goal.

Furthermore you certainly don’t want to give your user the wrong impression; nobody likes to waste their time. Try and avoid content on your page that doesn’t ultimately point towards the visitors intended destination.


Now of course there are plenty more odds and ends that you can incorporate when looking at optimising landing pages, this is just a quick overview. Even then some of these points may be more heavily weighted then others, depending on the aim of your particular landing pages. If you'd like to read more about optimising and usability from an e-commerce point of view, then take a look at last month's light hearted take on it.

If you're interested in learning more about how Rocktime can help you, from sites to search marketing or mobile to bespoke development then why not get in contact and drop our sales team a line.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Geek Video of the Month

Why go to the supermarket, when the supermarket can come to you? Check out this month's Geek Video for an innovative idea from big-name retail brand, Tesco.

Their Korean network of shops, Homeplus, ran this fantastic campaign using QR codes and mCommerce. As you can see in the video, the subway store allows commuters to do their shopping on the fly, with deliveries arranged in hours and minutes rather than days, so your shopping is on the way to your house, as you are!

From the looks of it, the idea was very well received, the return on investment is certainly more than tangible. At the time this campaign ran, in June of last year, new customer registrations for Home Plus increased by 79% and sales by 130% and Tesco Homeplus became the number 1 online and 2nd offline supermarket in Korea.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Google Venice update and Local Search

Here at Rocktime we do love Local, and usefully for us and our clients, Google loves Local too. The Google Venice update in February sees a few tweaks to search engine rankings which can be summed up in the following;

• Local results will be more heavily favoured in search rankings

• Local results will now be ranked higher for broad search terms

• Google now returns the searcher more relevant, specific, personalised results relating to the location.

Since the Panda update almost a year ago, there are three other significant Google updates worth being aware of;

In August 2011, Caffeine was initiated in order to create a faster, more accurate indexing and search system and to better handle rich media and real-time content.

November 2011 saw the release of Fresh which enhanced the importance of adding new fresh content to a web site and was largely about chronological order of content. Google Fresh acted to give more weight to websites producing new content than ones that haven’t produced a new page or post in years.

Most recently in January 2012, Google released Search plus Your World (SpYW), which you can read about on our own article about the SpYW launch. In brief this update increased the importance of social content in searches, as well as additionally prioritising Google’s own social network site, Google+, in search results.


Author: Alice Cheetham

2012 Social Media Startups

Hot on the coat tails of social media’s current love affair with Pinterest, come a handful of start ups that have all kicked off in 2012. Some less subtle then others! Let’s take a quick look at just a handful of them.

“Social Travel” has been growing in leaps and bounds. As everything seems to follow Pinterest in trending towards more visual approaches to content; we’re seeing a lot of similarly styled sites popping up.

Trippy recently redesigned its site to jump on the Pinterest bandwagon. Users can now create travel boards and can pin images to them, comment, and also choose to tag their images with “Want to go” or “been there”.

Though originally launched some 3 years ago, just earlier this month, the visual-travel-discovery site, Wanderfly, redesigned and re launched their site. Gtrot, another social travel site has also opted for a more visual focused design update, with similar photo uploading and recommendations.

Now moving away from travel and more to commerce, Fancy can be described as a Pinterest catering for ecommerce merchants, facilitating ecommerce in two ways;

• The majority of items pinned on Fancy come straight from ecommerce stores, so a ‘Buy it’ button takes users straight to the merchant's page

• Users can also purchase items directly from the Fancy site, involving merchants more directly in the process. This requires merchants to find items that users have fancied, when they find something that they stock the merchant can place a bid to sell that particular item, through Fancy, by using the ‘I want to sell it’ button.

Pingram.me sells itself as a mash up of Instagram and Pinterest, though you’d be hard pushed to tell the difference between it and the latter of those two at a glance. The major difference between the two is that pinning on Pingram is only enabled on photos taken by other Pingram users. This approach is intended to both respect Pinterest etiquette and protect other Instagram users from having their images shared unknowingly.

