B2B investment priority for 2013 : web development on their company site

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homepage_showcase_ihouse360According to a survey conducted by BtoB Magazine, slightly more than 70% of B2B companies will boost their spending on website development this year.

70% of respondents planned to increase spending on websites this year making web development the most widely shared digital priority. Email marketing also received attention: 62% said they will be spending more on this channel. “Web 2.0” technologies such as social media and video got somewhat less attention, though still more than a majority of respondents planned to increase their budgets for both formats. A little over one-third of respondents will be spending more on mobile this year as well.

The difference between B2B and B2C marketers? Most B2C marketers focus their attention on properties they don’t own, like Facebook and Twitter. Some brands, for instance, have gone so far as to use their Facebook Page URLs in television and print ads.

On one hand, this makes some sense, as consumers are already on Facebook and therefore may be more likely to take action. On the other hand, driving traffic to Facebook doesn’t make a lot of sense if the experience on Facebook doesn’t drive meaningful action, which is often the case. Also, having their only web presence on 3rd party properties makes them vulnerable to any changes the owners make, basically at their mercy.

By investing more into their own websites, B2B marketers signal that they understand there’s arguably a higher ROI from investing in experiences you own and control.

6 Smart & Effective Email Marketing Tactics

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Business owners are spoilt for choice with which marketing tools to use be it emails, social media or mobile marketing. An article by , features tips on how your business can engage your audience with a very basic tool – email.

Despite the decline in email, new communication channels won’t replace email. “Email is actually more important than ever with the ground swell of social and mobile,” says Greg Cangialosi, CEO of email marketing company Blue Sky Factory, which also partners with Mashable.

“When you think about the social ecosystem out there, there isn’t a tool or network available that doesn’t allow you to sign up without an email address. Email actually drives a lot of the social web activity, through notifications, alerts and more. Email is a great complement to social in that it allows marketers to extend the reach of their messages and identify influencers on their list,” he adds.

And successful brands are doing just that — cross-pollinating email marketing strategies via email clients, social platforms and mobile devices. Ultimately, brands still find email effective because it’s inexpensive and universally accepted by people all over the world.

Here are several simple, emerging email marketing methods with which brands are seeing success.

  1. Tap Into Current Events & Pop Culture
  2. Use Twitter and Facebook to Promote Opt-in Urls
  3. Segment Your Database
  4. Provide Incentives to Subscribers via Social Media
  5. Expand Email List with SMS Promotions
  6. Optimise Emails for Smart Phones

For more of this article, visit http://mashable.com/2011/04/19/email-marketing-tactics/. You may contact us for our email marketing services here.

Technology start-ups find their feet in S’pore as ecosystem develops

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SINGAPORE: A conducive eco-system is helping fuel the Internet start-up scene in Singapore. One third of companies that apply for start-up funding come from the information and communications technology, according to Spring Singapore. And some of these start-ups are seeing strong sales growth.

Since it started in February, Zalora has been doubling sales every month. To beat traditional brick and mortar shops, it offers local customer service support and a free return policy. Co-founder & regional managing director of Zalora Chris Feng said: “We want to offer the flexibility to our customers. If I buy online – let’s say I want to buy size 7, but I’m not sure if 7 or 8 or 6 is a good fit for me, so we encourage our customers to try all different sizes, and they can simply return the sizes that don’t fit them.” This has helped boost the incomes of delivery services providers.

SingPost said its logistics revenue have grown 9 per cent in the last financial year. Head & vice president, Logistics Singapore, SingPost Anthony Lim said: “In the Singapore market, some of our key customers like Zalora, Clout Shoppe, vPOST and Groupon contribute to the growth of our e-commerce, e-retail business. We have many SMEs too as our business partners and customers. They form a fast-growing segment of the e-commerce market.”

According to MasterCard, an increasing number of shoppers perceive online shopping as akin to shopping in a retail shop. Based on its online shopping behavior study last year, 34 per cent of shoppers see no difference between online shopping and shopping in a brick and mortar environment, up from 27 per cent in the previous year.

Head of programme for marketing at SIM University’s School of Business, Allan Chia, said: “Many of the new online websites and retailers – they’re basically start-ups. It’s an ideal marketing environment for start-ups, because they are catering to a whole new segment, a whole new generation of consumers who are Internet savvy, who are constantly searching online.”

