Takes a few seconds to get going but I reckon it’s worth a watch…

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For me, this was by far and away the best Expo yet. Insightful, great speakers, terrific buzz about the place and all in all a cracking couple of days. So, what did I find particularly  fun and interesting….

• Dave Naylor. Dave’s seminar’s on SEO were a real eye opener and really informative. I also had a good natter with him in his “surgery” and not only was he a great help, but a decent chappie too. ‘Leeds Leeds Leeds’…
• Easy Content Units Our ‘janner’ friends (the two J’s) have built a really great tool which I honestly believe all merchants and affiliates should use. They didn’t present, but appeared to be holding an (almost) 24 hour surgery on the cracking ECU.
• Chatting with Clarke Duncan. It’s always good to have a natter with Clarke. He’s always got loads of great tips which he’s willing to share and doesn’t hold back with his opinion (or two!).
• Chatting to the fella’s from Google. It was great to finally meet somebody from google and find out that unlike the myth, they are actually real people, who like you and I, like a couple of beers! It also is nice to know that they run a ’sensible’ business model and are actually there to help merchants like us progress.
• Hooking up with the AWINners. Is it any wonder they are called winners? Their team all seem to have so much vibrancy and passion about Affiliate Marketing that for me, they really are the network of choice!
• Conversion Rate Experts (and Squirrel). We’ve not done any work with the chaps at CRE yet (we may do if the price is right ) but they obviously know their pop and gave a great presentation on increasing your conversion rate. Toooooo many people focus their entire marketing effort on attracting visitors rather than converting your actual visitors into purchasers.
• The Food. Rather than your traditional ’sarnie’ we were treated to chilli con-carni and nacho mix, and then the delightful pizza (although I regret having the same pizza the night before at Frankie and Benny’s,  grrrr!). Talking about Pizza, pizza’s without cheese are nearly as funny as dogs in hats driving down the road with their heads hanging out the car. You had to be there…
• The Folks. Faaaaarrrrrr tooo many to mention. From my sidekick Mr Keen, through to the Queen of Affiliate Marketing it was bostin to catch up with you all once more. Also nice to meet new people like the Hodge and Michelle Croft. Smashin.

So there we have it folks. It was a really great Expo. If you didn’t go then you really should (the usual suspects of Mr Frost, Shane and Moosehead were sourly missed) and I’m already looking forward to next years!!

Toodle pip.

TBW

PS - To the person who reads my blog (I quote) “EVERY DAY” happy belated birthday.

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Ho Ho Ho!

It’s 1st October, the dark nights are drawing in and that can only mean one thing - Christmas is a coming. So, we only thought it right and proper to provide our lovely affiliates with some delightful tools to help them maximise sales over this years festivities.

1) Landing Page Product Generator

Nowadays with the advent of Easy Content Units, AWIN’s Content Widgets and the like, Affiliates can choose exactly what products they wish to promote instead of the products dictated by the merchant. So, we thought we’d take this one step further and allow you to select exactly what products you want to appear on your landing page so as to increase conversion rate with our Landing Page Product Generator.

How you get involved? Simples…

• Email Ben on ben@prezzybox.com and tell him you’d like to customise the products on your landing page. Don’t worry if you don’t already have a landing page - we’ll create one for you giving your users £5 off all orders over £20. You can see an example of one of our landing pages here
• Once we’ve created your login details then you simply need to login on the link provided
• Then you need to select which products you want to appear on the page and enter the product ID’s in the boxes provided
• Press ’save your Settings’ and then log out.

That’s it. As we say - simples. We really do beleive this will help with conversion rate as you can now focus your landing page on exactly the products you are promoting.

Generic Voucher Code

As an extra incentive to use the landing page we’ve created a genric gift voucher which allows users £5 off all orders over £15. Simply use voucher code EARLY-BIRD The voucher is valid till the end of October.

2) Customised Product RSS Feed

We’ve also launched our Customised Product RSS Feeds.

