Lindsay Devinney

For our final presentation, my group decided to compare the Amazon Kindle Fire, and the Barnes & Noble Nook. The competition between these two is fierce. They are competing for second place to the ipad 2 tablet. The ipad starts at $500, so for many people this year it will be unattainable. So, we made it our mission to find out which tablet would the next best thing, and a little easier on our wallets. We all expected ti Kindle Fire to win since only one of us had ever even heard of the Nook.

First we tried out Google Insights to compare. My team was in charge of getting the information on the Nook. We took a look at the chart of “Nook” versus “Barnes and Noble” and both were pretty similar. The first huge spike for both was on the date of the Nook’s release, and since then it has steadily gone up. This shows that the Nook came out, sparking interest and has continued to keep that interest up. I took one more look at this chart this morning and saw that Black Friday had a huge spike, but since then it has actually gone down quite a bit. We also took a look at the regional interest. The US blew everyone out of the water! Singapore was second but with only a tiny fraction of the searches. We then looked at the top 10 states of regional interest and found they were: North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Iowa, New Hampshire, Arkansas, Utah, and Minnesota. Most of these had significantly higher numbers for the B&N searches than for the Nook.  When we looked at top searches, number one was “fire vs. nook”

We also used Social Mention to take a look at the Nook’s Strength, Sentiment, Passion, and Reach. We got 25% Strength versus 33% for the fire, both brands got 8:1 sentiment scores, 15% passion versus 44%, and 37% reach versus 32% with the fire.

Social Mention gave the nook an overall visibility score of 2281, and the fire’s score was 1440. Both of them had by far the  most mentions on Digg.

The nook got a 73% positive score on tweet feel when we stopped it, and the fire got a 70%.  I wouldn’t rely too much on this site though, because the technology for deciding whether a post is negative or positive is flawed. We saw a lot of red ones that once you read through it, were actually positive…and vice versa.

Since all of our search tools were coming out to close to call, I did some research and read a few articles that the tech experts were posting.

I found an article on PCWorld.com, posted November 18th. This article, along with every other one I found, once again stated that as far as tablets go, the ipad 2 is by far the best, but if you want to spend less than half the price, go for the Nook or Fire. The Nook costs $250 and the Fire costs $200. Normally I would have wondered why they are even fighting if everything ranked them so comparable, yet there is this $50 difference.

All of the articles I found had detailed reviews of both tablets and the Nook always came out on top. It seems the only reason the Fire is considered such close competition is because it has access to Amazon and its users and the $50 price drop. So, in my mind the Nook wins out unless you really just cannot bear to pay that extra money.

Before this class I never realized the depth of online search. I am glad that I now have the tools to help me with future research projects or just plain curiosity! Google Insights really is an amazing tool. I like how it puts the graph of interest over time, but then explains the high and low points! The twitter tools not really good for facts, but it gives a great look at the overall opinion of people using twitter. That was sort of why we chose to compare Nook and Fire. We thought that people wanting a tablet are more tech-savy and probably use social media like twitter. We thought that would give us more feedback from them and it did!

I think the if the Nook could knock its price down to match the Fire, they would blow it out of the water. Also the advertisement for the Fire is really good, I mean just log onto amazon.com and there it is! As I said before, we had never even heard of the Nook, so they need to up their advertising.

Overall this project was a great learning experience and I took away the ability to use great search tools in the future.

Assignment 12

I apologize for the link to my post. For some reason it would only post in 4 or 5 lines and be waaaay

long across the screen. Please let me know how I can fix this!

According to my google analytics account, this page has actually has some traffic!

Adwords Example

I chose the custom Fortune cookie title because it will be searched most. I decided to add wedding into the text because my target market is the wedding industry.The call to action is buy the cookies, and the landing page is the cookie site. I went to the home page because you never know what theme people have in mind so that way they can search for whatever they want very easily.

The keyword phrase I chose was ‘wedding cookies’

There is medium competition for the phrase with 49,500 monthly searches and 40,500 local monthly searches.

I would choose ‘wedding favor cookies’ because even though it has high competition, it is searched a lot.

I would also choose ‘ edible wedding favors’ because it has more hits as well and it may bring people who haven’t thought of the cookies and may get them interested.

At only $1, my average CPC is estimated at $0.71

My estimated daily clicks are 40.51

My estimated daily cost is a whopping $28.81

Raising my max CPC basically doubles all of the above information but bumps up my ad position a little bit.

Before this class I had no idea what SEO was. Now I can’t imagine not knowing. It is SO important to any company or firm with a website, which most places need these days. In the fashion world, if you do not have a website, you are WAY out of the loop in this day and age! More online shopping is done now than ever before, so if you are not a household name of a designer or brand, like the boot maker in the video we watched, then SEO is very important to helping you be found when people search your type of product.

