Cuban Serrano Superior. That’s why. Despite the fact that York Coffee Emporium has sold this brand of coffee on a seasonal basis for years, PayPal suddenly took exception under the trade embargo imposed by JFK. In 1960. On products sold to American consumers.

We couldn’t have our favourite coffee roasters unable to trade so The Distance team sprang into action. Senior web developer Dajve Green said: “We installed an extension that allows York Coffee Emporium to disable certain payment methods on a product-by-product basis, so they can sell Cuban items but the customer won’t pay with PayPal. This applies to any purchase containing the Cuban coffee, whether it is the only product being purchased or not. All PayPal methods have been disabled, including taking credit / debit cards via the PayPal gateway.”

The extension used to control the payment methods for the products was the PaymentFilter for Products and Customer Groups. So, the Cuban Serrano Superior was back up for sale in record time, PayPal were pacified as customers now pay through Sage Pay for their Cuban goodies and York Coffee Emporium were able to carry on as usual.

A PayPal spokesman said: PayPal makes every effort to comply with the laws and regulations in the countries in which we operate around the world. We have determined that as a US company, PayPal and all of its subsidiaries are obliged to comply with specific US government-imposed sanctions, even if these subsidiaries operate outside of the US.”

Thanks for reading, I’m Ben Pethullis, coffee drinker and Head of Digital Marketing.

First it was just the Nexus 7, but we’re now seeing a strong lean towards these smaller tablets as a target for clients. Is it the price? Is it the spec? What, in short, do they have over their larger brothers?

The common assumptions are that a 7 inch (and in this we are including the 7.9 inch iPad Mini), is better if:

• you’re on a budget and you need something for browsing websites and reading ebooks,
• you want a light, easy-to-hold device. It’s definitely harder to hold an iPad 2 up and read an e-book for more than 10 minutes due to its bulk and weight,
• you’re looking for a device you can fit into small bags or jacket pockets.

And a 10 inch is preferable if:

• you want to watch a lot of films,
• you do a lot of typing, whether it’s emails or documents,
• you need more built in memory as the larger tablets offer more capacity, which is always useful if you want to store films, games and music on your tablet.

And we reckon these assumptions are pretty much spot on. The biggest draw has got to be the price – Google set the bar with the Galaxy Nexus 7 and other manufacturers have aimed at the same price point to stay competitive.

Have a look at our pick of the best 7 inch tablets:

GOOGLE NEXUS 7 – from £159
This has to be the best value as it’s a great all rounder. Developed with Asus, it’s Google first tablet and a brilliant all rounder, even if it doesn’t look the most stylish.

APPLE IPAD MINI – from £269
It’s perfect for web browsing, email, reading and generally being beautiful. It’s still great for movies and, well, is possibly even better than the iPad itself. It looks amazing, but obviously you’re paying more and it’s important to realise the display isn’t high resolution like its bigger brother or the competition!

SAMSUNG GALAXY TAB 2 7.0 – from £158
Uses a version of Android OS, but doesn’t have the best storage and its plastic screen means it isn’t up there in the style stakes.

AMAZON KINDLE FIRE HD – from £159
With access to Amazon’s range of books, music, films and a free trial of LoveFilm, Amazon’s Kindle Fire is a good choice. For the web, email and films it’s a great rival to the iPad Mini and Nexus, although reading on it just isn’t as good as the original Kindle.

CNM TOUCHPAD 7 – from £100
It’s acceptable, with an alright screen and decent storage (if you stump up another £20 for the 16GB model), but it just feels cheap against the other 7 inchers.

Does your app target the 7 inch market?

Some of our service provider clients are focusing on this form factor, as the size and cost point are ideal for their business model. If the 7 inch platforms don’t fit into your app business model, why not get in touch and find out how you can take advantage of this new space? Just drop me a line at anthony@thedistance.co.uk

People can see straight through content that’s been optimised automatically or constructed badly to just show up in searches. It’s vital to not treat customers and potential customers like idiots, and writing to a certain intellectual level with intelligent content is key to this.