Besides retailers, B2B businesses have also gone online. One-year-old start-up Chope is replacing pen-and-paper diaries when it comes to restaurant reservations. Arrif Ziaudeen, CEO, Chope, said: “Diners are able to come to Chope.com.sg, find a restaurant that they like, it queries the table management system sitting in the restaurant, finds an available slot and places them in there. The restaurant pays for that functionality by a monthly subscription fee, so its a software-as-a-service.” Chope said the number of bookings made through them is doubling every quarter. It has also grew its list of restaurants from 9 to 150.

Although Singapore represents a small market, start-ups said factors – such as Internet connectivity, and government grants – make it easier for them to do business.

Source: Channel News Asia

More S’poreans shopping via mobile devices: PayPal

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Source: Channel News Asia

SINGAPORE: More Singaporeans are shopping on the go — via their mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. This, according to a study by online payment provider PayPal.

In 2011, Singaporeans spent S$328 million shopping using their mobile devices. This represented a jump of more than seven times from just S$43 million the year before.

Almost half of those who shop online are mobile shoppers, and they accounted for almost a quarter of all online shopping last year.

PayPal said three out of four mobile commerce purchases in Singapore, worth S$244 million, were spent via smartphones while S$82 million worth of purchases were done through tablets. A tablet user will typically spend around S$380, nearly a third more than a smartphone user.

Fashion items and accessories, movie tickets and books were some of the most popular items purchased by mobile shoppers.

The study also found that tablet users typically spend more online and are willing to purchase higher—ticket items such as automotive goods and computer hardware.

Four out of 10 mobile purchases were made at home, with Singaporeans also likely to shop in the office and while commuting via public transport.

PayPal said that a 24—7 presence is key to capturing the market.

Elias Ghanem, managing director of PayPal (Southeast Asia and India), said: “You have to have a store, you have to have an online presence, You have to have a mobile presence.

“We were positively surprised to find out that 70 per cent of e— and m—commerce is done locally.”

Singapore’s mobile commerce market is expected to grow ten times to S$3.1 billion by 2015.

—CNA/ac

Starbucks is turning itself into a tech company, what about your business?

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How Starbucks is turning itself into a tech company
Photo credit: Brendan Howard / Shutterstock.com

An article by Jennifer Van Grove from Venture Beat higlights how a company like Starbucks is building its brand and connecting with its customers though social media and mobile technology. Jennifer has interviewed Adam Brotman, formerly senior vice president of Starbucks Digital Ventures, chief digital officer to find out more. With the creation of the CDO role, all of Starbuck’s digital projects — web, mobile, social media, digital marketing, Starbucks Card and loyalty, e-commerce, Wi-Fi, Starbucks Digital Network, and emerging in-store technologies — were packaged together and placed under Brotman’s care.

Not just another executive promotion, the move signaled something bigger and far more profound: Starbucks is turning into a tech company.

Seismic shift

Photo credit: Venturebeat
Adam Brotman, Chief Digital Officer, Starbucks

The way Brotman explained it to me in an exclusive interview, Starbuck’s digital businesses are as essential to the company’s ongoing success as the coffee it sells.

“[Digital] has been an essential part of how we build our brand and connect with our customers… there’s been such a seismic shift [in our interactions with customers] that we needed to pull it all together and make it a priority,” Brotman said.

To understand why, you’ll have to go back to the past. The Starbucks of 10 years ago built its brand and told its story almost exclusively through its employees (“partners,” in company parlance). Smiling faces in green aprons were largely responsible for your impression of the company and its mission.

Today, baristas remain core to the in-store experience, but the company can use its arsenal of digital tools to build even more lasting relationships with customers. With 18,000 stores in 58 countries and an expanded portfolio of products, Starbucks is relying on digital to help spur even more growth.

“Digital has to help our store partners and help the company be the way we can tell our story, build our brand, and have a relationship with our customers,” Brotman said.

The digital restructuring, championed by chief executive Howard Schultz, has been four years in making, Brotman said. The radical move to create a chief digital officer position is soon to be copied by the biggest and brightest brands.

“It’s reflective of a trend that we’re going to see happen at Fortune 500 companies around the world,” Brian Solis, principal at Altimeter Group, told VentureBeat of the CDO role.

“We live in an era where the customer landscape is not only dynamic, it’s incredibly segmented,” Solis said. “What used to work from a traditional marketing sense … now opens up a series of new touch points that we have to explore.”

By creating the chief digital officer role, Starbucks is on the right track and demonstrating that it’s thinking about the customer and the business in more fluid ways, Solis said.

