Consumers Will Keep Spending As U.S. Hurdles Fade: Economy

Despite delayed tax refunds, rising fuel costs and a lagging economy, consumers are still spending and forecasted to spend even more. The Commerce Department report shows that retail sales increased 1.1% in February, marking the biggest gain in five months.

Amazon Is The Most-Visited Online Retailer In Europe

comScore Inc. reports that Amazon, North America’s largest online retailer is also the largest e-commerce site in Europe. In December, 26.4 million Europeans visited Amazon’s site, making Amazon the most visited e-retailer in Europe.

In addition, Amazon had 6.6 million mobile European visitors that month, an 87% increase from December 2011. Russia, Europe’s largest online population with over 61.3 million users, represents 15% of Europe’s total online audience.

Customers Don’t Want Ads, They Want A Conversation

In an effort to create more meaningful brand connections, companies are now executing deeper collaboration campaigns. Marketers are making a pivotal shift from marketing “at” consumers to marketing “with” consumers.

Five popular trends to demonstrate this effectiveness are: Democratized Product Development, Close Continuous Customer Relationships, Open Organizations, Peer-Powered Media and Measurement of Influence not Impressions.

Toy Store Owner Looks To The Future After St. Louis Area Rallies

A small toy store in St. Louis was saved by crowdsource funding. Shawnta Ray, owner of Once Upon a Toy in Edwardsville and LagoonaMagoo in Clayton, began explaining to friends and local customers that the store would be closing soon. To her surprise, local supporters rallied around Ray and started a crowd-sourcing effort on Crowdtilt, a fundraising platform.

Their goal was to raise $75,000 by March 15th. Money donated would only be collected once their goal was reached, but by March 15th over $82,450 was raised. Both stores will remain open.

“I don’t really know how to thank everyone enough or to show enough humility,” said Ray.

Video Game Uses Layouts, Audio Cues To Successfully Help The Blind Navigate Buildings

A new video game helps the blind navigate buildings in real life by improving spatial awareness through a computer generated layout. Audio cues help blind users find hidden jewels in the computer generated buildings, which proved to help players navigate those same buildings in real life.

With over 285 million estimated visually impaired people, this new spatial awareness technology could benefit the lives of many.

“The video game not only allows you to build a map in your mind, it allows you to interact with it mentally in a way that you wouldn’t be able to if you were taught explicitly (by walking through it),” said Dr. Lotfi Merabet, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

The post Toy Industry Article Roundup appeared first on Play Happens.

Toy Industry Foundation Holds Record-Breaking Toy Drive At Toy Fair 2013

On The Toy Bank’s 10 year anniversary, the Toy Industry Foundation acquired over 42,000 donated toys and games, a 33% increase from last year’s toy drive.

“Since The Toy Bank’s founding in 2003, caring toy companies have helped us to deliver the joy of play to more than 10 million disadvantaged children… We’re off to a wonderful start for 2013, and we cannot wait to share what the rest of the year has in store!” said Jean Butler, executive director of the Toy Industry Foundation.

Why Mums Shop Online

Busy parents are finding it easier to buy children’s toys online. The convenience factor appears to be a bigger influence on buying behavior than last year’s price influence.

Half of surveyed mothers cited price as the greatest factor, a 21% decrease from last year. While 12.5% of mothers said product range is most important, and a little over 8% cited customer service and brand integrity.

What You Can Learn About Online Shoppers By Watching Them

Behavioral science companies have been watching consumer behavior online and are making some interesting observations.

For instance, social proof (showing what your friends liked and bought) is more effective at night with nearly no effect during the day. And, beware of customers who type their last name in all caps, they are 5.6 times more likely to be a fraudulent buyer.

Breaking Rules In The Toy Business

Nicholas J. Webb invented Hӓnz, a toy that can be played with over and over again and incorporates a competitive social element. Hӓnz has caught the attention of over 60 retailers and many educational leaders. This highly versatile construction system offers potential classroom applications focused on artistic and engineering challenges.

This added element of innovation is something that Webb hopes National retailers will be interested in as well.

Can Kickstarter Change The Toy Industry?

Kickstarter is a funding platform that allows anyone to pitch their idea, movie, book, toy, etc. for crowdfunding. Every creator sets their funding goal and deadline. Pitches can include a business plan, a video, photos and more. The project creator also sets incentives for people to help fund their project.

Since its 2009 launch, Kickstarter has funded over 80,000 different creative projects.

Here’s what spokesperson Justin Kazmark had to say about funding for toys, “Toys fall into our games and design categories. The latter is a catch-all for a range of different things. Some toy things in the design category include building kits like LEGO-type projects. A lot of the stuff that works on Kickstarter is for things that have a creative focus.”

The post Toy Industry Article Round Up appeared first on Play Happens.

The post Toy Fair 2013 Video Recap appeared first on Play Happens.