Why is quality content important?

Readers will be more likely to engage with, link to and share/recommend content if it shows a certain level of expertise, is immersive and relevant and stands out within their area of interest.

So, how do you do it?

Follow these simple tips and you can be blogging content that’s professional, relevant, informative, well written and popular.

1. Think like a journalist

Whatever you’re writing about – no matter how ‘dry’ the content appears to be – find a spin on it that leads itself to be cited by others. You need a hook of some kind.

If you’re blogging about the best kind of telescope, for example, look around first. Find out what’s hot in the astronomy niche right now – and I mean right now. What particular thing are the passionate followers of our stars into today? Find it, hook it in with your content, cite reputable sources yourself and you’re more than halfway there.

• “Reporters are more likely to use your post to explain a facet of what they’re reporting on if they can simply point to your article.”

[Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seventeen-ways-to-improve-your-blog-case-study]

2. Find credible information and sources

If you’re building up case studies, or need to prove points, then make sure that any data you use and cite is current, up-to-date, relevant and properly referenced – nothing will discredit the ‘expert blog’ more than citing dodgy information quickly grabbed from inferior sites.

3. Use a range of content

Intersperse text with videos, images and infographics to make sure the blog remains engaging and to help demonstrate the strengths and proposition

There are a few tips here to read over:

• http://blog.kissmetrics.com/blog-editors-cheat-sheet/

I also like this idea raised;

• “Create a list of regular ideas you can repeat as part of a series. Things like Quick Tips, Q&As, Know Your… Top 5/10s, etc”

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2207432/46-Ways-to-Kill-It-With-Content

4. Headlines help

Headlines need to attract people to your post, and they need to be optimised correctly.

Readers need to be able to understand what they can expect from your blog post, from your headline alone. It should be in Plain English, unambiguous and cover off all the main points. Don’t try and make it too clever or think that being vague will draw people in – chances are it won’t.

People who habitually read a lot of blog posts want to understand what they’re reading fast, and they want the voice to be authoritative and trustworthy.

Have a look here for some more tips:

• http://unbounce.com/landing-pages/5-headline-formulas/

• http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/140675/10-questions-to-help-
you-write-better-headlines/

5. Become the voice of authority

Whatever you’re writing about, it’s vital you sound like you know what you’re talking about. By writing and posting credible, interesting content consistently and regularly you will build up a name for yourself as an authority on X, Y or Z. This is exactly what you want.

To do this, you need to clearly show who writes the posts (for example, if you have a few ‘experts’ blogging about different things under the same banner, then create a profile for them with clear information on who they are and why they’re experts – this can help them build a recognisable profile that readers will return to when they spot posts by them).

6. Expand around your main point

“Don’t be afraid to talk about more than what you’re doing. Become a knowledge hub and
add value to the digital space. Prove your expertise and give away knowledge and the rewards will be great.”

[Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2207432/46-Ways-to-Kill-It-With-Content]

7. Write clearly and in Plain English

The primary rule should be: write like you’re writing to a friend. Keep it professionally informal and don’t clutter sentences with any jargon or too much description.

Good writing, particularly online, is about clarity, strength of message and having a clear purpose. Think about what you want the reader to do after they have read the post – do you want them to share it on social media? Comment? Enter a competition?

Signpost their way, make it easy for them to find all the buttons to access social media or enter the competition.

Make content succinct, avoid repetition and write with a personality. Dry, marketing style copy will not be reacted to well in the kinds of niche markets you’re looking to attract. You don’t want it to seem like you’re selling something, rather it needs to be so interesting that anything you point towards as a good product/feature is something the reader will naturally gravitate towards.

8. Check your spelling and grammar!

It sounds like such an obvious thing, but you’d be surprised how many bloggers and writers just don’t! Nothing bashes your credibility more than spelling errors and poor grammar and the fact remains that people who habitually read blogs and contribute to forums (most likely the kinds of people you want to engage with) are extremely on top of grammar and spelling and will be first to question your credibility over errors.