“Now they’re looking at people that are increasingly mobile, increasingly social. And what [Brotman's] going to learn, and what other CDOs are going to learn, is that what it comes down to is the experience,” Solis said. “How do you connect with somebody who is living in the app economy? How do you connect with somebody who lives within the social graph? Are they similar or are they dissimilar? What’s it going to take to cultivate those types of relationships?”

Solis also pointed to makeup retailer Sephora as another brand deeply committed to digital in all the right ways. The company, recognizing that consumers’ shopping behaviors have changed, is putting iPads in stores, equipping stores with Wi-Fi, and is actively encouraging customers to shop and search online as part of the in-store, decision-making process.

“The reason why Starbucks and Sephora are investing heavily on these digital strategies, and these roles to support these digital strategies, is because it’s not just any one type of initiative that’s going to grow their customer base,” Solis said. “It takes a series of complimentary and parallel strategies that someone has to orchestrate.”

One of Starbucks’ digital means for customer engagement is a mobile payment system that’s years ahead of the curve in terms of adoption…

Read the rest of this article on VentureBeat here.

Source: Jennifer Van Grove/VentureBeat


Businesses need to create a mobile-optimised website, if they have yet to do so…

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In the article on Today newspaper titled “The challenge and promise of mobile”, the author Loren Shuster who is also director of Singapore and Emerging Markets at Google, gave his insights on why businesses in Singapore needs to start optimizing their websites to be accessible on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

In a recent study with IPSOS, Google found that Singapore has the highest smartphone penetration in the world at 62 per cent – ahead of the United States, United Kingdom and Japan. And the pace of change is revolutionary. The majority of smartphone owners surveyed had bought their device in the preceding 12 months; and three in five bought it in the last six months. This amounts to a dizzying pace of growth: Already more than 74 per cent of Singapore searches are from mobile devices.

If this sounds like a golden opportunity for advertisers large and small to engage with consumers, it is. But the hard truth is that mobile advertising is not only an opportunity, it is a necessity. Consumers have embraced the mobile revolution – which means advertisers should, too. Consider our other findings: Four in 10 used their smartphones to research and then call businesses, while 47 per cent visited a business they had found using their smartphone, 35 per cent made a purchase using their mobile phone, and 46 per cent searched for travel on mobile.

Each one of those actions represents an opportunity for businesses to grow. Yet nearly 80 per cent do not have mobile-friendly websites. If you asked a business owner whether he or she would ignore every fourth customer, the answer would be no. But with 25 per cent of retail queries coming from mobile, not having a mobile website is the same thing – and the rewards for first movers are significant. The good news is that it is not too late to be early.

Businesses can start with the basics. That does not mean designing a fancy app or even advertising on mobile right away. The first step is creating a mobile-optimised version of your website. Almost 80 per cent of Singaporean businesses do not have one, which means customers will not be able to fully engage with the business or brand even if they do advertise on phones.

The second thing many businesses get wrong is to think of an iPhone app as a mobile strategy – it is not. Businesses need to build and integrate their mobile strategy with existing campaigns. When developing their mobile strategy, marketers need to incorporate all available mobile platforms and devices, along with the mobile Web. They also need to define what they are trying to achieve: A restaurant may want to find new customers, while a large company may want a new way to engage customers.

Finally, if there is one thing we have learnt from the last 15 years, it is that those who react early to big changes in technology and media do much better than those who are late. Being early carries risks but it gives access to new and unique information about what works and what does not. Advertisers need to use that data to make informed decisions about their future mobile strategy, and even their broader business strategy.

Read the rest of this article on TODAYonline here.

So do you want to be the business who is willing to adopt such technology change early to have a winning edge against your competitors? If so, we can help! Find out more.

iFoundries receives Promising SME 500 2012 Award

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iFoundries is a proud recipient of the Promising SME 500 2012 award. The Promising SME 500 Award by the Small Medium Bussines Association of Singapore (SMBA), is an initiative hall-marked for the Top 500 Promising home-grown SMEs in Singapore and will serve as a national platform in recognition of each company’s achievements and to substantially boost its corporate brand presence.

All  Awardees have been carefully selected from a pool of nominations. To maintain the integrity of the selection process, SMBA’s board works closely with an independent Advisory Judging Panel made up of top executives from various industries and disciplines.

The management and team of iFoundries are excited and thankful to have received such an honorable award.

