If you are involved in a product driven business, you can’t afford to not be on the ecommerce bandwagon. I’ll try to clarify a few things.. Where did ecommerce come from, where is it going and how your business can get the most out of it now!

To some, ecommerce is relatively new; but to most adept internet users it’s been predominant for about 10 or so years, appearing around the infamous ‘bubble’ period. For many, eBay was the first real glimpse into the time saving marvels of maxing out a credit card without leaving your IBM 386 (complete with turbo button), but these days whether or not to sell it’s second nature to sell your products online.

According to Forrester, this year US online commerce is expected to reach $173b USD and by 2014, $248b USD with 8% market share of all USretail.

This may seem very impressive, but it’s been a long time coming. Let’s look back over the history of ecommerce and we start to get an idea about how long it has taken to arrive at this turning point.

Ready to make the plunge? Then read on..

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When this 2010 election campaign is over,  Tony Abbott’s stumbling performance on last night’s 7.30 report may well be remembered as a costly moment for the Liberal’s campaign. Abbott was unimpressive generally, but in particular in his  response to questioning about the details of his party’s broadband plan. Abbott struggled with questions about the detail of the plan, then attempted to pass off his ineptitude by saying “I’m no tech head” .

What was stunning about this wasn’t  Abbott  ignorance of the detail of the policy, but the flippancy and complete lack of embarrassment with which he dealt with his lack of knowledge. By saying he “wasn’t Bill Gates”, he was implying, by proxy that technical issues were the concern of computer nerds, and that the details of the policy were beneath hin Which is stunning in both it’s arrogance and Abbott’s lack of understanding of how the real world works.

What Abbott doesn’t understand is about broadband speed is the question isn’t who in the electorate will be affected, but who won’t. What Australian business doesn’t now have a web presence? What person doesn’t pay bills or manage their finances online? What student doesn’t use the internet for study? In fact, who doesn’t go online as part of their day to day life?

The answer, evidently, is career politicians who have advisors to handle that sort of thing for them, and have never had to place an order, or pay a bill, or book a cab, or find a plumber online.  Rather than being the reserve of “tech heads”,  issues relating to broadband speed are part of mainstream life in Australia, and will only become more important.

To put the inappropriateness of the statement in context, imagine if Kerry O’Brien had asked Abbott a question about the wheat industry, and Abbott, unable to answer, had joked “Well, how would I know, I’m not Old McDonald?” Or if he had been asked an economic question and responded with “Who do I look like, Ben Bernanke? Ask a number cruncher, why don’t you?” Unthinkable.

Abbott can take some comfort in one thing, however. The man the ALP have entrusted to take him to task over this howler is Stephen Conroy.

While i’m desperately waiting for a an invitation to the Flipboard iPad app, all I’ve got is their website which I find truly amazing, yet so simple. This is a great reminder that horizontal websites can really enhance the user experience. Here is my selection of the most outstanding fresh horizontal websites. You’ll also notice that none of these websites are using Flash (only plain HTML). If you know any other well-designed horizontal websites, feel free to share them in the comments.

(Ctrl+N)

Farmhouse Fare

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As a Digital Producer one of the most common questions I’m asked (after explaining  that no, I don’t make movies) is “what’s the deal with Twitter?”  Clients  in particular will acknowledge Twitter’s importance as a tool for their organisation, but express a slight bewilderment at how or why it is useful to them on a personal level.  Someone recently said  “I can see why WE need to be using it, but why should I be using it?”pretty much summing the conundrum up. Almost as common are people who flirt with it for a few weeks, then lose interest. The most common reason?  “Oh, I started using it, but couldn’t think of anything to say so I stopped.

In Australia,  the stats back up the anecdotes. There are currently around 277,000 users, or roughly 1.5 % of the population. In the US, the following is far greater(a detailed breakdown of the numbers, with an incorrect headline, here), but still nothing like the level that Facebook’s are or MySpace’s were. The uptake experience of people I’ve talked to mirrors the stats as well. An estimate 40% of users drop off in the first month.

For professionals and businesses, there’s not really much debate anymore about Twitter’s worth. It has proven itself  an outstanding means by which to build a brand,  for business to business communication, and to speak directly to those interested in your band. If you’re already a celebrity, all the better – the opportunity for to connect with fans and to build your fame by giving them a taste of your fabulous celebrity lifestyle, at no cost to yourself, is just outstanding.  If you’re a tech person, or a media professional, or work in an agency, again, the benefits and uses are obvious and immediate.