It’s also such an easy thing to do – just remember to proofread, or better still, get someone else to proofread for you – before uploading.

Thanks for reading. I’m Deborah Henderson, content co-ordinator at The Distance.

At the moment, the current PayPal SDK allows users to make purchases within the app but only with an existing PayPal account. With the new SDK, there is support for credit card payments without the need for a PayPal account. Essentially, PayPal will act as a gateway service for the banks in the same way that similar services do on the web.

It’s only available on IOS to start with but will expand later to other platforms, although when it was announced at SXSW, there was no clear hint of when.

PayPal connect 123 million account holders across more than 50 financial networks in 190 markets and in 25 currencies around the world and freely admit that they have fallen behind their competitors technologically.

James Barrese CTO of PayPal said: “Developers need the freedom to focus on innovation for their customers and not worry about handling payments… We listened to developers who wanted things to work better.”

Other PayPal innovations coming your way in 2013

JavaScript PayPal buttons – so developers can integrate PayPal in seconds by copying and pasting five lines of code into their website, shopping cart or a QR code. It’ll be much easier to accept payments on a website.

PayPal Here solution – will be coming to the UK this summer. Paypal Here opens up affordable card payments for small businesses. It’s already used in the US and some other countries and PayPal has been working on a version for the UK – a revolutionary card reader that’s small enough to carry around in your pocket but handles both Chip & PIN and PayPal payments. It’ll be trialled across select UK businesses before becoming generally available this summer.

New APIs – will be announced throughout 2013 and PayPal have promised to keep listening to developer feedback and adapting as they go.

Drop us a line…

If you’d like to talk to us about embedding the new PayPal SDK within your apps, just get in touch. The latest version is already available in our Pocket Commerce framework.

It’s basically an iPhone and iPod Touch app that lets you capture and share short (like six seconds short) looping videos. Six seconds is not a long time. But the idea is it’s so easy to use that it’ll unleash torrents of creativity among the great and the good of the interweb.

It’s only been going a couple of months but a community has sprouted up fast, helped perhaps by the ease of use of the app. Vine co founder and creative director said: “We wanted to create a new way to capture life in motion.”

How it works

For those who haven’t given it a bash yet (and that would be anyone who doesn’t have an iPhone/iPod although it does look like there is an Android version in development so non-Apple aficionados may not have that long to wait), here’s a quick run down.

• Vine records for as long as your finger is on the record button (called the ‘create’ button)
• This means you can create video in a single shot or tap the screen to create a stop animation style video
• That’s it! Pretty damn simple…

What good is it for digital marketing?

In the same vein as Instagram and creative use of YouTube video, Vine is a goldmine for smart, savvy digital marketing types. Just think about what certain brands have been able to do with Instagram – Redbull and Starbucks jumped right on it, and the coolest President the US has ever seen used an Instagram account during his 2012 campaign.

Smart interactive use

I really love this kind of thinking from The Guardian online: encouraging readers to contribute to political debate using Vine works excellently. And if it can be used for politics, it can most certainly be used for products. It encourages users to crystallise their thinking and create something meaningful – if you only have six seconds you’re going to want to make them count.

People love dynamic video

Video has pretty much the highest engagement level and, given how quickly Vine has taken off, it certainly looks like a brilliant channel to get your digital marketing hooks into. Of course, its affiliation and integration with Twitter has helped this happen, which is great for optimisation – videos posted to the app will appear in relevant search results and Vine supports hashtag searching.

How you can use it for effectively

• Involve people – it’s so easy to use it’s perfect for anyone and everyone to get involved. It’s a perfect platform to encourage your audience to send in clips of them trialling and reviewing your products/services. Incentivise with a prize and watch the interaction build. It’ll boost your Twitter page, hashtag your products/events/whatever and re-engage old contacts. ASOS get people to post video customer testimonials with the promise of goodies for the best one – perfect. Another great example from ASOS is here.




