November 26th, 2008 by Gruden
Web-blast is a huge end-of-year party for Sydney’s web community – bringing together web designers, web project managers, interface designers, information architects and other web professionals. Join a range of Sydney’s web communities and celebrate the end of year in style on Friday 5th December, 2008 at Bar Broadway.
Online ticket sales start tomorrow, so get in quick! Entry is $12,(with free drinks until the tab runs dry) so lock yourself in for a great night out. Purchase your tickets here.
November 25th, 2008 by Gruden
Online consumers intend to spend less in stores during this holiday season than last, but slightly more online – where they expect free shipping and deals not available in stores, according to The Consumer Internet Barometer from The Conference Board and TNS, reports Retailer Daily.
Bargain hunting will remain the driving force behind online sales, notes the quarterly report, which surveys 10,000 households across the US and tracks who’s doing what on the internet.
“Free shipping, exclusive online deals, coupons and discounts are among the incentives consumers will be expecting this season,” said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center.”
Online sales across retail channels are forecast to grow 9% this holiday season, compared with a total retail sales forecast of just 1.5% growth this year in the key holiday shopping retail sectors, according to TNS Retail Forward. It expects online sales to reach $42.5 billion in the fourth quarter, up $3.5 billion from last year.
Below, some of the findings from the Consumer Internet Barometer.
In-Store vs. Online Shopping
Even though online shoppers plan to spend less in stores this holiday season, planned spending online is up slightly compared with the same quarter last year.
“Despite slowing retail sales in many channels this holiday season, online shopping is likely to be one of the few bright spots this holiday season,” said Mary Brett Whitfield, director of the Retail Forward Intelligence System of TNS Retail Forward.
Check out the rest of the survey results here.
Source: Marketingvox
November 21st, 2008 by Gruden
Nearly 61% of US consumers who recently bought a mobile or wireless phone were influenced by online product reviews and user comments, while 30% of purchasers were similarly influenced by blogs, according to the Media Influence on Consumer Choice survey by Ad-ology, MarketingCharts reports.
Additional findings
About the survey: The Media Influence on Consumer Choice survey is conducted quarterly by Ad-ology Research to study on- and off-line media influence on buying decisions. The survey asks a national consumer panel about key factors in their buying decisions. Respondents also rate nine types of online and seven types of traditional media with regard to how each influenced what they bought and where they bought it. The research was conducted with an online consumer panel of 1,105 adults from August 25-28, 2008.
Source: MarketingVox
November 19th, 2008 by Gruden
Last weekend saw the exciting launch of the NSW eTendering System from the Gruden Commerce Team.
The NSW eTendering site, managed by the Department of Commerce, supports hundreds of agency users, tens of thousands of suppliers to government, and tracks NSW government procurement through the tendering process to the awarded contracts.
Building on the success of the AusTender II development project, in late 2007 Commerce requested Gruden develop a refresh of the eTendering system. A three month scoping phase followed, developing a detailed functional specification, including specifying requirements for post-live releases. Gruden then took the site through a Look & Feel process, designed to refresh the eTendering system in light of NSW Government style requirements.
After a thorough templating phase, in which every public and admin screen was mocked up in HTML, and a period of prototyping key interfaces, development commenced. Running for five months, with periods of end-user testing to engage all stakeholders, development remained on time and budget with strong change management and control from the combined project team across Commerce and Gruden.
Finally, Gruden had a month to develop migration scripts to move data from the legacy system to the new. This final migration ran over a weekend to minimise downtime, and involved moving gigabytes of data and tens of thousands of public records and their associated history.
The site has been deployed to a cluster of Solaris 10 servers, running Coldfusion 7 and MySQL 4. Upgrades to both Coldfusion and the MySQL narrowly missed the first release of the system and are likely to occur within the next 6 months.
When the traffic returned Monday morning, users were greeted with a fresh, easy-to-use and robust eTendering system. The team at Commerce and Gruden have developed a solid basis on which to further build the system to meet the requirements of NSW Government procurement.
November 19th, 2008 by Gruden
Ever wanted to know a little more about Gruden and what we get up to in the office when no one’s looking?
Take a quick look at our video on Agency Fair, showing the Grudenites working hard, and just as importantly, playing hard.
Agency Fair is an initiative created by Transfer, a full-service talent and initiatives agency. It gives agencies the opportunity to tell people about their strengths as well as the things that differentiate them from other agencies.
Go on, check it out!
November 13th, 2008 by Gruden
Just in case you couldn’t get enough of us already, there’s another way that you can now access all our up to date information and blog entries on the web, via Gruden’s FriendFeed.
FriendFeed enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends.
Subscribe to our feed by visiting http://friendfeed.com/gruden.
November 5th, 2008 by Gruden
AIMIA has just announced a fantastic lineup of speakers for next week’s Web 2.0: Optimising Your Business Online forum, to be held on November 12th.
You know all the benefits of Web 2.0, but are you maximising all the available opportunities online?
What are the expectations of vendors, agencies and customers and how do we deal with it? How does Australia stack up globally and what does the future hold for you and your business?
AIMIA and Adobe are delighted to present Web 2.0: Optimising your Business Online, a forum that will gauge the state of play of true interactive web applications in the Australian market. Our expert panel will examine, debate and explore current adoption as well as predicting future utilisation of Web 2.0.
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to see Simon Reid, Senior User Experience Consultant, Adobe, Jane Huxley, General Manager of the Media Division, Fairfax Digital and our own Guy Cowan, Production Manager, Gruden, give their expert opinions on how you can optimise your business online.
Sound enticing? Register to attend here. Full event details can be found here.
November 3rd, 2008 by Gruden
Australian businesses plan to invest more than AUD$17.9 billion dollars on digital services in 2009, a survey by the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA), IBM and Hyro has claimed.
AIMIA’s first annual AIMIA Digital Services Index reported that revenue generated through digital services in Australian business jumped by 17 per cent in 2008, and now accounts for nearly one in every four dollars earned.
The Index said that organisations will next year target 40 per cent of customers through digital initiatives. Despite these figures, AIMIA chief executive John Butterworth said there is evidence of under investment in digital services: “While digital initiatives now sit behind 40 per cent of customer interactions, and 25 per cent of revenue, investment in digital services will reach only 14.3% of organizational expenditure for 2009, indicating significant under-investment in digital services”.
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