Websites Showcase Private-Label Baby Brands

In an effort to drive new-parent traffic into their stores, and to their private-label baby products, supermarkets are employing dedicated websites. While providing relevant editorial content that engages young parents, the sites also extend special offers, e-coupons and more to develop “the baby shopper.”

According to Jim Hertel, managing partner at Willard Bishop, retailers are “saying ‘if we invest in this household today, we could form a relationship that could span years, not just to the next shopping trip.’”

Making The Most Of Your Post-Purchase Emails

The time between a customer submitting their order and receiving your product is a very commonly overlooked engagement opportunity. Article author, Jim Davidson, makes the great parallel between ordering a product online and ordering food at a restaurant. After you place your order, you salivate with anticipation. This process intensifies your appetite and urge to satisfy your craving.

This gives you — the seller — the opportunity to fill this anticipation-stage void with further brand marketing. Showcase your brand’s personality, “keep their glasses filled” by continuing to provide information related to their purchase, check back in after they have received their meal, I mean order! And, by establishing a fluid customer service experience throughout, and after a product purchase, your customers will be more likely to return.

China’s Internet Is A Giant Shopping Mall [Infographic]

China’s rising middle class is changing the global retail landscape; this infographic examines Chinese consumers’ rise in online shopping. This easy to digest infographic translates how much the average Chinese consumer spends, what they buy and how it compares with the U.S., U.K. and Europe. Jim Erickson, managing editor of Alibaba Group’s corporate news website Alizila, compiled this data from various sources.

Classic Toys Designed To Traverse Generations

Parents often seek favorite toys from their childhood when buying new toys or games for their children. This nostalgia effect creates a more bonding experience with their children. Toy makers have long tried to capture this generational toy connection by creating brands that stand the test of time.

The New York Times recently reported on Hasbro’s efforts to continue this connection among Transformers and My Little Pony fans whose affinity for the products, the toy company hopes, will trickle down to their children.

Intertek Acquires Brazil-based Toy Testing Laboratory E-TEST

Intertek has acquired 85% of the share capital of E-TEST Laboratorio de Ensaios e Tecnologia Ltda. (E-TEST), a privately owned testing laboratory serving Brazil’s toy market.

“The acquisition of E-TEST will enable Intertek to serve Brazil’s R$3 billion toy market…” said Intertek’s Jay Gutierrez. “It also provides Intertek the opportunity to expand our chemical and restricted substances testing capabilities in Brazil, as well as to add testing services for other children’s products categories such as school supplies, party articles, baby bottles and pacifiers,” he continued.

Newtown Dad, Toy Inventor Help Local Children Sleep Peacefully, Again

A Thank You call from Newtown dad Chris Wenis to toy inventor Geoff Roesch has resulted in a friendship and toy donation to help the children of Newtown sleep at night.

“The call was the most humbling and meaningful thing that has ever happened to me as a toy creator,” said Mr Roesch of Volcano LLC. “We’re just a three-person company, but we work incredibly hard to make good toys. We never imagined though, that one of our toys might be used for something as meaningful and important as helping the families in Sandy Hook.”

Playing To Learn: Panelists At Stanford Discussion Say Using Games As An Educational Tool Provides Opportunities For Deeper Learning

At a recent Stanford University Graduate School of Education panel discussion on Education’s Digital Future Professor Roy Pea introduced the notion of “gaming to learn” which has been around Stanford for close to a decade.

“Human minds are plug-and-play devices; they’re not meant to be used alone. They’re meant to be used in networks,” said Professor James Gee. Games allow us to do that with ‘collective intelligence.’

Panelists agreed that the traditional classroom, in many ways, stifles attributes most essential for learning: risk taking, persistence, collaboration, problem solving.

The post Toy Industry Article Round Up appeared first on Play Happens.

Google Analytics. You’ve signed in a few times, it’s working, but now what? Lets dig into what the data is really telling you.

Every business and website is different so I’m going to briefly walk you through the basics and let you determine what the data means based on your unique goals and marketplace. But, by walking you through some overall quantifying indicators (like bounce rate) I’ll also provide you with a better sense of your site’s content, engagement and referral traffic that can easily be applied.

You’re about to learn:

1. What do the metrics mean? Which are most important?
2. Where is my traffic coming from?
3. What keywords are people searching for that lead to my site?
4. What are my top viewed pages?
5. What are my worst performing pages?
6. Where are people leaving my site the most?
7. How can I increase sales by better leading my customers through the customer acquisition phases?

Lets start with the first thing you see in Google Analytics–your audience overview.

These infrequent users (not you of course, you’re savvier than that) probably stumble onto this page, see the line graph and think *phew* people ARE coming to my site. Cool, back to work. Not so fast people! We’ve got some digging to do.

Main Overview / Dashboard

What do the metrics mean?

Scroll down to the main overview module and let’s break down the data:

Visits: The number of visits to your website by users. The number of individual sessions initiated by all of the visitors to your site. (If a visitor is inactive on your site for 30+ minutes, a future activity is considered a new session)

Unique Visitors: Unique person visits to your site. (Repeat visits do not count here, just an “individual person count”) The first time someone visits your site, a cookie is set in their browser. Every time after their initial visit, the cookie recognizes it as the same browser.