• Build up a narrative – as well as uploading individual videos, users can create a series, which can be used to grab attention. You could create a series of videos with different stories under one linking or underlying theme. EE did a cutesy one for Valentine’s Day that worked well.





• Showing how stuff works – people inevitably want to know how things work – how to videos are always popular. Vine’s perfect for creating a series of short steps to show people how to use your products/services.
• Make it you – make it individual, make it fit your brand, make it very much your thing. Like with Twitter, blogging and Instagram, creating that perfect blend of being on brand but with a discernable personality (a great example is @innocentdrinks and @dogstrust) is vital with Vine.

Thanks for reading. I’m Deborah Henderson, content co-ordinator at The Distance.

A couple of months on, and with Graph Search in Beta for some users, what is the lowdown? How’s it going to affect users? And how will digital marketers be able to use it to their advantage?

Let’s discuss…

A new live search engine within Facebook

In very basic terms, a search bar will allow you to search for what your friends have liked or recommended, as well as photos of friends and you, or photos of you that friends have tagged – you get the idea.

There are three areas you can search under: photos, people (interests and profile info) and places (venues, activities, locations).

So if you type in: “Friends who live in Solihull and like fishing” then you get instant, targeted results, ranked on the number of likes or the level of your interaction with the chosen place, person or photo.

But why?

The idea is to get recommendations from your friends and friends of friends based on their privacy settings for content they’ve posted – and to find people on FB who share your interests.

Zuckerberg said that it’s an infrastructure that’s been in the making for years, and it’s something no one else has – the ability to take a very precise query and return an answer. For example, if you searched “Cinemas in York” via Google, you’d get a list. If you search via Facebook Graph Search, you’d get a list of the cinemas in York that your friends visit and like.

Bing integration

Facebook have also partnered with Bing to bring up results from the rest of the web. So, the new search results page features a two column layout with Bing-powered web results appearing on the left hand side, overlaid with Facebook results showing how many people like a result. On the right there is content from Facebook pages and apps related to your search.

How do the three search areas work?

PHOTOS: You can find photos you and your friends have posted or been tagged in.

PEOPLE: You can find people based on things they’ve shared with you, including their interests and profile info, location, religion, relationship status, education, likes. So you could search something like: “People who like cycling and live in York” or “Movies my friends like.”

PLACES: Find things like restaurants, films, new music through your friends and connections.

What about privacy?

Of course this has a load of implications for that old Facebook thorn in our side – privacy settings. Your privacy choices determine what is searchable and, be warned, that all the settings have changed and will need to be redone if you want to keep a tight hold on what can be searched from your own profile.

This is the aspect most likely to cause a user backlash and could result in people battening down their privacy hatches and actually removing detailed information from their profiles. We know from past experience that most people don’t change their privacy settings anywhere near as much as they could – and Facebook always do tell you exactly how and why you could and should, so it’s likely to settle down as people get used to the new UI.

What Facebook Graph Search can’t do… yet

Graph Search won’t be able to search for posts and status updates that match a particular topic, although apparently this is in the pipeline.

What about digital marketing?

The question on most marketers’ lips is: it going to be a way to drive up the number of likes for brand pages?

And the definitive answer is… it kind of depends how it goes, how the user uptake goes and generally how it affects user behaviour. There are a number of likely scenarios but until a certain bedding in period has been gone through, and, of course, everyone actually has full access to it, the best way to use it for brands won’t be completely clear.

If brands can reach out directly to individuals then there’s a potentially huge payout, but spam will inevitably be a problem, potentially leading to people changing their privacy settings, which will alter the kind of results that are obtainable.

Adverts should certainly be able to be more accurately targeted based on specific bio information and it should increase the value of dormant likers – that is, people who may have ‘liked’ a brand page but don’t interact with it.

It’s all in the details…

There is the chance that there may not be enough data in your social graph to make search results meaningful. The searches will depend on people having up-to-date, detailed and accurate information on their pages, and although there is a demographic who are likely to be on top of this, there are inevitably millions of users who just don’t keep their Facebook that up to date. It could encourage people to be more diligent about updating their profiles and representing themselves and their lives more accurately through their profile.

