Insightful articles, opinion and commentary about mobile and web.

Simon van Wyk contends that while David Jones looks like it’s finally getting serious about online sales, it’s also lamentable that in 2012 they’re just getting round to it.

While the traditional retail sector continues to struggle, online retail sales are setting a blistering pace – growing at more than ten times the pace of the traditional bricks and mortar stores. According to the National Australia Bank’s inaugural Online Retail Sales Index, in 2011, annual online retail sales tipped over $10 billion for the first time.

While online sales account for just 5% of total retail spending, changing consumer preferences and spending habits are set to disrupt the traditional retail equation for ever. Furthermore, if our high street icons don’t measure up, more and more of this spend will shift offshore. The world has changed and customers are now bolder, more sophisticated, and hungrier for the best deal than ever before.
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HotHouse’s head of copy, Alan Curson, has written an opinion piece that is stirring up some lively debate on Campaign Brief.  He argues that the old mainstream is dead and that smart brands realise that rather than using the internet to support TV and print, it’s now far more effective to do it the other way around and put digital at the centre of things. See if you agree by reading the story on Campaign Brief.

In October 2011, Mary Meeker, the feted venture capitalist at KPCB, released her highly-regarded Internet Trends 2011 report. The report captured 11 key trend s and what she labelled as the Mega-Trend of the 21st Century: The empowerment of people via connected, mobile devices.

Of course, this trend is a reality everywhere. More and more of us are armed with our mobile devices of choice and use them more or less non-stop, 24×7. Just walk down any busy street and take a look around - almost everyone, regardless of their demographic, is interacting with their mobile devices.

And the more we interact with our mobile devices, the more we will want to explore the mobile web. We’re already hovering tantalizingly close to the point where more people access the Web using their mobile devices than they do using a PC. To me, it’s clear that 2012 will be the year the mobile web comes to the fore.

And so, brands will start to realise that their mobile strategy can no longer be treated in isolation. From now on, every digital experience will need to be built with mobile devices as the starting point and brands will have to develop digital experiences for three screens: the smartphone, tablet, and personal computer.

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By Simon van Wyk

Following on from last week’s post about blogger engagement, here are summaries and/or links to some case studies of successful blogger engagement programs and campaigns. We’ll also post House Party’s case studies over the coming months.

HP: (Case study summarised from the book “Digital Strategies for Powerful Corporate Communications”) The computer behemoth enjoyed a 10% increase in PC sales in one month simply by leveraging the blogging community to promote its HDX Dragon computer system in 2008. HP sent a new computer system to 31 bloggers it had identified as influential to their business, offering to let them give the computers away in competitions among their readers.

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