China has become known as a burgeoning market for many sectors and industries and while some growth in etail sales is to be expected in such an emerging economy, the growth has proven greater than most thought. It has seen a calculated annual growth rate of 120% in the past 10 years, compared to just 17% in the US.

Person to person sales are the most common types of online retail in China, accounting for approximately 70% of all online sales. This includes the use of sites like and similar to Ebay, including Tmall and PaiPai but the trend of using sites similar to Amazon is also increasing as more and more larger ecommerce stores throw their hats into the ring.

Other aspects of the online retail market in China differ too. Online ordering is often combined with bicycle courier to ensure same day delivery; something that most people in the Western World could only imagine. Cash on delivery is not an unusual concept for such purposes, giving consumers the opportunity to check the product before they pay and buy it.

In terms of where the majority of ecommerce purchases are made, it is the largest cities where the majority of sales are obviously made but those living in lower income and lower tier cities actually spend as much per person and a higher percentage of their total income when compared to those in major, tier 1 cities. It is believed that this is because those in the smaller cities and more remote areas do not yet have access to the same shops and opportunities as those in larger cities. There may also be an element of finding the best deal and saving money for low income individuals.

Last year alone, China spent $190bn in online sales and the authors of the report predict that this will rise to $420bn by the year 2020. What’s more, they say that China will overtake the USA as the world’s leading ecommerce market next year and that the transition may actually occur sooner than this.

The report says that not only are ecommerce purchases replacing purchases from bricks and mortar stores but they are providing consumers with access to items they could never have purchased before and this means that etail sales are continuing to increase at a very high rate. Currently, the Chinese ecommerce market makes up around 6% of the country’s total retail spend comparing favourably to the 5% share in the USA and this, combined with the number of people in the country, has helped propel the Chinese industry to become the second biggest online spender in the world.

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A ComScore report indicated that more than $50bn worth of purchases were conducted online in the first quarter of 2013; only the second time that Internet retail has hit such lofty heights.

A slew of UK retailers have reported improved online revenues:

• John Lewis recently reported that online sales topped £1bn for the first time and representing a 41% increase in its eCommerce sales figures.
• Tesco eclipsed even this, announcing £3bn in online sales; a 13% increase.
• Debenhams enjoyed a 46% increase in website sales which helped beat the slowdown experienced during the cold and snowy winter months.
• Next Group also reported poor high street sales but these were tempered by a 9.5% increase in online sales.
• Marks & Spencer have announced the opening of a 900,000 sq ft automated warehouse to help fuel further online sales.

A report from IMRG shows that the UK has benefited further, with an additional 14% increase in online sales in April alone. However, it was mobile commerce that was the real benefactor here with a 131% year on year rise that indicates the increasing likelihood that people are willing to make purchases from their mobile phones and other mobile devices.

However, it isn’t all good news for ecommerce websites, as the USA and France are among some of the nations that are looking to impose an online sales tax. Under the proposals, e-retailers would have to collect sales tax when purchases are completed and one study indicates that 44% of US shoppers would buy less if the bill is passed.

Ecommerce has taken giant strides in the past few years and major retailers are really beginning to invest heavily, in what has obviously become a massive contributing factor to business performance. Small retailers and businesses can also benefit greatly from an online presence. With the marked increase in mobile commerce sales, this is another area where additional effort and investment should be considered a worthwhile venture.

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Google has steadily but surely made its way into the travel sector

Google Hotel Finder, launched in 2011, can now reasonably be considered the first step and this was followed by the acquisition of Zaggat in the same year. 2012 also saw the launch of Google Flight Search and Flight Explorer as well as the purchase of Frommer’s. However, it is Google Hotels that could have the biggest influence on the sector.

Google Hotel Finder enables users to search for hotels in a particular town or area. It has recently added a feature that allows users to search according to the time they want to stay. Travel time search further enables the user to find hotels that are within a specific travel time of a particular location. What’s more, integration with Google Maps not only makes the service a beneficial and easy to use tool but it also means that it will gain considerable mobile attention as people search for nearby hotels while on the move.

With user ratings and reviews, as well as these features, the evidence points to the fact that Google Hotel Finder is, to all intents and purposes, already a booking website. Google themselves will deny this, pointing to the fact that their users are directed to the hotel website or provided with contact details and will need to make bookings directly with the hotel.

There is criticism of this Google service. Google Hotel results appear at the top of search engine results pages and, in a lot of cases, this means that the hotel’s own websites appear low down the list. However, it does mean that searches that would ordinarily bring up a booking website are more likely to bring up details from the Google index.