My two top keywords were “time” and “business”. They tied for #1 at 15 each. I was not surprised that business showed up a lot, I tend to use that word a lot in my business courses. I was, however, a bit surprised at the time. I was unaware of how often I used that one. Another thing that surprised me was how low “fashion” was at 7. I am a fashion major and I try to apply my marketing courses to it whenever possible. Overall I think this tool gives good insight on content we are not always aware of in our blogs and websites.

I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to find what I was looking for on the McDonalds website. It took me a mere four clicks to get to a relevant IT job that was in Illinois. I do not think I would expect that going into any job hunt! Along with many relevant job descriptions, there were other tools I would find very helpful if I were applying. One of these tools was called Job Alert. It explains that if you cannot find what you are looking for, then they will email you alerts as the positions you want become available. The other tool was called Career Center, and this one gave you a user name and password so you can login to your own account to view and/or make changes to your resume and contact information. Both of these tools enhanced my opinion of the site.

It was also quite easy to find information about both careers and benefits. One extra click for both to be exact. Once I searched IT jobs in Illinois, ten opportunities came up and all I needed to do was click one to get a great description including; what the job is, what experience is required, what experience is preferred, and what education is required. The descriptions are all very inviting and make the jobs seem great. In order to find benefit information all I needed to do was scroll up and on the left side of the screen is a list of other related pages, one titled ‘Employee Benefits’. After clicking to that page, one will see how well of a job McDonalds has done in breaking down every benefit available in an easy to understand way. They section it off into; Health & Protection, Pay & Rewards, Investing in Your Future, and Balancing Work & Life (i.e. Vacation time).

Now that I have sung the praises of McDonalds as far as relevant content, there are some negatives as far as how compelling it was. Although I would say the site was professional, it was pretty boring. The descriptions made me want to work there, but the look of the page did not and what people see comes before what they read.

As far as design and usability, I went back and forth. The navigation was amazing, much more than I expected going into this assignment. It was very easy to go through and find everything I could possibly need. It was also easy to check out new or interesting things and then go back because the site uses breadcrumbs, so I could back track to what I was there for. The spacing and Layout were alright. There was a large amount of white and white space, but the spacing of text was very easy to sift through to the information I desired. There were hardly any colors, just white background, red headings, and black text all in a plain font. It was easy to read and professional, but I think they could amp it up a bit while still keeping the professionalism. I did not see any engaging content. I found one single graphic on the Diversity page, but no pictures of employees or friendly videos to welcome me at all. As for the overall ease of use on the site, it was very easy to use, just not very pleasing to look at.

If I were to make some changes, first, I would change the background from white to maybe some faded out pictures of the workplace or something relevant to the page I was on. When I have applied for jobs, I like the feeling of a family in the workplace and seeing pictures or even a video from someone in that position or the boss him/herself! The signature McDonalds colors are that bright red and yellow, they could incorporate those in many ways that could make the site look more sophisticated. Also, aside from the background images I mentioned before, other images and/or graphics will catch the eye of people applying and probably help the look of the entire section of the site.

Now, in comparison, when looking for the same things on the Walgreens website, it took me 8-10 clicks to find relevant job information.  There was no IT section so I just had to search for jobs in my area (43) and then sift through those to the 2^nd page until I found something. The overall navigation was worse than McDonalds, once you found a good job, the descriptions were great.  They also gave the option to add the job to my cart, which would be nice if I wanted to keep looking and remember the first one I found. The colors are boring in the same ways as McDonalds and I did not see a link about benefits. There were no pictures, graphics, or videos here either, making it professional, yet boring as well. I think if I were deciding which company to apply to, I would choose McDonalds, because they put all the information I need right there and make it easy to access, whereas I would have to go through a lot more trouble to find the same information at Walgreens.

I enjoyed Ryan coming and speaking to us although it did seem like he wasn’t exactly sure what to talk about at some parts.

Basically Ryan is the webmaster for IT Supplies and he does a lot of content management (emails, etc.) for the company’s site.

The company was founded in 1998 by Greg Lehart, and started out as a small business selling HP devices out of his garage. Ink and Toner Supplies, at this time, held a very small inventory and focused mostly on consumable products such as ink and toner. This is another company that survived the dot com bust that we learned about in class.

Over the years IT Supplies’ business models have changed and been added to as the company grew. The 1st primary sales channel was simply phone orders from a catalog which eventually turned into a simple online catalog. As technology expanded, thousands of products were added, making it important to increase web functionality.