Not just for existing friends anymore

When Facebook started to take over our lives, it was very much a tool to keep in touch with existing friends. It combined the best of MySpace and Friends Reunited and most people were very clear that they use it to keep in touch with real life people.

Zuckerberg just as clearly announced a change in direction when he talked about Graph Search. It’s a step change to make Facebook about meeting new people as well as staying connected to existing friends. It’s sort of a MySpace/Match/dating/music/IMDB/Bebo crossover, designed to link everyone to everyone else in the world…

The main message for marketers would be to wait. Even when Graph Search is live for everyone, there will be an inevitable user backlash, background tweaks by Facebook and a while to wait before the dust settles. That’s the time to be planning how to use it best.

Thanks for reading. I’m Deborah Henderson, content co-ordinator at The Distance.

At The Distance, we see something much more – the potential for mcommerce is huge. And it’s much more than creating a browse and buy app.

How many people use their mobiles to buy stuff?

Google released figures at the end of 2012 showing that 45% of the UK population own smartphones and over half of those are using them to access the internet every day. Slightly more recent figures by Comscore in January 2013 make it 53% – whatever the exact figure is today you can be sure it’s rising all the time.

What about tablets? In the UK 3.9m people own one – that’s 13% of households. Shopping through Mobile is increasingly important with 69% of tablet owners buying something on their device every month, according to InMobi and Mobext.

PayPal forecasted that globally they would process $10 billion in Mobile payments in 2012, at 150% year on year growth but their Q4 results showed that they hit $14 billion at 250% year on year… For 2013? A forecast of $20 billion.

Different ways to use mobile devices while shopping

It’s not just about sitting at home and browsing an app before buying. Mobile devices are increasingly part of a shopper’s experience actually on the High Street itself.

A recent survey by The Cloud found that 73% of British smartphone owners have used their phone or device when out shopping to check prices, look for offers using apps like Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare. They also found that 13% of users use their smartphone or tablet on the High Street – that’s 5.6m people.

One in five smartphone owners (20%) have used their device to upload a photo of themselves or a product when shopping and asked their friends or family for advice before buying it – equivalent to 4.8m people.

Huge scope for growth

A survey by Rackspace of over 2,000 smartphone and tablet owners found that 40% of respondents buy stuff using their device – leaving a huge scope for mcommerce to grow even among the current audience.

Almost 17% said that mobile devices have increased their impulse buys. But what is it that makes them do it? 71% said that the main reason is because it’s so easy to do. A lot of those who don’t use their device said it was down to simply preferring their laptop, but security is still an issue for about 27%.

The future of mcommerce

Mcommerce apps need to work as a consumer experience, melding online and the High Street. Of course it should generate its own sales but it needs to work hard to influence people’s choices in store and online.

At The Distance we’ve developed PocketCommerce – a fully customisable framework for creating commerce enabled apps for retailers. It seamlessly integrates with online stores and makes it easier for loyal shoppers to stick with brands they love, however and whenever they want to shop.

PocketCommerce isn’t just about immediate sales, it’s about driving customers into stores and online, using various loyalty and integration features. Have a look at our PocketCommerce page for more details.

A new Fairy Loyalty Scheme was created to reward a registered customer that allows them to earn Fairy Points as they shop that can be redeemed against future purchases. With such a large catalogue of discount cosmetics we also created a Deal of the Week feature with a sign-up option to allow customers to register for email notifications of new deals. The new features allow the site to engage with their customers and encourage repeat visits.

Following the launch the site has had a strong run-up to Christmas with an improvement in conversion rate and average order value on the website following the site re-design.

Launching the Cosmetics Fairy Website

As Cosmetics Fairy had a previous Magento website we carefully planned the category structure to replicate the old department URLs as these pages had existing trust and strength metrics associated with them. Prior to launch we have worked on improving the on-page optimisation of these category pages and reducing past duplication issues that the site had with its sister wholesale site.