It remains to be seen whether Google can take over the hotel booking industry completely but the signs are ominous for Trivago and Hotels.com. Once Google has its eye on a particular niche or industry they do tend to keep pushing until they have a major market share. Chrome has become one of the most popular browsers, Google Docs is a serious contender to Microsoft’s Office suite, and Google+ has made serious inroads into the social marketing industry too, although Facebook certainly isn’t dead in the water just yet!

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Twitter has signed a deal thought to be worth several hundred million dollars with the advertising giant Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG).

SMG are owned by Publicis Groupe, who boast the likes of Coca Cola, Microsoft, and Walmart among their portfolio of clients. The deal is the biggest of its kind for Twitter and represents a huge amount of advertising revenue for the social media giant. It also represents the micro-blogging platform’s belief that convergence with TV advertising will prove the driving force behind their future success.

The Financial Times reported on Monday that the deal had been struck and while the two parties, Twitter and SMG, were unwilling to discuss financial details of the deal it has been widely reported that Twitter will receive hundreds of millions of dollars. In exchange, SMG will receive preferential placement and other preferential treatment when it comes to certain features.

As part of the deal it is also believed that SMG will gain preferential access to market data that could prove very useful in their marketing efforts. It seems likely that a direct feed will integrate data directly from Twitter into SMG’s own system. This will allow for highly targeted marketing messages and adverts to be displayed according to SMG’s requirements. It will make it possible, for example, for SMG to be able to target an ad at a very specific demographic such as a precise age or geographic location.

The deal will further concentrate on the connection between watching TV and tweeting and the two partners will create what is being dubbed the Social TV Lab. This platform looks at how people watch TV and send updates to their Twitter accounts and it will enable both companies to benefit from the information and data provided.

Not only does Twitter benefit from the injection of cash but it also gives credence to their argument that they are a viable advertising and marketing platform for businesses. Even Facebook has struggled to turn their massive user base into serious financial gains, as evidenced by their recent flotation on the stock market.

It is believed that Twitter aims to float at a later date and this increase in revenue will certainly help, especially if more advertising agencies are prepared to come on board. The deal between the social network and one of the world’s largest advertising giants could lead to an opening of the flood gates and a massive surge in Twitter profits.

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A number of high profile and less publicised patent cases have been brought by the likes of Apple and Motorola. Recently, Apple lost its fight when they claimed that the swipe to unlock feature used in phones made by the likes of Samsung and Motorola was an Apple technology. Courts decided, in that particular case, that the technology was not patent-worthy so could be used by other companies.

Two years ago, Motorola opened up its own patent case against the California based Apple company. They claimed that Apple had infringed on 18 of their patents. What’s more, when Google bought the mobile phone company, they further extended the case to claim an additional six patent infringement all related to the iCloud service. The decision today, although it is likely to be contested by Google, represents the final patent in this list.

The patent in question is Patent No 6,246,862 and is concerned with a sensor that is used in mobile phones to detect when the phone is near the user’s face. The sensor is then used to ensure that applications are not opened, calls finished, or other actions taken when the phone touches the face. The technology is used in the Apple iPhone as well as in a number of other mobile phone handsets. Had Apple lost the case then they could have endured a ban on the import of their iPhone handsets into the US while the patent issue was resolved.

However, the International Trade Commission upheld a previous ruling, albeit for different reasons. The ITC agreed that the idea was obvious when considering previous technologies used by mobile phone and technology companies to prevent unwitting gestures made by the caller when they held the phone near their face to make or answer a call. Google have said that they are disappointed in the decision, and the company has the right to challenge the decision at the US Court of Appeals.

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Essentially universal search is the display of added media which is presented alongside organic search results. As a whole the research shows that throughout 2012 a drop occurred in the fraction of keywords with at least one universal search integration. Overall the drop was around 11%. Image integration was unaffected for the most part and remained around the 30% mark. However video integration suffered, decreasing from 76% to 62%.

Aside from image and video integration the Searchmetrics research also investigated shopping integrations in regards to which brands seemed to dominate search results, ultimately showing Google to appear most frequently. Over 50% of shopping integration was accounted for by Google over the 2012 period, leaving closest competitor Amazon second with roughly 10% market share.

Video content remains the real loser in universal integration for 2012, although it still surfaces in a huge 62% of universal search results. What the Searchmetrics shopping research shows is that while Google dominates shopping and video integration YouTube enjoyed more than 75% of that market throughout 2012, and unsurprisingly YouTube increased its market share this summer. Contact IM3 for more information regarding Google shopping changes (UK).

