I arrived at Old Trafford, Manchester on an overcast morning and followed the steady stream of visitors to Ecommerce Expo into the show. While this may not be the biggest show in the calendar it is certainly an interesting event. There are also some advantages in not being the biggest event, the main one being not getting frustrated at having to queue for up to an hour to get into a seminar that lasts less than 30 minutes.

There were a good variety of exhibitors, mainly offering ecommerce solutions. If you went thinking anything different then I would suggest that you look at the title of the event and just think about it for a moment. There were also three theatres that held keynotes and these were in use throughout most of the day.

I managed to get to three of the talks in total and took something of value away from each one

Think Mobile – Nicholas Kuminsky (Google)

Nic Kuminsky gave a great talk on that perennial subject “This is the year of mobile”. He made a lot of sense in saying that there will be no one year of mobile but rather this will be seen as the decade of mobile. At the start of his talk he showed a publicity video for Google explaining the concept of online advertising and I did notice that one of the companies mentioned was JC Penney.

In a nutshell Nic argued that companies will have to have a mobile strategy in order to survive and that simply expecting a website to render on the small screen of a smartphone will not be good enough, that users prefer to interact with a site that has been optimised for mobile when browsing on a smartphone or tablet. He also pointed out that with the GPS capabilities of smartphones that location is becoming a major factor in peoples search habits.

Smartphone usage is being aided with the rise of cloud services with phones like Android, BlackBerry iPhone, and Windows Phone 7 providing processing power while the cloud provides the data for the phone to crunch.

As a result of what I heard I have now committed myself to producing a truly mobile site by the end of June. Stay tuned for progress reports.

Top Tips for a Strong Social CRM Strategy – Duncan Ward (SagePay)

My next talk was from Duncan Ward from SagePay who gave some useful pointers for creating a CRM strategy using social. As his talk progressed I found myself nodding more and more frequently in agreement with the points that he was making. Social is very much a buzz word at the moment and there may well be a bit of bubble developing around it just as there was around websites a decade ago.

In many of these types of talks or online articles you hear about the social success stories without any real analysis of why they were successes and this leads to a belief of “We have a Facebook/Twitter account why aren’t we millionaires?”

Duncan focussed in on identifying the metrics so that you can gauge how successful your campaign is. Some of the useful points that he made included:

• Define a measure of success (number of followers, click through rates etc)
• Don’t use everything, use the mediums that will be most successful for you
• Empower your staff, but set guidelines
• Add value by providing something in return for people liking or following you

One of the points that he made that really struck a chord with me was regarding monitoring. Duncan suggested something that I already do for a number of my clients, create a social media team where part of the team monitor what is being said about the brand and identify possible leads or equally those that are not happy with the brand. These leads are then forwarded on to the experts in the team who have knowledge about the industry who can then engage with the leads/complainers.

What’s in a Postcode? – Guy Mucklow (Postcode Anywhere)

Guy is the founder of Postcode Anywhere and if you ever wondered why we have postcodes then by the end of this talk you would be in no doubt at all. Guy gave some background, such as the first UK postcodes where created in 1959 in Norwich (note to self: remember that fact it is bound to come up in a quiz at some point). There are now approximately 28 million addresses registered in the UK with postcodes.

Some of the reasons why postcodes are useful include:

• Deliveries – They make finding addresses easier
• Geocoding – allowing an address to be added to a map
• Speed – You can access an address in just seven characters

Guy also advised what the advantages of having software on your site that allows an address to be traced via the postcode. These included:

• Address Capture
  This can speed up the transaction process as the user does not have to enter all the details themselves. The quality of the data will be more accurate. It provides your business with a more professional image. Delivery times are improved as the address is easier to find.
• Clean Address
  Having accurate data means that you will get consistent data, this will lead to better Business Information. You can improve the targeting of advertising campaigns as you can tie individuals to specific locations and you are likely to have fewer returns
• Customer Profiling
  Again this is likely to lead to more accurate targeting and is also a major factor in reducing fraud.
• Work Out Distances
  By knowing exactly where an address is then you can work out the mileage to that address from your own premises and makes it easier to exclude households that are outside of your delivery area.
• Show Your Nearest…
  Again by knowing where a visitor is based you can then show them where your nearest branch would be.
• Locate Customers
  You are able to analyse your customer addresses to identify hotspots allowing you to identify areas where you might want to increase your brand penetration.

Obviously being a trade show there were a lot of exhibitors present and I thought I would give you a quick rundown of the most interesting or eye catching exhibitors with my awards, cue fanfare and drumroll “And the award goes to…”

Best Ecommerce Product

There were lots of products available for display but to my mind the best Ecommerce product goes to Advansys. They offered a feature rich package that really has to be seen to be believed and guess what you can see it at their website. If you are looking for a product that is scalable then this really is the system that you want to adopt.

Best Use of Technology

This award goes to Skuuudle, and no I have not misspelt the name. Skuuudle allows you to check out all your competitors to see what price they are selling the same products for. This will allow you to be constantly ahead of the market. There is a huge amount of customisation that is available within their back office. They also have a variety of price plans, so even if you are a small business then you will find a plan that suits you. You can even try a free trial for 30 days so that you can really get a feel for how useful a business tool this can be.

Brightest Stand

This had to go to the people from B2B Marketing. They offer a range of services to the B2B marketer including a monthly magazine, which I have read and think is packed with great articles. They also provide members with Best Practice guides, bench marking and technical evaluation papers and business cases. If that is not enough for you then they also arrange training courses and networking events. They were even giving a 20% discount on membership to attendees of the show. Their stand certainly made you think “The future’s bright, the future’s B2B Marketing” or something like that.

Best Talk

I had a lot of difficulty making my mind up about this one and as time has passed since the show my view has changed and changed again. However, I have finally decided that my award for best talk should go to Nic Kuminsky from Google. His talk was enlightening and perhaps has had the greatest impact upon me.

I also have a special mention to make to a gentleman who I got talking to waiting for Nic’s talk to begin. His name is Chris Brassington of Starfish 360. Chris is heavily into mobile development and has been for 10 years and so fully understands all things mobile. If you are currently looking for somebody to provide you with a solid mobile strategy and implementation then do contact Chris, I don’t think you will be disappointed.

Final Thoughts

I had an interesting day at Ecommerce Expo Manchester. I know that this is a much smaller show than the main show that will be held in London in October but I do feel that it was a show that was well worth attending. If you are in the North and you are into Ecommerce then I would definitely recommend attending next years show.