Monday 18 February 2008

Growth In Online Restaurant Reservations - Why?

What is driving the increase in online reservations for restaurants?

Demand is being driven from both customers and from restaurants.

From Customers

From calls to clicks, the world is changing. According to The 2007 American Express Hospitality Monitor 62% of UK consumers search the internet to decide which restaurant to visit. Restaurants, that’s over half your potential customer base.

When they find the restaurant they want, how do they book? How they book and how they want to book are two different things. Many customers book on the phone because they have to. Restaurants that can be booked online are booked online. Why? Because web booking is quick, it’s easy, and it’s free.

From Restaurants

The phone is great. But wouldn’t it be good if the phone only rang when you are there and when you’re not busy? The worst time to take a booking by phone is when you’re at your busiest.

The best time to take a booking online however is anytime. Anytime means: when you’re closed as well as when you are too busy to answer the phone. You can’t answer the phone 24 hours a day 7 days a week, but the internet is open for business anytime.

Looking at our 2007 data, at Livebookings Network we've found that 18% of online bookings are made between 10pm and 10am - that’s 18% of bookings you might have otherwise lost. On the other hand, 44% of online bookings are made during busy service times. The most popular hour of the day to make a booking online is between 1 and 2pm - that’s when you want to be focussed on service, not answering the phone.

More and more customer reservations behaviour is changing and the internet is proving to be an important channel that is being adopted by both restaurants and their customers in increasing numbers.

Friday 15 February 2008

Get More Traffic To Your Blog From Facebook

One way to get visitors to your blog is to get your blog posts in front of an audience that might want to read them.

And one place that your audience might just be hanging out is on Facebook.

If you have a Facebook profile, there's a neat application that you can add to dynamically display your blog posts on your profile.

First of all get an RSS feed set up for your blog. A good place to do this if you haven't already done so is at www.feedburner.com.

This will give you an RSS feed URL for your blog.

Then, log into Facebook and go to the Blog RSS Feed Reader application and add it to your profile.

In the configuration, add the details of your RSS feed url (For example, mine is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/davidnorris), and configure how you want the feed to appear on your profile.

Then, every time you add a blog post it will appear on your mini-feed. It takes your blog to your audience rather than asking your audience to come to you.

Checking my Google Analytics account, I can see I'm now regularly getting referrals from Facebook as a result. Nice.

Thursday 14 February 2008

Virtual Flowers, Whatever Next?


Now you can send your loved ones a "digital bouquet" of flowers.

This is weird. Call me old fashioned, but there's something lacking when your flowers are sent by email!

What's even more weird is that you might want to actually pay for it!

In the States, www.bokayme.com/ are offering you the chance to send your loved one a digital bouquet. Woopy-dee-doo! AND -you can pay $3 to customise your bouquet. Bizarre.

Still, it will create lots of inbound linking for their parent company, news chatter, blog posts, viral marketing.

Wednesday 13 February 2008

It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know

How recruitment is changing to use social networks and "Web 2.0" technology to source candidates.

The recruitment business has always been about matching supply and demand. Candidates and Employers.

In the old days, this would involve newspaper and magazine advertising to source potential candiates. Then along came the internet, which allowed for three important changes:

1. Aggregation of supply
Websites sprung up that posted jobs from many different employers and agencies, allowing for a one stop shop for candidates.

2. Employer direct advertising
With the internet employers can advertise directly themselves with ease and source lots of candidates with a simple online listing.

3. Candidate driven demand
Candidates can search for jobs using search engines. This allows employers and agencies to advertise using paid search (e.g. Google Adwords) to fish for candidates that were stating their interest.

There have been a few winners in this first round of the internet revolution. A good example is Monster.co.uk, a jobs listing site that when I checked last had over nearly 2000 jobs in London for just one sector: IT/Software Development.

HR Managers and the recruitment industry have adapted to this new world. Can they adapt to what's coming next?


Get A Haircut And Get A New Job

The next round of change is being driven by online social networks and "web 2.0" (community driven) applications.