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Google Penguin is essentially a heavy hitting Google algorithm update, first announced on April 24 2012, that aims to lower SERP ranking of sites that violate Google’s rules of good practice. The sites penalised by Google are typically guilty of using inorganic ‘black-hat’ SEO strategies such as participating in link schemes, duplicating content and ‘keyword stuffing’. Speaking at the SMX conference Matt Cutts spoke of the imminent Penguin update saying ‘we don’t want low quality experience merchants to be ranking in the search results’.

The last time Google updated the Penguin 3 algorithm was October 2012, following on from Penguin 2 in May 2012, and another extensive update is expected later this year. Search Engine Watch heralded the upcoming update as “a ‘next generation’ coming that will have a major impact on SERPs,” and Matt Cutts, called the update ‘very significant’, sending waves of nervous anticipation through the SEO world.

While impending updates from Google Penguin loom many can’t help but speculate what we’ll be dealing with later in the year. Some predictions hint that Google Penguin will give more recognition to social site links that add to online authorship and tracked ownership of online content. Search Engine Watch explained how “many SEO pros believe that social signals will play a more significant role in the next iteration of Penguin.”

But no matter where these forecasts come from there is one consistent prediction; it’s all about quality, not quantity. Google has always maintained that their algorithms will never punish sites that include quality, organic links.

It’s seems inevitable that the Google Penguin update will be a significant shake-up of the current system, in an attempt to take unethical SEO’s by surprise. With Google sources and SEO experts endorsing this update as ‘jarring and jolting’ we’re sure to see major modifications to the SEO industry later this year.

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Jessops PricewaterhouseCoopers Administration News

The UK division of PWC (Price Waterhouse Coopers) has been placed in charge of dealing with the administration, appointed late afternoon on Wednesday 9th January 2013.

In the face of stiffening competition and a price war of camera’s, electrical goods and other related photography equipment, the popular and well known high street brand of Jessops is now facing a bleak future – if any at all.

The Jessops administration company immediately announced that it would be inevitable that some of the Jessops branches would close as a result of the not-so surprising news. A dramatic fall in sales during 2013 led to many industry analysts predicting trouble for Jessops in the UK, and the company which has been trading since 1935 has now gone into administration amid increasing cash flow problems and credit issues.

Jessops Redundancy Pay

Almost 2,000 staff at Jessops now face the long wait to find out what chance they have of firstly keeping their job, but if the worst happens then they will be seeking to secure the redundancy pay they are entitled to.

The Jessops administration news first started filtering through on the 9th January, with PWC stating: “Our most pressing task is to review the company’s financial position and hold discussions with its principal stakeholders to see if the business can be preserved. Trading in the stores is hoped to continue today but is critically dependent on these ongoing discussions. However, in the current economic climate it is inevitable that there will be store closures.”

Rob Hunt PriceWaterhouseCoopers / Rob Hunt PWC:

The joint manager of the Jessops administration Rob Hunt announced that the company had been dealt a series of blows which led to the decision to call in the receivers.

Jessops Vouchers Still Valid?

The administrators also took the unpleasant step of immediately announcing that any Christmas Jessops vouchers are not valid – any vouchers that people received will not be accepted. Also any returns of faulty or unwanted goods will not be accepted.

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How to use Google Data Highlighter tool

In what is a major departure from the usual method of using html to mark up data as structured the Google Data Highlighter tool uses mouse point and click functionality. A simple user friendly ‘walk through’ format guides you through the tagging process on your nominated web page allowing event related data to be assigned the data structure attributes adopted by Google.  In addition to this new user-friendly methodology, should your site have multiple web pages of event related information in a standard format, then Google can be taught the format and any format variations allowing the automated suggestion of tags. Completing this exercise correctly at the first time of using the Google Data Highlighter allows Google to identify any new event listings which will then be displayed in the enhanced manner on the search engine results page when your website is crawled.

Advantages of Google Data Highlighter

Google Data Highlighter makes it easy for someone without experience or lacking confidence in html to make relevant changes to a website which will have a positive impact to the performance of that website on the search engine results page.  This will be especially useful to small businesses and SME’s who maybe wanting to market their own events or do not have the in-house capability to make changes of this nature to their website html. For the web marketer it becomes another useful and quick instrument to use within Google Webmaster tools to aid Search Engine Optimisation.

Google Data Highlighter – the future?

The decision by Google to roll-out a feature which removes the burden of technical knowledge is to both aid the adoption of the feature, an experiment to see how Google Webmaster users react and possibly a look into the intentions of the web giant and where it sees the future of how we will interact with structured data. Time will tell if the data highlighter tool will be developed for use with data other than events.

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