But what about the average person, you ask? How do they make Twitter more than just “that website with the bird”? Pretty easily. Here are igloo’s tips on making Twitter work for you:

1. Don’t assume you have to say anything.

As  I mentioned, people often express their reservations about Twitter by asking “But what would I write about?”. The answer I usually give is don’t write anything.  (more…)

Igloo has taken the Mazda Australia website into the mobile realm, bringing a number of key features for users who are on-the-go.   This includes all the details on Mazda’s vehicle range, a dealer locater, roadside assistance information, as well as news and latest offers.  The site is compatible with modern mobile browsers and has been optimised for iPhone, Blackberry and Android.  iPhone users can also get touch happy with a swipe-able gallery of vehicle ranges.

Check it out on your device of choice simply by visiting the Mazda Australia website or directly at m.mazda.com.au.

It was just one remarkable factor in a remarkable campaign, but it’s still surprising just how effectively Barack Obama was able to utilise social media and digital campaigning in his 2008 presidential campaign. He pushed his message and brand, generated support and mobilised financial backers. He attacked and diminished his opponent, without cheapening himself or tarnishing his image. Through this success in the “new media” he was also able to highlight the age difference between himself and his opponent, and add credence to his message of being the harbinger of change and innovation.

In considering the lessons this offers for the upcoming Australian election, there are a few qualifiers. The Obama social media campaign, particularly My Barack Obama, were primarily fund raising exercises. As well as financial factors, the length of the American campaign and the reliance on volunteers to facilitate their campaign rallies (occasionally quite elaborate affairs), so mobilization of supporters is vital just to keep the campaign running smoothly. As well, the Australian campaign is (mercifully) significantly shorter than it’s American equivalent and at a set time, which brings significant planning advantages.

Despite this, there’s a lot both sides can learn from Obama’s campaign, and from what’s happened since. Here, then, are the 5 tips we would give both parties, should they ask, about how they should conduct themselves digitally during the campaign. We are offering the advice to both parties because we are wise and benevolent like King Solomon and Quentin Bryce.

1. The Normal Rules of Twitter Don’t Apply (for the campaign period only)

I’m going to get slightly controversial with this one. For the next week or so, before the campaign hots up, expect to see several stories about Gillard and Abbott’s presence on Twitter. 90% of these will be bookended by a quote from a “social media expert” of some description, who’ll advise them that they are “broadcasting” too much, and that they need to “engage in conversation” (never “have more conversations”, for some reason) with their followers. Ordinarily, fine and sensible advice. Post-election, it’s just what they should be doing.  But right now, I’m not so sure. (more…)

In my post last week, I mentioned a report which blamed the lack of spending on internet advertising in part on the low quality of online advertising campaigns. It’s a claim that you hear from time to time working in the field,  either in the form of stray”I hate those pop up things” comments,  or from serious sources like this 2009 article from TechCrunch, which claims that “the internet is about freedom… and a truly free population will not be forced to watch ads”

The comment stayed with me through the week. I knew it was wrong and could thing of a lot of reasons, but didn’t post about it as I couldn’t think of a succinct way to explain it. Then the Old Spice Man exploded, and it dawned on me. It’s wrong because people LOVE internet advertising.

If you’ve been in a sleeping pill induced coma for the past week, the Old Spice Man is a deodorant campaign which has exploded. It’s mildly amusing bit in the Chuck Norris/ Barry “The Cougar” Dawson vein (you could almost call the humour Anchorman-lite)  which has exploded across the internet. It has 55 million YouTube views, and the campaign’s been given legs with the having the character uploading personal responses to users from various social media sources, answering questions on Yahoo, and so on.

The campaign’s not a great one, but it shows just how deeply internet advertising can penetrate if it is popular – or more correctly, how deeply a popular campaign can disseminate with proper integration and some momentum. This is advertiser created content as a legitimate entertainment source – people are engaging because they like the campaign in and of itself, not the product. Advertisements – not advertiser funded content, advertisements – are now a legitimate form of entertainment. (more…)

As I live in the outer south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, my working week involves a fair amount of traveling. Train travel to be specific. To keep myself busy/sane on the daily commute I usually either read a good crime novel, check the latest headlines on my trusty N95 or listen to a recent episode of one my podcasts. While flicking through some old podcast episodes the other day  I came across this one from the hanselminutes podcast by Scott Hanselman. The episode talks about a new project called ASP.NET Web Forms MVP and it really caught my attention. On the project’s website, the two Australian  creators state:

The ASP.NET Web Forms MVP project is about bringing the love back to Web Forms through a renewed approach to using it – an approach that facilitates separation of concerns and testability whilst maintaining the rapid development that Web Forms was built to deliver.