The big changes happened between 2000 and 2011. The online catalog was improved with technology and email was added in 2009, with a blog added in 2010. The newest addition is the usage of data for segmental marketing to improve the functionality of the site.

Ryan’s job is very complicated and he fully recommended learning some html as you go. He adds content constantly using whatever he can such as keywords, google analytics, product information, videos, and even tutorials. IT Supplies uses direct marketing as well.

I would say the only tie between Ryan’s job and the fashion industry I hope to break into, is the requirement to keep abreast of new developments in one’s field. While always suggested, in both Ryan’s and my own, it is a requirement for success.

So, first and foremost, I added the meta plugin because for some reason I have had a hard time logging in from the beginning!

This may or may not be helpful to businesses, but it is extremely helpful to me. I still added two more plugins more relevant to the assignment after getting this one out of the way.

1.Widget Twitter VJCK (V.J.Catkick - http://www.vjcatkick.com/?page_id=5475)  I added a Twitter plugin/widget. It seemed to work as you can see “Lindsay’s Tweets” on the side bar of my blog, but I have tweeted and nothing shows up and I am not sure how to fix that. I went to the plugin’s site to see and it all seemed very basic. Anyway, this plugin would be very important for a business to have since so many of them are on Twitter offering deals lately. Or for instance, I follow Michael Kors and he has recently updated with links to watch his fall runway shows live! For other fashion buyers, fans, or curious possible clients, this is a great way to show them where to see it first!

2.  Slideshow (DevPress - http://devpress.com/plugins/slideshow/) Next I added a slideshow plugin. Again, this one will not show up and I even had a friend who does wordpress for a living drop by to help. I tried changing the theme, but again nothing. Hopefully class will help me out with these problems. Moving on, having a slideshow would be extremely important from a design point of view. People do not only want to hear you describe your new lines, they want to see for themselves and make their own opinions. Beauty is very subjective in the fashion world and showing off what you’ve done will get feedback faster than only a written description!

That’s all for now! Chao!

I very much enjoyed Chris Krohn’s presentation to our class last week. I am a textile, apparel, and merchandising student and sometimes feel as though some of the marketing material does not apply to me. Although Chris works for Restaurant.com, which does not apply to my field, he still talked about it a way that I felt could apply to my own desired field one day.

Some of the key points I took away from his presentation were, the importance of having B2C AND B2B, the importance of failing to succeed, and the importance of different types of business internet marketing.

First, B2C marketing, although swept under the rug in the past, has become a key element to the current success of many companies and businesses. B2C, meaning business-to-consumer, is important in the increasing demand for customer satisfaction. Restaurant.com applies this concept by offering a huge inventory of over 18,000 restaurants and 45000 daily options for customers to choose from. B2B, or business-to-business, is applies by making a profit for the restaurant business. Restaurant.com made several millions for the restaurant industry last year.

I felt the need to mention the importance of failing to succeed as mentioned in the company’s history. Restaurant.com failed twice after the dot com bust and look at them now. In the fashion industry knowing that sometimes (most of the time) you will fail, but it only takes that one thing to make a design or campaign succeed and that large success is more than worth the small failures along the way.

Chris mentioned several types of business marketing the site does, some of which include segmentation, affiliate, SEO, paid search, email, public relations, social media, and ILS. I liked that he showed the pros and cons of each and how they apply to his company. This is living proof that often times using many marketing strategies instead of one can be extremely beneficial and open a business up to new and different target markets.

This presentation related both to our readings and discussions on internet history and business models. As for our internet history material, we have talked a lot about how a huge percentage of dot com companies have died out either right at the burst or over time. Learning about this company brought life to the small percentage of successes that we have mentioned during that time. The fact that technology was not up to speed with them and, the way they adjusted and reformatted over the years reminded me of the peapod example, which had to do the same thing and is still alive and well today. In our reading we have learned about 9 basic business models. Chris mentioned affiliate specifically. This is where the business in question rewards affiliates (such as bloggers ) for sending them customers. There are internal and external affiliates and they are handled differently and sometimes through a third party because a large company just does not have the time to deal with every little blogger affiliate on a daily basis. There are pros and cons to using this for Restaurant.com. Some pros include, the help of CPA vs. CPM OR CPC, brand exposure and media placement possibilities, and it is great for customer acquisition. Some of the cons are; it is expensive, it does not build brand loyalty since most customers acquired this way are one stop shoppers at the site, it is very discount driven, it is susceptible to fraud and/or cyber squatting.

I enjoyed what I learned from Chris and it helped me understand some of our chapter material better. I hope you enjoyed my small recap!