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

Geek Video of the Month

This month’s Geek Video combines one of our themes of the month, social commerce, and our love of anything Smartphone and App based into one neat little package.

Last month saw the release of Pizza Express and PayPal’s innovative new app, combining the physical retail industry with online payments for the first time in the UK market. As demonstrated in the video above, it’s not just about paying! You can also find a restaurant, book a table, see the menu and keep track of receipts for purchases.

Currently the app can be used in all 370 Pizza Express restaurants in the UK, and will ultimately be supported by a company-wide roll-out of free WiFi in each restaurant. Depending on its success and uptake, perhaps we can look forward to seeing versions developed for other operating systems and maybe even other retail companies taking a look into integrating their online-offline shopping experience! Well done Pizza Express ;)


Author: Alice Cheetham

Excited about Social Commerce

This month on the blog we will be discussing what we love about Social Commerce. We aim to talk about word of mouth marketing, social commerce websites we like, integrating your shop with Facebook and social commerce functionality we recommend.

Retail / E-Tail has entered a new phrase where product discovery and purchase decisions are informed by the collective and distributed via social intelligence of peoples’ own networks of interactions/social graphs. There are a number of websites that encourage social discovery of products found online; two of our favourites for social discovery of products are Polyvore and Kaboodle.

Social commerce is not new; Amazon's customer reviews and Ebay's groups could be classed as early examples of social commerce. The term has come back in the lime light, with announcement of Facebook Credits and news that some of our favourite brands have set up a Facebook shop. Of late there have also been some clear winners in social commerce, with Groupon (a social deal site) reported as being the fastest growing company ever. Furthermore, within our industry there are many stories about brands making their website more social, for example integrating Facebook plugins to their websites.

There was a recent survey of Facebook users (by 8th Bridge) which found that one third of Facebook users prefer never to leave Facebook for functionality, including shopping, suggesting that Facebook is morphing into a social commerce platform giving further insight that is people not brands that are driving social commerce. However, in contradiction to that point, it must be noted that, social commerce on Facebook is yet to make its mark in the UK. The IAB recently reported (5th July 2011) that a survey found that 89% of UK social networkers have yet to buy anything from Facebook and with 44% not interested in doing so.

From the same study, the IAB found that “tapping into the power of online recommendations and the influence of friends is essential to make UK shopping more social. Some 53% of consumers were more likely to look up information about a brand if a friend had recommended it, and almost one fifth (17%) stated they were likely http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifto buy from a brand if it was recommended by someone they knew” Read more about the IAB study on UK social shopping behaviours here on the IABUK website.

It is important for any brand to consider how they are creating a social experience for their customers, both online and offline. We think Simple engage well with their skincare customers

Common questions include: How will their customers recommend them to others? Are our customers likely to rave about our latest products? Would they be interested in sending a coupon to friends? Which social media channel i.e.: Facebook, Twitter, should we use? How will this relate to our overall business objectives? Which social share icons will be useful for our customers and for overall website growth?

Rocktime are regularly making changes to their client websites to enable them to create a more social shopping experience. Where appropriate they are advising their clients to add appropriate social share icons, where possible think niche, to mine and nurture their brand ambassadors and to monitor customer behaviour to maximise return on investment from social activities, i.e.: identifying that competitions are best run at lunch time.

Word of mouth has always influenced purchase decisions; we are encouraging clients to bring reviews onto their site for social and SEO benefits and to enable site visitors the option to spread news of their reviews / interaction further. This is based on the fact that 90% of purchasing decisions are subject to social influence (Wired magazine, 2011).

According to research from Booz and Company (May 2011) it is expected that the social commerce market will soar to $30 billion by 2015.

A few of our other social commerce facts, which we have collated whilst monitoring trends over the past 3 years, include:

• 150 million people engage with Facebook in external websites each month (Facebook, 2011)

• Social Media in the UK: A visitor coming from a social media site is ten times more likely to make a purchase online than an average visitor- 7% vs. 71%. (Simply Zesty, 2010)

• 53% of people on Twitter recommend companies/products in their Tweets and 48% state their intention to buy the product (ROI Research for Performance, June 2010)

• Two or more channels are used by 78% of consumers to browse, research and make purchases. (ATG, March 2010)

• In the near future we will no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media. (Opinion from Socialnomics, August 2009)

• 90% of online consumers trust recommendations from people they know and 70% trust opinions of unknown users (Econsultancy, July 09)

• 60% of retailers use customer reviews, 55% say reviews are a priority in the company year (Shop.org, July 09)

• 25% of search results for the world's 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. (Socialnomics, August 2009)

It was also interesting to find out recently that the most active social sharers are women aged 27 to 33; this demographic also drives the highest conversions on social media sites (Research from Spinback, reported in Mashable 12/05/2011).

Rocktime has set up an internal Steering Group on Social Commerce to make strategic decisions on the growth of social commerce within the Rocktime E-commerce shop. Best practice will always be promoted.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Social Commerce functionality will include, but by no means limited to, RSS Feeds, User Generated Content, Social Share Functionality, Social Network Integration, Social Layering, Communities and Niche Groups/Messages.

If you have questions on how you can effectively implement a Social Commerce strategy and are unsure about the best route to take, please call in and talk to a member of our Sales team. With our active ‘Social Commerce’ internal steering group, you can be positive that we will be on the ball with the most up to date trends and social functionality.