Now moving momentarily back to the world of Social Travel, but refreshingly un-Pinterest like, we have this new site, Tripbirds. Rather than relying on friends to create content, Tripbirds instead organises geotagged content from other friends on different platforms, which at the moment includes popular media such as Facebook, Foursquare and Instagram.

Mashable has kindly outlined ‘9 social networks to watch’; such as Path, Highlight, Sonar, Banjo, Glancee, Localmind, Forecast, Gogobot and Fancy which we mentioned above. All these social networks are trying to win an audience over from Facebook, yet trying not to become too similar to Facebook; which already offers some very similar features to these new start-ups and has the added bonus of being used by many of the businesses we work with and certainly all our friends.

Of course, whilst spreading your influence is important, getting on board every social media fad that pops up isn’t a constructive use of time and effort. If you’re interested in investing into social media and discovering where to focus your efforts, why not get in contact with Rocktime and talk to our Flashlight team about discovering a Social media strategy tailored for you.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Utilising Pinterest for Brands and Business

As a business you may want to encourage engagement, either through visitors stumbling across your own Pinterest board, or allowing visitors to pin your content to their boards. Both of these are easily done through the lines of buttons under the images on Pinterest, similar to Facebook’s approach with their Like/Share buttons.

In order to facilitate this, the Pinterest site offers both a “Follow Button” and a “Pin it” button that can easily be incorporated into sites. You can even install a "Pin it" button into your browser bar or download the Pinterest App for iOS.

All this has lead to some very popular Pinterest boards and users, attracting thousands of views and followers. Back in February, Mashable & Zoomsphere looked into the top followed Pinterest brands. At the time the most popular board on Pinterest is The Perfect Palette, a blog focusing as a resource for weddings, and has amassed an impressive 240,000 followers. Many of the top 10 brands lend themselves well to the primarily female audience that Pinterest seems to attract, such as Real Simple magazine, Better Homes & Gardens and Whole Foods to name but a few.

Whilst there are plenty of home crafting and design ideas floating around, e-commerce has also been making leaps and bounds via Pinterest. Fashion retailers such as ASOS have been quick to get on side with Pinterest. The very fact that Pinterest's two main strengths are that it's primarily visual AND social lend it extremely well to products such as beauty and fashion.



Of course, on the other side of the coin, you may not want people to be able to share content from your site on their boards. Why? Because there’s no authentication process on pinning content, essentially the company allows its members to add copyrighted content without the original creator’s permission. Obviously, for many companies and individuals this could prove to be a serious issue.

As stated by Ben Silbermann, CEO of Pinterest, “We care about respecting the rights of copyright holders. We understand and respect that sometimes site owners do not want any of their material pinned.”

To avoid such problems, Pinterest now provides site owners with a snippet of code, which can be found at the bottom of their Help page, which deters visitors from pinning their content.

Also in the works, Pinterest is currently testing a character limit for pin options in the hopes of preventing users from stealing content such as blog posts or articles, but this has not been rolled out to the public yet.

If you're interested in learning more about Pinterest, there's no shortage of information around, including our own Introduction to Pinterest on the Rocktime Blog.

There are quite a few lovely infographs available on the topic, which provide a great overview of how Pinterest has shot to fame and the kind of user base it attracts.

Whether it's technical, marketing or social, if you're after more information and want to talk to our sales team, then why not get in contact with us here at Rocktime.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Geek Video of the Month

Touch screens are pretty cool right? We certainly seemed to have embraced them, with the popular trend of smartphones and tablets in fairly common use. How about a touch screen that can project onto any surface?

This month's Geek Video from Andy, our Technical Manager, demonstrates some "work in progress" tech from Microsoft; a Wearable Multitouch Projector. It may not be the most elegant of pieces to wear about, but it's definitely a start! The projector uses motion and depth cameras, as well as projector, to turn any flat surface into a gesture sensitive display.

It doesn't seem too far-fetched to think that in time they'll be able to shrink it down to something more manageable. Alternatively, maybe we'll see smaller wall mounted units for pop up displays or touch screens. It's an interesting idea, just imagine the potential!