Here's 5 examples of what's coming next...

What connects them all is that increasingly we will be referring each other for jobs and sites will facilitate this.


1. Niche Community job boards
Specialist communities have built up over the last few years. Owners of these sites realise that their audience might be interested in jobs in that sector. An example that I've found to be successful was http://www.e-consultancy.com/jobs/ which is an online marketing and ecommerce resource. I posted a job here for just £99. I only got a few candidates, but one of them was the one we hired. Result.


2. Linkedin.com - professional networking site
Linkedin is a networking site that allows you to keep in touch with your professional contacts. It's like an online contacts list that is automatically kept up to date. There's over a million users in the UK. By my calculations, there's probably only 200,000 that are "power" users.

Anyway - linkedin has job ads. As an employer I can list a job for only about £100 (Monster is about £500). What's clever is that when a user logs in, jobs in their "network" are shown. I've found many of the jobs advertised that I've seen when I log in to be highly relevant: they're in the right sector and are interesting job roles.

What's also clever is that if you apply for a job, Linkedin will tel you how you might be connected to someone at the hiring company. You know "John Smith" who knows a "Jane White" at "Company X" where company X is the job opportunity. It gives you a chance to knock on a few doors, ask John to have a chat with Jane to find out more about the job, put in a good word for you. The power of a personal introduction is always and will always be a useful door-opener.


3. Facebook pages and applications
Facebook has a number of jobs applications. Companies are trying to find one that works. I'm not sure that Facebook is the right place for job hunting, but lots of companies have tried to make it work.

There are two main types of applications: "refer a friend" and "search for a job". The trouble is with the "search for a job" type applications is this: why would you want a "David added the search-for-a-job application" message to appear on your profile, especially as so many of your "friends" are probably your colleagues. Who can you trust these days?

Refer-a-friend type applications are potentially interesting, but the whimsical nature of Facebook means that it doesn't lend itself to a decent referral audience. If you are going to refer a friend you need to put some effort into it. See Zubka.com, below.


4. Zubka.com - referral reward site
This is a very interesting start-up and it's private equity backers are the same guys that backed eBay, Betfair and Bebo.

Zubka’s approach is that a user will log on to their website, see a job that they think that their friend may be interested in, and make a referral. If the friend gets the job, the user gets a fee. The fees are substantial. For a £50,000 role, the referrer stands to make £3,600 if the candidate is successful. That's a pretty big carrot. It does require some effort from the referrer, but not too much. 10 minutes work could land you a couple of grand.


5. Notchup.com - get paid to interview for jobs
Taking things one step further is Notchup.com. Let's see if this one works out, but it sounds interesting. Here, you register and employers can invite you for interview.

What's great is that they PAY YOU to go on the interview. How great is that? According to their "interview calculator, I'm worth $610 an interview. Could be worth an afternoon off? I haven't really test driven this site myself, so I'd be interested in feedback from anyone that has.


So - what success have you had with finding candidates or jobs through community based websites?

I'd be interested to know. Comments welcomed....

Tuesday 12 February 2008

What, Why, Who, When and How

The 5 senses of getting things done.

Think about it, at a very basic level, a lot of human communication really is about these 5 simple words.

What - describes the situation (past, present future) and whether you want it to change or stay the same.

Why - the logic (or not) that explains the situation or need

Who - person or groups of people that are responsible, need to know, are to blame, are the audience, stakeholders, participants or enablers

When - is this now, in the past or in the future, specifically; either a date or a time

How - How did it happen, how does it happen, or how will it happen?


When you are putting a project together and you want to "get stuff done", it's good to always remember these 5 words. Whether it's building a website, running a marketing campaign, setting goals for an employee or making changes to a system or process, these 5 words are to a project what the 5 senses are to us in everyday life.

To be effective we use our senses all the time. Sometimes we use our sight more than our smell, sometimes our hearing more than our touch. If you want to get things done, you need to use your 5 communication channels of What, Why, Who, When and How.