The initial questions that popped up in my head after reading the project summary on their website was: How is this different to the MVC framework and can they be used in unison? Facilitating separation of concerns and improving testability could easily be used to describe MVC so at a glance it would look like they are trying to create a competing framework. However after listening to the podcast episode and reading a bit more about the capabilities of the framework it seems that it’s more about improving the current webforms development processes than competing with MVC or other processes. Both frameworks lend themselves well in different situations. Sometimes one is more suited then the other and sometimes maybe a mixture of both is the best approach.

Our latest website project, the redevelopment of the Mazda Australia website (mazda.com.au), was built using the Sitecore CMS web platform. The Sitecore framework is built on top of the ASP.NET Web Forms which means that you are more or less ‘stuck’ using the webforms model. As someone that has worked with Web Forms for quite a while I am happy to see that someone is making an effort to put the fun back in webforms development. I think this framework could be a very useful addition to the development toolbox here at Igloo as we gear up to tackle our next big website project.

Check out theese links if you are interested in learning more about this framework:

• Visit the website
• Listen to what one of the creators (Tatham Oddie) has to say about it on the hanselminutes podcast or the TalkingShopDownUnder podcast
• Watch a discussion from TechEd 2009 by the creators Tatham Oddie and Damian Edwards

How do you chose which framework to use in your website projects?

For me, there are few things more motivating than being told I won’t be able achieve something that I set my mind to. So it was with a strong sense of pride and satisfaction that I sat as part of a very dedicated team of digital designers and developers while we put finishing touches to the new Mazda Australia website last night. We’d been told many times that we’d never deliver the site in the timeframe we committed to and a number of times during the development it looked like this would be correct. But a Herculean effort from our team has ensured we got there in the end and definitely feels good.

Over the past 6 months, as we’ve scoped, designed and built this site, at times I’ve felt like a bit of a surrogate mother. So much time and effort is invested in effectively nurturing the development the website that it almost seems strange handing over responsibility for it’s ‘real life’.

The site was born, as is the way with website launches, in the wee hours of this morning. And just like the beginning of human life the first few hours will be filled with lots of tests and poking and prodding to ensure the vital signs are OK. So far so good.

The most satisfying part of this whole process, however, has been the team spirit that everyone involved in the project have built. Many people have sacrificed enormous amounts of their personal time in order to achieve this great result and I can’t thank our team enough for their effort and attitude from start to finish. We’ve learned a lot about each other along the way. Some can’t eat chilli, some have mad soccer skills, some have awesome collections of 80s French dance tunes and some had never seen UFC until this project exposed them to the likes of Brock Lesner and Rashad Evans.

Now is the time to reacquaint ourselves with our partners and families and figure out how to deliver a web development project within business hours. Someone told me it can’t be done. We’ll see …

To see the new Mazda Australia website, go to www.mazda.com.au.

By Adam Leys – igloo Client Service Director

Its very rare that i go to a new site that captures my interest for more than a couple of seconds or gets a return visit. The site may look fantastic, have a crazy papervision interface, integrate super nice video and be selling me a product that i’d love to own, but the overall experience feels like the previous site i just visited and was just another exercise in current trends.

Then there’s the sites or ideas that allow me enjoy the my limited time spent soaking up what online media has to offer, its got nothing to do with content or the product being sold, but rather the elegant execution and the considered and engaging animation and interaction.

This got me thinking into what has been some really simple and elegant ideas that have captured my interest and have been worthy of the ‘Send to All’ email.

Some of these are getting old, but hey ive remembered them because i enjoyed the experience and continually keep referring them.

http://wonder-wall.com/
http://www.muji.com/rhythm/
http://changeperspective.saab.com/
http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/landing_page
http://www.gettheglass.com/
http://thankyou.thisisgrow.com/TFWA
http://soytuaire.labuat.com/
http://panamera.com/#/home
http://www.thefuntheory.com/

Im sure ive left off a few gems, got anymore for the list?