Author: Alice Cheetham

Facebook updates Insights; real time analytics

The wind of change is certainly blowing strong in the Facebook camp. Along with their new Timeline format, of which the compulsory switch over for is fast approaching, Facebook Insights (their built in analytics engine) has also had an update.

Earlier this year Facebook updated their own analytics engine, Insights, to now allow statistics to be viewed in real-time, removing the two day delay previously in place. This is a great update for any brand that runs campaigns through their Facebook pages, especially those on a short time scale, as it allows brands to see how fast information is spreading immediately.

This change to real time statistics will also help brands and businesses to see what’s working and what’s not, and allow them to adjust their content or approach appropriately.


The update to Insights also includes a new measurement “People talking about this”, it’s a little ambiguous, and in fact covers quite a range of factors. Ultimately it allows you to view the numbers of Facebook users who have:

• Liked your page
• Liked, commented on or shared a post on your page
• Answered a question you’ve asked
• Responded to any events you’ve announced
• Mentioned your page
• Tagged your page in a photo
• Checked in, or recommended your place

This certainly is great news for marketing and social media strategy, but developers will also need to be aware that certain metrics that once were read by Insights are being removed, check out their Developer page on Insights for more information.

If you’re interested in learning how Rocktime can help you with Social Media and adjusting to changes in the internet environment, then why not get in contact with our Sales Team and arrange a meeting.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Why use Google Plus?

Maintaining a multi-platform social media strategy can be a demanding and time consuming task, but the benefits can more then pay off!

Using Social Media, such as Facebook, Twitter & Google+, has shaped up to be a powerful drawing-in tool, attracting potential customers. Case in point; Samsung had a fantastic mobile ad campaign, which saw three times above average click through rate by linking directly to their social media accounts. This example goes to show that linking to social media can certainly achieve very tangible results.

Of course, using social media is all well and good, but nothing beats some good statistics and real figures for seeing how much of an impact you're having with it. Wordtracker has a great summary of methods of measuring your Google+ traffic on one of their latest articles. The article is well worth a read, not only are they looking at referral traffic from Google+, and how to measure it in Google Analytics, but Google's +1 button as well. By using tools such as Topsy, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools you can get a great idea of how your social media pages and tools are affecting your search marketing.

On the topic of Google+, whilst they may be aiming for a slightly cleaner and simpler look then Facebook’s new Timeline styled profiles, that doesn’t mean you can’t make it look nice, as shown in Mashable’s article Google Plus Profile Hacks and Econsultancy’s Top 20 Google+ Photo strips. Of course, these aren’t anywhere near as complex as ‘hacks’ but instead just a smart use of images and file naming, and relatively easy to do. On a similar premise, you can also use animations to further hook your visitors at first glance.

Finally, coordinating a social media strategy alone can seem like a daunting task, let alone across comparatively new platforms such as Google+, there are many tools available to help ease the workload. Why not take a look at our own Useful Tools section on the Rocktime site, where you can make use of our Campaign Objectives Worksheet, ROI Sales Funnel and Percentage Change Calculator. Don’t hesitate to get in contact with our sales team at Rocktime to discuss your integrated marketing strategy.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Facebook Timeline for brands

As the final roll-out of Facebook Timelines for personal profiles rolls ever nearer, this week sees the introduction of Timeline for brands as well. The option to switch to Timeline is already available for Facebook Pages, and it’s looking like the 30th of March will be the date for compulsory uptake of Timeline for pages. Some well-known brands have already got in there with some great displays of what a business can do with Timeline, but what do these changes really mean?


There's a lot of new changes to take in, perhaps the most immediate change off the bat is the removal of the landing page. In our previous thoughts on organising a Facebook Page, we were all for using iframes to create your own custom, free from Facebook formatting, landing page. In place of a landing page we now have the Timeline page, with its large header banner and Timeline arrangement down the side. Extra tabs that were once the mainstay of Facebook brand pages are now for the most part removed, and instead we have a section for photos, apps and company info.