If you have any further social commerce statistics that you would like to share with us, feel free to leave a comment below.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

Image credit goes to Sarah, who snapped the Facebook Credit Cards in her local Tescos and for the second image credit goes to the Janrain Blog who write about the four emerging social commerce tools for retailers.

Social Media Review: Shopping Centres

Shopping centre marketers are starting to use social networking as a cost effective method of keeping their retail destinations in front of their key audiences.

Social media for shops (on and offline) has proven to be a great tool to drive awareness, footfall and most importantly sales. We are seeing a number of shopping centres now promoting the ‘Community’ feel on their sites, but many are missing a trick in integrating their community focus with social media.

Rocktime works with a number of fashion and beauty bloggers, who we know regularly tweet and blog about new store openings at their local shopping centres and are eager to promote the latest shopping trends to their followers. As a consequence, there is a significant opportunity for shopping centre marketing managers to leverage and connect with the local fashion bloggers, letting them know in advance of new launches, shops, or possibly even blogger-specific events. Many shopping centres use Facebook to connect with their regular shoppers and this morning we found almost 100 UK shopping centres of differing sizes that currently use Twitter.

The majority use Twitter to interact and engage with fans and shopping centre staff as well as promoting:

• Shop offers
• New launches
• New shop openings
• Meal deals
• Competitions-West12shopping centre in Shepherds Bush is particularly active
• Following the stores in their centres & Re Tweeting their promotions & news


Ashford Outlet Centre in Kent regularly posts lifestyle tips, new shops, charity events and personal shopping services on their blog. Their BIO states:

“Insider news on the latest stock, best buys and events from the people who work at, shop at and love Ashford Designer Outlet”

Bridgend Outlet centre has a similar message:
“Insider news on the latest stock, best buys and events from the people who work at, shop at and love Bridgend Designer Outlet”

On closer review this particular chain of Outlet centres in the UK shares the same web template, with each also offering a blog in the same standard design. Each page within the website is unique as they are focused on the individual shopping centre locations and facilities; content is however repeated across the blogs, which isn’t a good strategy for SEO, as the shopping outlet with the most links to it will be the one that will receive a placement in the search results for that blog post. Nonetheless this is an effective way of getting the word out on what is new to a location-targeted audience.

View the links below to understand more about the standard template designs:

Ashford Designer Outlet

Bridgend Designer Outlet

We recommend that shopping centres use social media as part of their overall marketing plan, but for true ROI it should not be viewed as an ‘add on’ but must be integrated with traditional media marketing such as print and radio, as well as focused on the website search optimisation strategy.

If you give shoppers a reason to integrate with your communities, then shopping centres can then drive these campaigns via other marketing channels - i.e. posters within the centre, local newspapers, or social responsible community PR programmes to increase community involvement further.

Examples of encouraging shopper to interact might include the following:

“Find out about all the latest shopping centre gossip over at Twitter and Facebook”

“Let us know what you think of the new XY store over at our blog”.

“Who would you like to turn on the Xmas lights? Vote over at our Facebook page”

“Keep up with the latest style trends with us”
(view: http://www.westfieldstylenotes.com/springsummer-preview-river-island/)

Social Networking can also assist with the creation of other cost effective ideas, which can be derived by listening, learning and engaging with your fans within social networks or on your corporate blog.

Shopping Centre Marketing Managers, or a designated marketing agency, can use social media to trail out new ways of getting people increase footfall to a destination, such as:

“Take part in an exclusive competition; pick up a leaflet from the info office this weekend”

“Print off this voucher available on Facebook and get it stamped over at the Info desk and receive discounts at xy store”

The information captured can then be fed back into the shopping centre’s marketing database, and used to further help promote community involvement and most importantly drive further footfall.

Sharing with you my (current) top ten shopping centres using Social Media
Bicester Village (Club, YouTube, Twitter, ENews, Facebook, Flickr, RSS)
West 12 Shopping (Twitter,VIP ENews)
West Quay (Twitter,Facebook)
GunWharf Quays (Club, Facebook, Twitter)
Liverpool One (Twitter, ENews)
West Orchards (Twitter, Facebook, ENews)
Spinningfields (Community, Club, Twitter)
Westfield (Twitter, Style Blog)
Bullring (Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, RSS, Community, ENews)
Trafford Centre (Twitter, Facebook, Blog, YouTube)

As a team we really are getting quite passionate about the value of social media for retail clients, if you are in retail and would like to discuss this further please get in touch with Fiona Anderson in the Flashlight Team.

Fiona worked on early in-store theatre innovations for fashion brands, through to current expanding a brand’s online footprint. Fiona’s direct experience with the challenges of operating a shopping centre has been the Dolphin Shopping Centre, in Poole and small scale events at The Cascades Shopping Centre, in Portsmouth, back in 2004. Surprisingly she has been quoted as saying “she hates shopping for herself but loves the shopping research for clients”. Give her a call and convince her that your shop, shopping centre or retail experience will change her mind.

Our Logic Content Management System boasts several modules to suit retail clients including: Voucher Codes, Competition module, Community features, Store Locator, find out more about Rocktimes Bespoke Web CMS here.

In the meantime happy shopping....


Author: Sarah Griffiths @sarahgriffiths