In the months leading up to Christmas we add literally 100’s of products to our site. Keeping track of them all as an affiliate can be the difference between an average Christmas period and a great one.

If you click here then you will find an RSS feed of all of our latest products. Simply add this to your favourite RSS reader and then every time we add or update a product you’ll be the first to know. This will give you a great competitive advantage when it comes to product reviews, listing products or price comparisons.

Customising the RSS Feed

It doesn’t end there though. You can also customise the RSS feed in order to give you your own Personalised TRACKING DEEP LINKS to each product. You can see a step by step guide of how to do this here.

Also, if you want to use products from a specific product category then you can by simply using the following querystring - Prezzybox.com. You can see an example of this here

3) New Site Design which will increase your conversion rate

We’ve teamed up with onsite analytics company 7 Billion People and have recently redesigned Prezzybox in conjunction with their recommendations on how to increase conversin rates. The early signs are that it is showing an improvement in conversion rates. You can see the full article on the relaunch here and why it will help increae your conversion rate, but some of the things we have put in place are:

• Home Page focusing on gifts. We sell gifts so lets tell people this straight away

• Product Page - bigger call to action and direction to the cart when you’ve added an item to it

• Simpler cart/checkout, which we’ve developed to direct the customer to the buying process as seamlessly as possible

All of which we feel will help increase conversion rate over the Christmas period.

4) Creative

Ben and Bianca have been busy beavering away to create lots of lovely creative for this yuletide and have produced the following:

Content Units

We’ve designed a number of fancy content units in a host of different shapes and sizes. Each content unit incorporates a Christmas feel and a working search bar or gift wizard. All the content units include products which we feel are going to be top sellers this Christmas.

Christmas Gift Wizards

The Gift Wizard is a great of of choosing a gift for someone if you don’t know what you want to buy for a friend. We’ve therefore produced a number of Christmas Gift Wizard content units which you can use on your site. This form of creative is always very popular as it adds a unique feature to your site and allows your users to search for specific items or find the perfect Christmas gift in a hurry!

Vidibox Video Content Units

A video is a great tool for selling products. You can see some research we’ve done on Videos assisting in conversion rate here. So, we’ve produced a number of video content units. You can see a selection of them here

Where to find the creative

All of the creative can be found on both AWIN and POR and is ingeniously entitled Christmas and then what it is (for example Christmas Gift Wizard Search Box). If you struggle to find any of it please contact Ben and he’ll point you in the right direction.

Easy Content Units

Easy Content Units allows affiliates to create product content units in seconds which look and feel like part of your site. These content units are then updated to ensure correct pricing and availability is shown to your visitors. All of their units are fully customisable to fit in with your site and they’ve even got units, where we keep the products fresh with our current bestsellers. However affiliates can customise them any way they wish. You can see an example of one of the Prezzybox ECU here or check out the print screen below.

Best Selling Products/Hot New Products

I’ve looked at all the stats, bent the ears of our buyers and spoke to Nikki in PR to see what are going to be the best selling products this Christmas. I’ve split it into:

1. Hot New Products for Christmas
2. Best Sellers this Year
3. Stocking Fillers that will fly out

Now, the list is far too big however and would make this post HUGE!! So, I’ve taken the liberty of posting on a different thread. You can see this thread by clicking here

That’s all folks

That’s all for now folks. We’re hoping this Christmas is going to be a cracker so if there’s anything we can help with then please don’t hesitate to contact either Ben (ben @ prezzybox.com email and MSN) or Zak (zak @ prezzybox.com on email and MSN) and our new addition Nikki our PR girl (nicola @ prezzybox.com on email and MSN) or give us a call on 0844 2495 007.

Cheers,

Zak.

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Hurrah! We’ve recently launched the redesign of Prezzybox.com. Our design/technical team have been working on this for the past few months and we’re really pleased with the results.