Although we changed the category structure to the department pages we were able to use an in-house extension we have developed where parent categories can be removed from the URL structure. This allowed us to recreate the old URLs of the previous website.

In instances where old categories were not being used we used the Magento URL Rewrite Manager to create 301 redirects to ensure a smooth transfer for the URLs.
As part of the launch of the new website we also reintroduced a brand category structure to the website which had previously been lost.

Moving forward we are working with Cosmetics Fairy to develop the optimisation of the website and to work on promoting the brand online and increase its digital footprint.

Thanks for reading, I’m Ben Pethullis and I am looking forward to working with the Cosmetics Fairy team.

I just wanted to say a huge thanks to The Press (York), and all the judges that voted The Distance their ‘New Business of the Year’. It’s a great honour and we are hugely humbled by the recognition from the York business community.

We set our expectations for the business, our staff and ourselves very high from the very first day of trading. I’m glad to say the entire team has stepped to the mark! We’d like to dedicate this award to the exceptional people behind us. This one is for you lads!

Running an External Blog

The quickest entry point to running a blog for your brand is to start up a blog on a platform such as WordPress or Blogger. By finding an available and relevant name for your sub-domain, choosing a skin and you could be up and blogging in around 15 minutes.

A slight alternative to the above is using the external blogging platform but to host the content on your own domain name, a name that is not your branded ecommerce website. One of our clients, CoverYourWall, has used this option to create their own On Wall blog which is host to information-based content related to the products that they sell. The blog shows some excellent engagement with customers via the comments section; highlighting the value of this area of a post and one that shouldn’t be neglected and tainted with the “blog spam” brush.

These methods offer a very quick entry to blogging and an easy solution to implement for ecommerce websites using Magento Go; the external blog can be linked to the main brand’s ecommerce website.

The disadvantage of this method is that it is difficult to associate the great content that you are adding to the blog with your main branded retail website. By linking across from the blog to the ecommerce store you will create some strong links for your retail website, if you build up the strength of the blog.

A solution implemented by CoverYourWall is to add the Hello Bar plug-in for WordPress that promotes their ecommerce store at the top of the page. This is an excellent way to ensure your blog readers know about your store and can easily navigate to the site.

(image: DezineGuide.com)

Hosting the Blog as a Sub-Domain

If you are running a blog on a WordPress or Blogger platform you can redirect the content to a sub-domain you have set up for your main brand domain. Eyesore Merch is an online retailer of band t-shirts who launched a new website in November 2011, they were originally blogging using a WordPress set-up but by creating a blog sub-domain on their Eyesore Merch domain were able to redirect the original blog that was set up to this new location; all the old content was transferred and redirected to the new location. The domain mapping service in WordPress does have a yearly charge but makes mapping a sub-domain to a WordPress blog quick and easy.

This has the advantage that the blog content and its value can be better associated with your brand and building the strength of the blog sub-domain can have some positive impact on the strength of the overall domain.

You still need to make sure that there are clear calls to action to move visitors to the blog through to the main ecommerce website; again the Hello Bar plug-in could be a potential option as could image banners in the blog sidebar.

A Branded Solution

A more comprehensive solution for Magento Go ecommerce websites is to use the above solution, creating a blog sub-domain to your main domain, but to implement a skin on the blog that replicates the design and header of the main ecommerce website. This creates a more complete customer experience as they visit the blog and they can more easily move from the blog through to the ecommerce pages.

The Distance built an ecommerce website for Louise Pierre and used this approach for their blog; hosting the WordPress blog on a sub-domain and using the URL Rewrite Management area in Magento Go so that a link can be added to the main navigation that redirects to the blog. Readers of the blog will find not only the regular updates from Louise Pierre but the main navigation of the website offering easy access to the store pages and the blog is fully branded and consistent with the retail area.

Thanks for reading, I’m Ben Pethullis and I hope this was a useful follow-up to the tips for ecommerce blogging (read Part 1 and Part 2 of these tips) and provides some ideas for Magento Go stores to get out there and add some new, great content to the web.