So every time you write an email asking for something, write a project plan, or present a business plan, make sure you've thought about all 5.

Say I want to ask my tech team to build a new webpage for a promotion. Sure, I can say "what" I want. However, if I miss out "why" I might not quite get what I wanted.

Adding "why" allows my audience to understand the reasons driving the "what", and makes it more likely that they understand the context. Also, if you tell someone why you want them to do something, they're more likely to do it than if you don't.

What if I miss out "when"? Of course, that's pretty obvious, I might get it late (at which point I'm going crazy), or the page is useless.

I might not know "who" needs to build the page, (my CTO might decide that), but I can say "who" the audience is and "who" the stakeholders are. This will help the tech team to gather further information that will make the project a success.

Again, I might not have all of the answers to "how" it will get built, but I can give my own "how" we will prioritise it, "how" we will get information and content, "how" we will market it and link it through the site, "how" we will pay for it or get paid for it.

What, Why, Who, When and How

A good communication includes as much useful detail as possible for each of these 5 words.

Think about it next time you write a project plan or ask for something in an email.

You might just get what you wanted.

Monday 11 February 2008

Mile High Club

Marketing was always meant to be this simple: pimp up your campaign with some sexy images and you're onto a winner.

In response to the age old problem, "how do I get more subscribers for my email newsletter", Cheapflights.co.uk go viral with a saucy microsite that let's all of your air hostess (or air steward) fantasies come true.

I won't say anymore except to be careful about getting too excited, this is pretty hot hot hot.

Click on www.enjoyyourflight.co.uk and have a cold shower at the ready.

Thursday 7 February 2008

Why Can't I Find You On Google?

Yes, we've all done, it, Googling our name.

I'm as guilty as the rest of them, but I have the challenge of competing with a footballer, a sculptor and a senator for getting a ranking. David Norris - it's hardly a unique name.

More and more "name searches" are taking hold as we "Google" our future employers, our future employees, dates, friends and celebs.

Can you be found if you Google your name? If so, what do you get? If you're in business, your professional repuation will increasingly depend on what people read about you online.

A new start up has just launched that aims to help us all get found. The site is still in Beta, so if you get in there now, you might get a listing for free before they start charging.

It's called lookuppage.com.

Here's how it worked for me:
1. Sign up
2. Create a simple profile
3. I received a call the same day enquiring about how I heard of the service and they explained more about their plans
4. The next day I found my page at www.davidnorris1.com through Google - it was listed in the paid ads! (I didn't pay for the ad - they did)



Interesting business model here. They buy me a domain, pay for PPC, it won't cost them much. I tell all my friends, they sign up, and soon their user base expands fast virally. When they get enough critical mass, they start charging for premuim services and work with corporate accounts. If this works, sales focussed companies and small businesses with low web presence will be eager to get a quick low cost visibility for their key people.

It's great too because I get a legitimate link to this blog from the new page, every link helps!

So - you've nothing to lose, go get your page now before they start charging.

Monday 4 February 2008

Portabilty Of The Social Graph: Google's new Social Graph API

One of the trends to look out for this year online is the "portability" of the Social Graph.

The Social Graph is a term used to describe the mapping of relationships between people. Many of us have relationships on well known social networking sites such as Facebook and Linkedin, as well as more obsure forums and specialised communities.

In terms of usefulness, to be able access these relationships is a great starting point for all sorts of website applications.

What's really needed though is a way to be able to get a "meta" view of all of these relationships so that you don't need to declare them all everytime you land on a new site. I don't really want to maintain 20 different "friends" lists when I only really have one set of friends. (OK, some contacts aren't friends, and some friends are not in contact online, but the point is that mapping out these relationships time and time again can be tedious).

Wouldn't it be useful if a website already knew about my contacts and suggested relevant useful topics according to my contacts and interests? What if say, website X knew that I was already "friends" with my friend on website Y and suggested that we connect on website Y as well? I might not know that my friend also uses website Y, and so with a simple prompt we could find each other.