We’ve not redesigned the site for the pure intention of making it looking pretty (although we think it does!). We’ve actually worked closely with NLP analytics company 7 Billion People and have employed a bone fide scientist to come and do full time analysis for us, all in the bid to increase our conversion rate.  So what have we done and why…

Home Page

• As more people have bigger monitors now we’ve widened the site to maximise the selling opportunity.
• We’ve really highlighted the fact that we are a ‘gift’ retailer and have added a ‘birthday’ gifts category as well as promoting our top goodies through our ‘top picks’ and ‘top 10 gifts’. We want people who come to Prezzybox to instantly know what we are about.
• All of the important messages - such as ’security’, ‘fast delivery’ and ‘customer testimonials’ are highlighted on the home page. This emphasises we are a legitimate retailer.

Navigation

•  The Navigation Bar now highlights all of the sub categories in the specific category, thus giving more options to find the ideal gift.
• There are 3 clear further ways to find a gift - namely the ’search facility’, ‘browse by price’ and our ‘gift wizard’ again hoping to entice the user to purchase.

Category Page

• The product categories display all of our top selling gifts in the particular category. This has always been the case.
• Alongside this we display our 6 top sub categories pictorially at the top and then all of the sub categories alphabetically on the left hand side. If users are looking for a specific type of product they can drill down in to the sub category.
• ‘See more like this’ is a really nice feature, as it shows which sub category the product is in and then allows the user to see more products which are similar. We feel this will greater emphasis the huge range we have at Prezzybox.

Product Page

• Really nice functionality this and will hopefully increase conversion rate considerably. We now notify people that the ‘item has been added to the cart’ and highlight where the shopping cart actually is so it’s easier for them to find.

Call to Action Box

• Displaying all of the necessary information. Shows the price, that the item is in stock, how quickly it will be dispatched and where you can click to find similar gifts. Again - simplicity is the key.

Shopping Cart

• We have made the shopping cart ’simples’. It highlights the products you want to buy as well as the security protection we have in place, the delivery options as well as the alternative methods of pay. We wanted to keep it simple so as not to confuse people and put them off entering the checkout.

Checkout

• Really simple design focusing purely on checking out. Hey once people are there that’s what they want to do.
• Emphasis on 100% security highlighted at both the top and bottom of the checkout again to re instill the fact that the company the user are passing their money over to are a legitimate one.
• ‘You are here’ type checklist to highlight that only one simple page  needs to be completed to checkout.
• No need to log in to purchase, which makes the process as quick as possible (although soon we will have the ability to log in if the user wants to retrieve their stored information).

So there you have it folks. We’ve really worked hard to improve the site both functionally and aesthetically whilst trying to ensure that the key statistic - ‘conversion rate’ moves in the right direction. We only launched the new design a couple of days ago so it’s too early to say either way, but I’ll definitely keep you posted.

Toodle pip.

TBW

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Just a quickie today.

Prezzybox, with immediate effect, are no longer using ipoints as their on site incentive scheme.

There’s been no fall out, in fact we’ve always had a good relationship with Nav, Megan, Tom and the team, it’s just that both parties have different thoughts/ideologies on how best to go forwards so we felt it best to part company, rather than to continue in a relationship that neither was entirely happy with.

I know that some affiliates had issue with Prezzybox working what they essentially saw as a ‘competitor’ so hopefully this should be a positive move for those affiliates and mean that we can work closer together in the future.

Toodle pip.

TBW

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Hi guys,

For the past few months we’ve been redesigning the Prezzybox.com website and we’re now in a position to soft launch it. You can see the new site design by clicking here and I’ve also included a screen grab of it below.

This compares to our old site - see below.

We hope to go live with the new site by the end of August, but if all goes to plan it could be as early as next week!

You like?

We’ve been working with neuro linguistic programmers 7 Billion People and have made a number of changes to the current site which we hope (fingers firmly crossed) will have a positive effect on our conversion rate. Obviously this will be good for all of our affiliate buddies too

I’d be really keen to know your thoughts on the new site - be they good, bad or indifferent so please feel free to comment below or drop me an email on zak @ prezzybox.com.