“We are very grateful to the organisers of SMBA for giving us such a wonderful opportunity to be selected as one of the 500 winning companies in Singapore. We would also like to thank all our clients for their wonderful support.”

- Andy Lim, Director of iFoundries

Campaign sites get boost from social media

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The proliferation of social media does not signal the end but will serve to enhance Web sites built specifically for campaign purposes in companies’ digital marketing strategies today. These sites provide focused content and context, and social networks play a key role in building customer buzz and chatter, experts point out.

Vary Yong, director of Singapore-based Web development company iFoundries, said supplementary Web sites designed specifically for marketing or promotional campaigns, for instance, microsites for events, sweepstake, game or questionnaires, were seeing fewer requests from enterprise clients compared to other services such as custom Web applications.

The cost savings from setting up marketing campaigns on free social media platforms are enticing to businesses, Yong told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail. It may also be easier for marketers to administer or moderate a Facebook profile page compared to a campaign site, he added.

 

By , ZDNet Asia on August 23, 2011

Read more on ZDNet Asia

Top 3 Web Development firms in Singapore

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Once again, iFoundries has been acknowledged by Topseos Singapore to be in the Top 3 Web Development firms ranking in Singapore.

Yes we are greatly honoured and we will continue to produce the best works for our customers!

The monthly rankings list published by topseos is a guide to the cream of the crop internet marketing vendors in the industry.

About topseos
Since its introduction in 2002, topseos has been identified as an independent authority on vendors who supply internet marketing products and services ranging from the best search engine optimization companies to the best pay per click management tools. In addition, topseos connects thousands of businesses each year that are looking for internet marketing services with those who provide it. http://www.topseos.sg

JED Announces Support System

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In March 2011 the JED hit 7000 listings.  Now, half way to 8000, we are announcing a major change and improvement to the JED.  It’s my pleasure to introduce the JED Support System.  With over a quarter million registered users in the JED, providing support is the primary use of volunteer time.  In the latest blog, we outlined a few areas of improvements that we would be working on over the coming months.  One of these areas was a new ticket support system.  After nearly two years going back and forth between what we wanted for the teams, end users and management, we have come up with a solution that goes far beyond standard ticket support and includes a Knowledge Base, Announcement Panel, Download and Sample Repository, task calendaring, integration with Mosets Tree and ArtofUser and more!

So Where Is It?

The new support portal is located currently only on the JED.  You can access it by clicking here or on the “Listing Support” link on the bottom left of the JED menu.  Eventually, all tickets across each directory/site will end up archived on my.joomla.org to provide cross-team access to support.

JED Support System

Who is it for?

Any user with a current or new listing and in general, any user of the JED that needs access to team support.  From today foward, all communication regarding listings or accounts on the JED will go through this ticket support system. If you email the team, you will receive a response asking you to submit a ticket.  This helps us track requests and fulfill them as quickly as possible.

What software is used?

After much testing, the JED under oversight of the CLT chose MaQma Helpdesk.  A very special thanks to Pedro Goncalves for his dediecation to this project and for a great product.  New features and improvements are still being developed that will even further enahnce the system we have now.

MaQma Support Desk Software

Where did the idea come from?

Back in 2009 Elin Waring, then president of OSM, came up with the idea that it would be beneficial to the community and working groups if there was a system in place to monitor communication and proactively respond to recurring issues.  At the time, a mixture of CiviCRM and JForce was being developed.  However, as with many things in life, things changes.  As with many things in software, the problems we are trying to solve today may be completely different tomorrow.  The initial team of Jennifer Mariott, Toni Marie, Louis Landry and others were the thought leaders that put this into motion.  For that, the JED Team and CLT wish to thank everyone involved in moving this initative foward.

What softwares were tested?

A primary concern was to use an extension already made for the Joomla platform.  We tested JForce, Billets, RSTicketsPro and even a few other non-Joomla (but open source) software packages.  Our sincere thanks to the developers of these products for allowing us to test and ask questions.

What is planned next?

The next phase will be cross-site support search for the teams, Trademark Application Integration and mobile support/applications.  From there, a redesign of the JED Listing Details page is on the front burner (look for a blog post in the next few days!)  Additionally, many more Knowledgebase Articles are coming soon along with centralized JED Documentation.  This new system provides a way for us to streamline this process and make it easier to search for answers.

The JED Team looks foward to using this new system and in a few months we’ll be able to report back statistics on the number and type of support requests we receive which will help further define the future of the JED!

Originally Written by Matt Lipscomb on Joomla Leadership Blog.