The large cover photo is a new addition right at the top of your page, which offers a large space to personalise and open the look and feel of your page. Taking into account it’s prominent positioning, updating this regularly offers a great opportunity to make your visitors aware of new opportunities.

The profile image has also changed, from the sizeable rectangle we were allowed before, now we’re reduced to a much smaller square profile image, on the plus side, it will at least thumbnail neatly when making posts on your own wall!

Bear in mind what an app comprises of is largely up the administrator, whether it’s what was once a custom page in an iframe, or a list of free issue apps for things like events and other social network integrations, it’s likely that all previous custom tabs will be converted into ‘apps’ that the visitor can click into.

Furthermore these now load on a separate page. You can also rearrange the order of this section to highlight particular content to users.


When it comes to the actual wall, as you can see on the side, we can now add in significant events from the past and date them appropriately. As a whole the wall becomes a more dynamic and visual experience. Images and videos are larger and take a more prominent position in the wall content over text, and can either cover half or the entire width of the wall.

Timeline also adds the ability to send private messages, meaning that fans and visitors can converse with you privately, adding another dimension to potential customer services.


The backend has also been thoroughly updated and streamlined, as well as the ability to receive and send private messages. Through the admin panel overview you can check out notifications, new ‘likes’ as well as basic analytics for your page. As an administrator you now have more control over the content posted onto your wall by fans, allowing the option for all content to be reviewed before going public on your Timeline.


What are the benefits to brands?

The new cover image is a whopping 850 odd pixels wide, which presents you with a lot of graphical real estate right smack bang at the top of your Facebook page, excellent for grabbing a potential visitor and drawing them in. Its prominent position makes it great for product promotion and pushing, since it’s the first thing your visitor will see.

By pushing the info section right to the top of the page, rather than leaving it lingering in the sidelines, it now becomes a lot easier for users to get the gist of your brand immediately. Furthermore offering the ability to send private messages to and from pages opens up new channels of communication and prevents walls from becoming cluttered with conversation between admin and client, which whilst handy for engagement, may be entirely irrelevant to every other visitor to the page.

The Timeline format itself lends itself to giving out information and content much more so then the previous wall designs. Of course, the conversation between brand and client is as important as ever, and in a sense Timeline lends itself to encouraging such discussion. The constant stream of information is easily accessible on the first page, and limited only by as much information as you, the brand, put in. Offering up more information for the user to consume leads to further engagement, and prolongs the interactions you have with your visitor. Timeline appears to be less a case by case display of content and more of a streamed story, dependant of course on the information you put in in the first place.

As Mashable puts it in their explanation of why Timeline is great for brands post;

“With the focus shifting from building conversation to sharing content, the purpose of a Facebook brand page will be less about selling and more about telling an authentic story. Brands can express what makes them unique and build an emotional connection with fans through behind-the-scenes photos, blooper videos, real-time mobile pictures, sound clips and exclusive news. In addition to expressing the brand in the present, a brand can utilize the Timeline to speak to its past to reignite nostalgia and sentiment that may be associated with it.”

If you're interested in making the most of your online presence, or wanting to find out how you can include Facebook and social media into your online strategy, then why not get in contact with our Sales Team here at Rocktime.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Introduction to Pinterest

What’s the interest in Pinterest?

We’ve all heard of the likes of Facebook and Twitter, but there’s a new young upstart making waves in the Social Media world. But what exactly IS Pinterest?

Based on the premise of a virtual pinboard, Pinterest allows users to build their own image boards, adding in all kinds of media from images to videos, or discussions, and comment on both theirs and other users’ pinboards. Registration is by either invitation from an existing user, or applying for an invite through the website.


It may sound like a bit of a fad, but there’s some impressive statistics to back it up.

Pinterest has actually been around for almost 2 years, but most of that’s been spent in an invitation only beta state. It wasn’t until December 2011 that the site catapulted itself into the top 10 social networks (according to Hitwise) and the tail end of 2011 also led to TechCrunch naming Pinterest the best new start up of 2011.
January 2012 has seen that success continue, and it’s now reported that Pinterest drives more referral traffic to sites then LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+ combined! Last month comScore reported the site had 11.7 million unique visitors, making it the fastest site in history to break the 10 million unique visitor mark. Not only does it boast some impressive numbers, but Pinterest has become a top traffic driver for Retailers.

