Five by Five

We were asked to contribute to the latest in the IAB’s vertical handbook series: retail. With a focus on what makes a good online shopping basket experience, our top tips are below. You can download the handbook here.

Shopping basket drop-off can be avoided by learning from the benchmark leaders: Amazon, Carphone Warehouse and Figleaves. What they do is simply make it easy for you to buy, change your mind, save it for later and come back, and compile wish lists which others can buy for you. What makes a good shopping basket experience?

1. Clear product descriptions and price information so users are reassured that what they wanted to buy has magically found its way to their basket.

2. Images to re-enforce the product description because people think visually too, especially when it comes to color choices.

3. Easy removal, amendment or addition of items because they’re allowed to change their minds.

4. Clear navigation to proceed to purchase or back to similar products, back to home, or a new search as these are users’ typical next steps.

5. Clear labeling of the basket during the entire shopping experience so the user can see what’s in it at any time.

6. Ability to save.

Ask WKD’s Kev n’ Dave anything. Yes, anything. Right here on WKD.co.uk.

Recently launched, Kev n’ Dave bring the WKD brand personality to life as well as help drive sales across the product portfolio.

Featuring two cheeky characters who epitomise the brand’s essence, users are able to interact with Kev n’ Dave to obtain answers to any question posed, in true WKD style. A variety of changeable videos, backgrounds and content will ensure the campaign is adaptable to seasonal activity throughout the year.

The application will be supported by a dedicated blog, Facebook site and newsletter, all of which will be promoted via online advertising, database marketing, social media, and video seeding.

As well as featuring a compelling creative draw to the site, users can easily navigate around other key promotions and content available including competitions, money-off vouchers, local event listings and an online shop.

Debs Carter, Marketing Director for WKD:

The campaign represents everything WKD stands for and focuses on engaging with our target market of males aged 18-24. The team at Five by Five have done a fantastic job in creating an entertaining online application that will directly appeal to our key audience’s sense of humour.

Nick Gill, Digital Planner at Five by Five:

Kev ‘n’ Dave bring alive the WKD brand using digital to its potential by being interactive, engaging and entertaining through differentiated content. We’ve created a knowledge source where consumers can interact and engage with Kev ‘n’ Dave to get answers to everything and anything but of course the answers will be delivered in an unmistakably WKD way.

Anyone come across memetic media?

The term comes from a development of Richard Dawkins’ social/evolutionary philosophy of ‘cultural genes’ that he termed ‘memes’.

He believes just as the best (or most evolutionarily advantageous) genes survive and replicate, so good thoughts, ideas, philosophies etc replicate and out perform the weaker or less suitable ones. The weak ‘flat earth’ theory is now all but extinct except in remote places cut of from other evolutionary branches.

When applied to media, memes or memetic is used in a looser sense to mean viral stuff and ideas, but there is also the sense that exposing an idea/product/service to the cybershpere will sort out the men from the boys, - especially now we have a plethora of peer comment in web 2.0. 

Of course, in evolutionary terms, fittest doesn’t always mean best - this is referred to as the QWERTY phenomenon where something builds on what’s gone before rather than being re-invented from scratch. The QWERTY keyboard layout was invented so that typewriter keys don’t stick, but there are much better ways of laying out the letters from a usability point of view, - these have been tried but have never caught on because this would be revolution not evolution.

What does all this mean? Well for something like Twitter it’s almost like a random mutation of the web (like growing an extra thumb to use a biological example) it just appeared one day and know one knows what it’s for. If it proves to be useful it will stay, if it doesn’t it will become extinct, but the chances are that it will find all sorts of uses that it was never invented for, ie it will evolve.

Here’s some further reading….enjoy!  

http://memeticbrand.com/
http://knowyourmeme.com/ - Tracks internet memes
https://www.imediaconnection.com/printpage/printpage.aspx?id=22266 – Brands that harnessed the power of memes