Toodle pip.

TBW

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Last week I saw a Tweet on Twitter looking for both Brummies and Geordies to help with a project on lastminute.com. Hailing from ‘God’s Country’ as I do and speaking the “Queens English” (Brummagen) I thought, “that’s a project I could get involved with” and duly replied.

After a bit of email chitter chatter I was shown Pronto - a ‘nifty’ new search facility from lastminute.

Not only is this an AMAZING search facility (the technology is brilliant - you really do need to have a play with it) but as it’s a search for local hotels and restaurants the ‘lingo’ can be localised (see below). In short you can change the regional dialect in which you search - just for fun. Instead of saying “hello” you utter the immortal Brummie greeting “Alroight me babbie!”. Hence the reason why they needed the wealth of my Brummie colloquialisms.

As I say, it’s a really impressive search facility and is worth a play with. It’s very intuitive, very quick and very clever. Also - because it’s something that’s a bit different, with all of the regional twangs, I think it’s something which will afford Lastminute a lot of PR too, which is obviously a win win from their perspective!

Well done Lastminute. Very clever indeed!

Toodle pip.

Zak.

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We like to do our bit for charity here at Prezzybox.com - as you can see from our recent Voucher Charity offer.

So, whilst chatting with Alicia from Skimlinks about a charity idea they had which involved the social networking sensation Twitter (I admit it, I’m addicted!!!) it became apparent that Prezzybox would be the perfect partner to run a trial with. The trial would combine a number of things I’m passionate about - namely Prezzybox, innovation and donating to charity (as well as social networking!). Perfectamundo!

Here’s the concept - which I have to say is simple, yet in my opinion genius at the same time - well done Skimlinks!

1. Customer comes to Prezzybox.com

2. Customer buys a goody and then goes through the checkout process as normal

3. Once they have checked out and are on the “Order Confirmed” page they see the following option to ‘chat for charity’ where they can tell their friends about their latest buy. If their friend then goes on to make a purchase Prezzybox will donate 10% of the sale amount to charity.

 4. The customer then clicks either ‘Tweet this’ or ‘Facebook this’. This then automatically populates either a ‘tweet’ or a ‘facebook status update’ which says “Look what I just bought from Prezzybox (link to product). If you buy one 10% of the price will go to charity”.  Here’s an example:

 5. Once they tweet it this will then be viewed by all their followers - which has the obvious benefit for Prezzybox of generating extra sales/brand exposure, but also the additional benefit for the charity of generating donations which they wouldn’t ordinarily get. Everyone’s a winner!

As I say, I think this is a brilliant idea - really innovative - so hats off to the Skimlinks team. You can see why they are getting so many plaudits so early into their inception.

Toodle pip.

TBW

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Oh yes, organised by our good buddies @10Yetis, Prezzybox have been featured in every one’s favourite newspaper - the Daily Sport!

The piece is based on some research we conducted on which region purchased the most ”fun gifts”, with the lovable Brummies coming out on top! For the sake of decency a mugshot of ‘yours truly’ has been positioned discretely to hide the woman’s privacy… hold on… personalised nipple tassels - I reckon they’d sell!!

Toodle pip.

TBW

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Next week Prezzybox.com are exhibiting all of the goodies which we feel are going to be the BIG sellers for Christmas 09.

Fancy a seaky peak??

We’re at:

• IPC Media (Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London, SE1 0SU) on Wednesday 8th July
• Nat Mags (72 Broadwick Street, London, W1F 9EP)  on Thursday 9th July

You don’t need to make an appointment, simply pop along and see the girls.

I really do think it will be worth while, because we’ve some AWESOME goodies on display which are sure to be big hits this Christmas, so it will really help you get ahead of the rest with regards to building sites and optimising them.

Toodle pip.

TBW

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