Not only is it high in the visit numbers, but there are now over 10.4 million registered users. Furthermore, a surprisingly high percentage of them are women. AppData and Facebook’s advertising tools show that just shy of 98% of Pinterests Facebook fans are female. Women between the ages of 25 and 44 make up 59% of Pinterest users. Its a great way to share and build a community of enthusiasts. The pinboards and pinner profiles are found easily and high in the search results.

Pinterest doesn’t shy away from its appeal to women either, on the Pinterest About Us page they describe their pinboards as a method to plan weddings, decorate homes and organise their favourite recipes. Of course, there are a fair few blokes as well, Fiona, here at Rocktime, has an exclusively male following of 'pinners' (each with their own beautiful looking pinboards!) for her own Music pinboard.

Naturally, Pinterest has it's own YouTube Channel, full of useful How To tips and a Twitter feed.
The biggest brand on Pinterest is 'Perfect Palette', with 244,163 Followers, 113 Boards and 6,925 Pins. The success is due to this wedding blog helping visitors to explore and choose the colour theme for an upcoming wedding.


Popular content on Pinterest covers a whole range of areas, from cooking to crafts and skincare to pets. So far it seems to have great appeal through its simple interface and ease of use. These attributes make it a great method of sharing content, your Pinterest content not only shows up on your pinboard, but can integrate straight through to your Facebook feed too; Facebook-connected Pinterest.

When reviewing web analytics, it is likely brands will start to notice new trends in keywords, traffic sources, what is driving traffic and where content is getting shared the most. So, it is well worth factoring Pinterest into an Integrated Digital Strategy.

If you’re interested in finding out how to get your foot in the door and how Social Media can further your business online, why not drop a line to our sales team here at Rocktime.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Geek Video of the Month

This month’s geek video has taken a bit of a morbid direction, asking the question “What happens to your digital life when you die?” As we invest more time and effort into our online presence, the size of our online footprint grows, but what happens to all that information after we kick the proverbial bucket?

The video infographic above by lifeinsurancefinder.com gives us some insight as to the pure amount of information about ourselves we can leave floating around the internet during our lifetime


Author: Alice Cheetham

Google launches social search ‘Search plus Your World’

Here at Rocktime we’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about Google+, reviewing the benefits of Google+ for businesses , the best practice use of Google+ and the current market and consumer trends that make the introduction of Google+ so attractive in terms of engaging on this social channel.

Kicking off 2012 with a bang, this month Google rolled out a brand new mode for its search results called ‘Search plus Your World’ (SPYW for short).

So what does this actually entail? As explained on the Google Inside Search page, if you’re logged into your Google+ account, you’ll now receive personal search results including photos from friends (and yourself!), content from circles, G+ profiles and related people and pages.

What does this mean for businesses and brands?

Google says that generic search results are less meaningful than content that is personally relevant. With SPYW this translates into friends and followers on Google+; which now has an astounding 62 million registered users. Google+ is on track to reach 400 million users by the end of 2012. If ever there was a time to psych yourself up and put together that Google+ page that’s been languishing for months, now is the moment! We’ve talked before about how interesting circles and ripples could prove to be with G+, and now it looks like it can pay off in terms of spreading your name and in search engine results as well. These changes are a step closer to full ‘social content integration into search results’. Google is giving priority to G+ content over Facebook, Twitter and blogs etc.

Unsurprisingly, not everyone is thrilled by this announcement, and you can imagine why. Twitter especially has been quite vocal about their opinion. And you can understand why companies like Facebook and Twitter would be worried; though whether this new approach to search has the power to truly shake things up remains to be seen.

Social is not about a specific social network, product, or channel anymore; it is about people, their conversations, and the insights these reveal. We’ve moved from channelled experiences and brand-controlled messages to empowered consumers in a channel-neutral marketplace. Just as we may take notice of a trend on twitter, do a search on Google, then watch a video on YouTube, check out the reviews on our mobile in our lunch break, tell our friends on Facebook, and then contact the company via their website; this can also all go on within Google+.