It all sounds a bit big brother right?

Well, our masters of the universe, Google, are having a go at solving this problem in the form of the Google Social Graph API.

How does it work?

Quite simply it gives developers tools that can analyse the links to and from the from any public "profile" page of a website and start to infer from the links who is connected to which networks.

For those of you who know your HTML, there is an anchor tag attribute "rel" which can be used by social sites and blogs to clarify further the type of relationship.

For example if I were to link to this blog from one of my sites I would write [a href="http://www.david.norris.co.uk" rel="me"]. The rel="me" attribute says that the site I'm linking to is one of my sites.

This is just one way that Google can read the link patterns to identify relationships.

Trying it out

Google offer a couple of example applications that show how the API can be used.

One of these is called My Connections. Here I entered 3 of my sites in the input box; this blog, my linkedin profile and my Gooruze profile.

On clicking "My Connnections", the script analysed the links between those sites.

Here's the link: http://socialgraph-resources.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/findyours.html?q=www.david-norris.co.uk%2Bwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fdavidnorris%2Bwww.gooruze.com%2Fmembers%2Fdcnorris.

It can tell which of the my "claimed" sites can be reached from each url.

Interestingly it found out that I had put in livebookings.net as one of "my sites" on Linkedin. This is the website for the company for which I work. It then identified a possible connection of another site that links to one of mine "claiming" to be me. This was www.linkedin.com/in/hultberg, which also links to livebookings.net.

This is because www.linkedin.com/in/hultberg is a linkedin page from a colleague at livebookings who also put livebookings.net as his company site on linkedin.

Will it catch on?

For Google, more accurate mapping of the Social Graph will require that websites enable the code in their links from profile pages to contain the REL attribute or other methods of categorising links out.

If anyone can encourage the uptake of new coding habits, Google can.

The question is
- will we reach critical mass of enough sites using these attributes so that relationships can be correctly inferred from the links?

We'll see. In the meantime, this is clearly a strategic effort by Google to have some control over how the Social Graph is made portable. Whoever cracks this nut is going to have significant advantage in the next phase of the internet's growth.

Saturday 2 February 2008

Raja-Fashions Tailor-Made Hong Kong Suits, Online Meets Offline

The joys and perils of buying a suit from the other side of the world.

Here's an example of where the internet and modern communications have transformed what's possible. Online meets offline, personalised service in a mass-market, off-shore manufacture, on-shore sales - it's a whole world of opposites.

If you know me, you'll know I'm tall and slim. The "slim patroller" they used to call me in the day. Getting clothes to fit me is very difficult, never mind a suit. I can get the fit on the shoulders only to find no length in the sleeves and a tent around my middle. Trousers that fit my waist don't reach my ankles.

Recently into a new job, I thought it was time to invest in a new suit. I managed to squeeze 10 years out of the last one, but the poor old thing had had it's day.

This time I thought I'd try a tailor made suit (for the reasons mentioned above), but I didn't want to spend a fortune on Saville Row.

I'd heard of Raja Fashions before having seen their adverts in the papers. You might have seen them too - they talk of a Hong Kong tailor, Mr Daswani, who travels the world (mainly the UK and the USA) to measure up clients for his team of tailors in Hong Kong. You're promised high street prices, but tailor made quality.

(Offline advertising for brand awareness)

I recalled the name so I went online and searched Google for "Raja" and "Hong Kong Tailors" and sure, soon enough I found their site. On the site, I found a list of dates when he would be in London, and I could make an online reservation from the site for the date and time that suited me. As it happened I had a 3 week wait before my Saturday appointment at a Kensington hotel suite.

