We have just taken live a customised ecommerce solution for an independent educational publishers, Brilliant Publications. It is the second such site we have completed for independent publishers this year, following on from Sportsbooks. We develop bespoke systems that are feature packed to meet the very needs of the customer. They supply the wish list and we develop the specification and solution!

The Brilliant system has been developed with a multiple of features including:

• Bespoke site design and branding
• A customer database within the backend
• A site wide search facility
• Newsletter signups, data capture, online feedback and contact systems
• Customer generated product reviews
• Complete client content management system
• Integrated blog
• Web analytics including all visitor tracking and conversion reporting
• On page SEO
• Social networking integration (Facebook, Twitter and RSS, Send to a Friend etc)
• Teaching resources zone
• Most popular books selection facility
• Dynamic front page showcase
• Facility to link Ebook’s unique ISBN to the printed ISBN
• ‘Related books’ display function
• Product bundling
• Book series options
• Optional playlist for mp3 files
• Multiple shipping price structure.
• Credit account and card payment options
• Internal stock control
• External stock display (Available in 7 days / 21 days / Not yet published)
• Postponed payment collection for books not yet published/back in stock
• 13 digit ISBN as the unique key for product identification
• Integration with the client’s Publishing Management Software
• Ebook download provision of 30 days for unlimited downloads
• Online quiz facility

Please contact us to see how we could help your business improve the ecommerce experience for customers and administrators, increase traffic and improve sales conversions and values.

An infection clamped beneath that molar with nowhere to go shakes the very foundations of your jaw and teeth. That innocent tooth, which has taken years to grow and countless tubes of toothpaste, will probably have to be removed. An infection at the core – at the nerve ending – can destroy all you have grown.

If your marketing strategy is infected with poor information, it will eventually destroy everything you proceed to develop. As any good dentist will say, prevention is better than cure. Although I believe my dentist, Malvern’s Chris Bocking, is the world’s best, I would not hesitate to agree!

Solid information provides sound roots from which a successful marketing campaign can grow. Without this, you risk infection and a costly extraction.

Decisions over potential opportunities, target market selection, market segmentation, planning and implementing marketing programmes, marketing performance, and control should all be underpinned by market research.

These decisions are complicated by interactions between the controllable marketing variables of product, pricing, promotion, and distribution. Further complications are added by uncontrollable environmental factors such as general economic conditions, technology, public policies, competitor activity, and social and cultural changes.

As if this does not provide enough headaches, we need to add to the mix the complexity of consumers. Relevant information can at least help us more reliably predict consumers’ response to marketing initiatives.

I am not arguing that marketing is a complete science. I would not be so passionate about marketing if it was. However, these are essential questions to ask before committing to any marketing campaign:

Your Customers
What are their locations, age, gender, buying behaviours and motivations?

Competitor information
Do you know their identities, marketing strategies and customer relationships?

Product information
How do your customers talk about your brand, products and service and likely impact of technology developments?

Industry information
What is the big picture? What are the future demand and supply trends and patterns?

Competitive opportunities
What are the under-served consumer segments and unmet consumer needs?

Qualitative research using depth interviews, focus groups, surveys, field tests and observations, supported by primary research yielding new, relevant and specific information will answer the above questions.

The Value of The Smile
I write this from a hotel near our Romanian office where the staff appear friendly and smiling. Last week I stayed at London’s Soho Hotel (a converted multi storey carpark!) where the staff were also exceptionally happy. It seems a rarity in hotels these days, but smile and world smiles with you.  It costs nothing and is a great marketing tool! And lest we forget, a good smile requires healthy teeth!

Matthew Rymer, Managing Director, The Marketing Farm Limited

The Marketing Farm are preparing to double the capacity of The Software Farm in the next 12 months to meet the demands of existing and future projects. Plans will soon be unveiled to build offices to accommodate our continued expansion.

We develop bespoke systems which could include the following

Dashboard with:

• Latest Announcements/News
• Latest items added to the knowledge base
• Important documents
• Advanced search within Knowledge base and Documents
• Links to RSS notification systems
• Live widgets connected to existing in-house software systems (eg Helpdesks)

Announcements / news

• Description, time to live/expire, priority (high/medium/low)
• Target the announcement to a certain department
• Send email alerts

Document management

• Centralized location (uploads organized into year/month/day folders)
• Retrieval: both browsing through documents and searching for specific information (categories, tags / keywords)
• Security: browse / download / upload privileges
• Distribution: notify members of the intranet system that a new document is available
• Archiving: remove it from the current list but hold a copy of the document on the server

Knowledge Base (question : answer)

• An online Knowledge Base for information on troubleshooting, solutions to common issues, how-tos, tips on using software or hardware
• Intranet users can post a question to other users, looking for answers for a specific topic
• Topics split into categories
• Tag assignment (find topics by: recent, featured, hot, week, month)
• A question can have more than 1 answer. Each answer can be voted up/down
• The user asking the question can mark an answer as the most appropriate/agreed one
• Unanswered topics can be easily tracked

Events Calendar

• Upcoming meetings, deadlines and other important events

CMS pages

• General procedures
• Help pages
• Department pages
• Employee directory
• Public contact lists

Business Links

• Links to Web pages that the team members will find interesting or useful.
• Links to internet sites such as virus scans, research, dictionary, thesaurus, competitors, customers

User management

• Organize users into departments
• A user can belong to more than one department
• Send alerts/messages to all users within a department
• Alerts can be stored internally and/or emailed to their inboxes

Resource Booking

• Booking and keeping track of resources that are in use throughout the organization
• Conflict checking
• Resource management (meeting rooms, laptops, projectors)

Photo Gallery

• Manage and search corporate and departmental graphics
• Create a graphics gallery to store corporate artwork, logos and photos
• Store data such as title, caption, author

Suggestion box

• Keep track of suggestions for your business and encourage employee participation.
• Sensitive data can be isolated and secured so only those who should be viewing the information are allowed in

Survey Pools

• Determine the date that you wish your poll to begin, and set an end date
• Display it on the intranet home page for high visibility

Take a break!

• A fun area where employees can go for a chuckle or to read on their lunch or coffee breaks