If you want to get develop a strategy for the Google+ channel and Search plus Your World, why not get in contact with the Rocktime Sales team
We have been helping clients to engage on the social networks for four years. Our maxim in 2009 was ‘Listen Learn Engage’, then in 2011 it evolved to ‘Inform Inspire Interact’, now in 2012, with the innovations in Google+ our maxim has evolved yet again to ‘Reach Impact Influence’. You are welcome to discuss with Flashlight, our Search Marketing Team at Rocktime, what advantages we could help bring to your business through social search (social media and search engine marketing)..



Author: Fiona Anderson & Alice Cheetham

Geek Video of the Month

Oh how exciting! It’s 2012 and what better way to start the year then; one of the world’s largest tech shows? Well ok, it might not be for everyone, but 9th of January saw the first day of the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas. The three day event draws 1,000’s of journalists and enthusiasts to see what technology the new year brings, with companies such as Samsung, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo to name but a few.

Why not take a look over the highlights of the show this year, from tablets to TV’s and laptops to smartphones and gadgets galore.


Author: Alice Cheetham

The winning Geek Video of 2011 is...

Our regular readers will know that each month we share with you our 'Geek Video' of the month. Each month videos are submitted to me, by the technical team, or clients and a monthly winner is chosen.

Without further ado, drum roll please!
Our top Geek Video for 2011 is...

The EXODesk! Featured in our December Geek Video of the Month. Sadly Santa didn’t bring me one for Christmas this year, but maybe next time.

Our highlights and runners up include this demonstration of some cool science with Quantum Levitation from November, and this fantastic infographic by Digital Life, on the future of digital from June.

Why not check out some of our previous Geek Videos and pick out some favourites yourself.

If you come across anything interesting, or find a Geek Video you think is worth featuring, why not let us know.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Geek Video of the Month

Dear Santa,

For Christmas, I would like an EXOdesk to replace my office desk at work, thanks.

Unfortunately though, it might have to wait until next year, as the video above is currently only a prototype. Built by the Canadian software company, EXOPC, their interactive desk is a tabletop computer, allowing you to manipulate objects by touch and dragging across the surface. If you’re interested in checking out more innovations about the ExoDesk, take a look over at their official development blog, EXOPC Lab.

The release date is set rather vaguely for 2012, with a rather heady price tag of $1,299. Whilst that might seem like a lot, it’s under ¼ of the price of Microsoft’s equivalent of the interactive desk, so if you’re dead set on your desk of the future, it might be something to keep an eye on!


Author: Alice Cheetham

EBay's new approach to Christmas shopping

To celebrate the Christmas season, eBay is opening their first ever UK store, though it’s not quite shopping as we know it...

Their temporary boutique opened yesterday, as scheduled, in London’s West End for just 5 days, allowing shoppers to browse their potential purchases before splashing out online. This is by no means eBay’s first foray into expanding from their online auctions; why not check out our previous article on their augmented reality app from earlier this year.

The shopping emporium works by making use of QR, or Quick Response codes. If you’re interested in learning more about QR codes and how they work, check out our previous post here. Customers can wander around the store and browse to their hearts content, purchases can then be made using a smartphone (or any other connected device that can read QR codes).

"Shoppers simply scan the QR code with their smartphone to make their loved ones’ Christmas wishes come true – no tills, no queues, no bags, no stress. Using your mobile phone, you can literally complete your shopping in a matter of clicks," claims eBay’s spokesperson.

Experts expect approximately 5.8 million shoppers to log on during the five day sales, with sales peaking at 30 gifts per second, almost double during the same period of 2010. EBay say they are expecting around 120 gifts to be purchased every minute via smartphone.

If you’re interested in learning more about how your business can take advantage of smartphone technology, or want to know how you can promote yourself over the festive period, why not get in contact with Rocktime and talk to our Sales team about the opportunities avaliable


Author: Alice Cheetham