Pageviews: The number of times people have viewed pages on your site. If a visitor reloads a page on your site, this counts as an additional pageview. If a visitor visits a different page and returns to the original page, a second pageview will be counted.

Pages/Visits: The average number of pages viewed during a visit to your site. Repeated views of the page by a user are counted in this average.

Avg. Visit Duration: This is the average time a user spends on your site.

Bounce Rate: Percentage of users who viewed one page on your site and then left. One of the best quantifying metrics, this will show you what pages, keywords and entries points have poor conversion rates, essentially “bouncing” off your site. This data will help assess which pages on your site need immediate attention. More on how important Bounce Rate is in a bit!

% New Visits:  Percentage of the total visits that came from new visitors. A new visitor is a user without your site’s cookie present in their browser history. An increase in % new visits could be a good indicator of extended outreach online. While a decrease could mean improved visitor engagement.

Traffic Sources (Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals)

Where is my traffic coming from?

Is it through a search? A direct source or a partnering website? Not only is it helpful to know where the majority of your traffic is coming from, but it’s also good to know which sources bring the most engaged users: those that stick around. You should be continually seeking out which sources send you quality readers, have low bounce rates, etc.  You might take note of any consistencies in these referral sources, and attempt to seek out more just like them.

In addition, our example website should continue and expand their outreach with tripadvisor.com. The bounce rate is extremely low and they have a very high pages per visit ratio. Four visits doesn’t give us a huge dataset to play with, but but those visitors are sticking around a while. These results also persuade me to look into where people are landing from LinkedIn, how can I better optimize that page for their business driven audience?.

Keywords (Traffic Sources > Search> Organic)

What keywords are people searching for that lead to my site?

The keywords visitors are using to find your site gives you a good idea of how people are stumbling upon your site.

The (not provided) is typically a large percentage of visit referral and is a bit controversial. Google states that (not provided) is: “when SSL search is employed (e.g., if the user is signed in to a Google account, or using the Firefox search bar), Keyword will have the value (not provided)” – Google

You will notice that the second most searched keyword is the url, classified as “Branded Search”, which is when people are searc specifically for your site by url, brand or company. This is a great sign of returning traffic, but you also want to keep an eye on where new visitors are coming from.

This example is a coupon site, they are obtaining visitors from specific coupon queries. Perhaps they could add a “If you like McDonald’s Coupons, you would also like Pazzo’s Pizza Coupons” With an encouraging call to action to check out a correlating page (with a link). In addition, people entering the site from the query “summit county kids activities” are probably looking specifically for specific local activities for kids. How can the current landing page for this query have richer content and persuade these readers to stick around?

Content & Top Pages (Content > Site Content > All Pages)

What are my top viewed pages? What are my worst performing pages? Where are people leaving my site the most?

Your homepage is typically one of the top pages, this is shown by just the /. Google Analytics only shows pages by /folder/or-page-name-here/ since all pages will start with yourdomain.com .

For most websites, the homepage gets all of the attention, when in reality you should give your most viewed pages some love!  You are already getting top traffic to these pages, how can you ensure that once a user is on a top page, they will continue sticking around and return again? The content on these top pages can make all of the difference.

Taking a look at your top page’s bounce rate. What top pages aren’t performing very well (high percentage of bounce)? What can you do to enhance the content on those pages? The #9 ranked page here has a bounce rate of almost 93% which is not good. I would suggest adding quality content about ‘Aspen News’ to this page in order to encourage visitors to stick around a while. It’s good to look at your lowest viewed pages but why not enhance the most visible pages first for better conversions?

Where are people leaving your site the most? Look at your exit percentages and determine if there is an outlier. Does one page have a drastically higher exit rate? If so, try to examine why?

How can I increase sales by better leading my customers through the customer acquisition phases?

Research your customer

Have content for each stage of your customer acquisition while optimizing it for the platforms sending you traffic.

Tweak pages for your various customer acquisition stages. For example:

• An education page where you educate new customers on why they need your product.
• A social proof page where newly informed customers can see testimonials from real product users.
• A sense of urgency sale page to help encourage customers to purchase the product at the lowest sale now.

Thanks for reading Google Analytics 101. I will provide feedback and suggestions to the first 2 commenters on their site’s Google Analytics. Please include “I look forward to you analyzing my site!” in your comment so I know you read to this point and want the feedback.

The post Google Analytics 101 appeared first on Play Happens.

The post Toy Fair 2013 Day 3 – Video appeared first on Play Happens.

The post Toy Fair 2013 – Day 3 Photos appeared first on Play Happens.

The post Toy Fair 2013 Day 2 – Video appeared first on Play Happens.

Also, be sure to check out our day two recap video

The post Toy Fair 2013 – Day Two Photos appeared first on Play Happens.

The post Toy Fair 2013 Show Opening Video appeared first on Play Happens.