(Online lead generation and appointment facility)

I was kind of expecting to see Mr Daswani, but no, the room had 4 younger guys from his team, with suitcases of fabric samples, tape measures and credit card swipe machines. Very quickly I was being seen to by "Dennis" (I'm sure that's not his real name) who very quickly started to take details about what I wanted. I said I wanted 2 suits, one simple black one and a slightly more fashionable brown pinstripe. He measured me up, and asked questions about various options I had such as type of vents, width of lapel, angle of pockets, number of pockets etc etc. To be honest I wasn't quite sure what I wanted, it felt uncomfortably fast and I was getting flustered. Maybe that was his technique. Moving so fast I was caught off guard on the negotiation front. I was expecting to pay £300 to £400 per suit. In the end, with upgraded fabric, nice lining etc, I was looking at £650 a suit. I also went for a white shirt (only £50), so the total bill was a whopping £1350. Ouch. Whilst I was being distracted by a guy taking my photo, my credit card was already being processed and only 25 minutes after walking in I was leaving wondering how on earth I managed to just drop that kind of money and would I get what I wanted?

(Old fashioned pen and carbon copied paper, and a "tiger" for a salesman)

I was told to expect my suits within 4-6 weeks. 3 weeks in and the shirt arrived. Great fit, just that it was a little tight around the collar. I don't usually wear a tie, so I let it go. It was great to have a shirt that didn't flap across my chest and was long enough on the sleeves and tails.Being cotton, it has shrunk a small amount too. I thinkif I were to order more of these I'd get and extra 1/2 inch on the collar.

(International parcel delivery)

I waited for the suits, but they didn't arrive. 7 weeks in I emailed Raja Fashions in Hong Kong and was told by reply that they had despatched about 3 weeks previously. I was given a Parcelforce tracking number which I looked up online. It's at this point that I started a period of 4 weeks of stress trying to get my suits. I don't think I'll go into the full details here (it warrants it's own blog post) except to say that the parcel had the wrong house number on it, it was apparently signed for and delivered at an address 4 doors down, by a name not heard of by the owners of the house, with the suit no-where to be seen.

Given that this happened at Christmas time and I was having to deal with Parcelforce's customer service centre (think: impossible call routing systems that have none of the options that relate to your situation).... well, you can imagine.

(Automated UK customer "care" - nothing of the sort!)

Three weeks later I had manage to confirm that the suits were not where Parcelforce said they were and was just about to call Mastercard to re-claim my outlay, when Raja Fashions confirmed that they would re-do the order and send the suits over within 2 weeks. I had almost given up.

(Email Hong Kong customer care, this time with results)

Sure enough to the day, my suits arrived and I was this time given an SMS to alert me of the delivery with a choice to choose a different day if the proposed day didn't work for me. Nice touch. Shame they didn't do this first time around and I might have managed to get the suits.

(SMS customer alerting)

My suits arrived in a cardboard box, slightly crupmled after their journey. I tried them on straight away with some nervousness. It was 3 months of effort, a signficant amount of stress and a fair chunk of change to get this far.

The result? Spot on. Absolutely fantastic fit. I sighed a big sigh of relief and looked forward to wearing my new threads.

I had to take the jacket of one suit to the local dry cleaner to get the crumples steamed out of the arms, but that was no big deal.

I've since enjoyed wearing my new suits and I must say, the feeling of tailor-made has me converted. It's lovely good quality wool fabric, feels very sharp. There's no going back to M+S again now.

Would I use Raja-Fashions again?

Yes - I think I would. I am very very happy with the end result. The process to get there was very stressful, but I think to be honest I was just unluckywith the delivery. Raja-Fashions redeemed themselves by re-doing the order once they were sure that it had gone missing.

I've got my next appointment in 6 weeks time. A supply of shirts is in order I feel!

Apart from my personal story, the story here is of a very successful business that is a real mix of all possible ways of doing business: offline advertising, online lead generation and appointments service, face to face sales, old-fashioned payment systems, off-shore manufacturing, personalised goods, international delivery, email customer service, SMS delivery alerting. By locating in Hong Kong but by travelling to their customers around the world, Mr Daswani has created a compelling business model that is going from strength to strength. Good for him I say. Good for me too, the lanky odd-ball that I am.