What I discovered was that although consumer confidence was affected by the recession, the economy will always have the fundamental requirements of supply and demand and through that, commercial advertising will always be essential.

During the recession 3rd Time Media continued to provide quality online creative for its wide range of clientele as well as employ me with the responsibility of promoting the business and increasing opportunities. This is an exciting challenge that demonstrates the companies’ and my personal ambition for growth.

This blog coincides with the end of the recession which has been well documented. In many news and media websites the office of national statistics reported a 0.1% increase in growth in Q4 2009 and although this was weaker than expected, it demonstrates that throughout 2010 both consumer and commercial confidence will grow.

Confidence, both consumer and commercial, ensures that there is sufficient time and money spent on marketing and it is through this increased confidence that I have already booked a few meetings in 2010 with some internationally recognisable brands ensuring that the year starts as it means to go on!

Javid, our in house developer, has designed a new CRM system for me to use daily in house. It is an easy to use, efficient CRM, which enables different parts of the sales cycle from lead generation and data entry through to booking meetings to be detailed and logged correctly. It has ensured all the correct information is always at hand leaving me more time on the phone. It is for this reason, as well as the ones above, that I feel that 2010 is going to be a fantastic year!

• Website Personalisation
• Search suggestions
• Various games on Facebook
• Question/Answer bots

On a conceptual level currently, 3TM are embarking on a path to revolutionise their methodologies with the use of AI in the future. Although AI principles have already been applied to many software packages in the past (e.g. Natural Language Processing), the web still has a long way to go. Very simple AI principles can do very complex things. Since one of 3TM’s specialties is to deliver results by enhancing customer-experience, they are now looking at making use of these clever principles to create an enjoyable web experience whilst boosting customer interaction and customer loyalty.

Imagine each web page you visit would act as a friend, who understands your wants and needs. It remembers from your past and acts accordingly. This already exists in many places without users realising it. However, 3rd Time Media may be planning on designing processes that take this approach to the next level, by making use of learning algorithms that not only look at users’ last actions, but also their previous actions as long as they’ve known the web site, or partnering websites. So if your actions vary in different moods, the application will understand what to present to you, depending on the mood it detects from you. Furthermore, the application will comprehend the responses of other users, in order to make early judgments for users with similar moods.

To do this effectively, a combination of client and server-side technologies are going to be used. These will be common technologies that will not require users to obtain any extra software. Simple elements of those common technologies will be used to filter through variables that can produce enough data to negotiate content, styles and events for users.

Example: Change colours, styles, fonts, images, events depending on user actions.

However, it must be noted that the boundaries here stretch much further than personalisation. A more business-oriented goal of analysing users’ actions is conversion. Artificial Intelligence at 3TM can potentially help a great deal in this aspect of business. User Interface design and usability are ever-changing concepts, especially across different industries. But imagine a website that changes its look and functionality depending on user-response and conversion whilst remembering all of its old states, applying them where ever appropriate.

A few examples of applications that 3TM believe may be possible without the need of staff intervention:

• Swap images to see which ones are more enticing to users and turn those users into customers
• Decide whether to show “VAT” price or “ex VAT” price depending on how likely it is that a potential customer is going to buy/trust.
• Swap special offers or trial versions depending on user and user mood.
• Exchange copy wording depending on an estimate of each user’s cognitive variation.
• Provide variation in branding to gain trust from distinctive parties depending on their geographic location and status.
• Email marketing and Email style variations, depending on user and likelihood of customer interest.

Dangerous? Ridiculous? Trial and error or Challenging? Has potential? Can it enhance conversion? Can it attract new customers? Can it help retain existing customers?

3TM believe that the potential of making a positive change to sales and customer retention is fairly strong in this arena.

I am genuinely excited about 2010.  Although the past year has been a difficult year for most businesses, if the current trend is a sign of a more positive trading environment, 2010 should be a better year.  

Why am I excited?  Last week we had our team Christmas party, which was the usual; drinks followed by food followed by drinks.  But while talking to Javid, our Senior Web Programmer between drinks and food, we came to the realisation that all of the hard work that we have ploughed into our content management system, spaceCMS has paid off with fantastic results.  

So…why exactly am I excited?  Clearly I don’t get out as much as I’d like…but the reason why this excites me so much is because we have created an exceptional piece of software.  I and other members of the team have used many a content management system, some good, some better than others, but all for one reason and another don’t match the user’s expectations.   

All of our hard work in spaceCMS has delivered a content management system that considers just about every requirement a good website management team would want when updating a website and then we’ve added more functionality on top of that.  This is exciting because part of my job will be to help promote this product to clients and potential clients and my job has just been made a hell of a lot easier. 

Other news….3TM has appointment of Joff Dickens as our New Business Development Executive.  This is a great appointment for 3TM, he’s keen, ambitious, always asking questions and wants to exceed and smash all targets he’s set.  

Our plan for 2010 is to strengthen the creative team with at least one appointment in the first quarter of new-year.  Other roles being considered are Online Marketing Manager, Junior Designer and Flash Developer.  Get in touch if you feel you could fill any of those positions.

• Enhance customer relationship
• Encourage customer loyalty for repeat business
• Acquire new customers
• Encourage further purchases by existing customers
• Send general information and service updates to existing customers, partners or employees

The following is offered in order to provide effective direct marketing through Email:

• 3TM can work with clients to produce an effective design, generate a message for successful marketing and define a solid target audience
• 3TM help clients to set out realistic goals and use corporate information to assume an appropriate schedule for campaign execution
• Recipient information can be segmented accordingly with user preferences and previous user responses. All data is secured and treated as strictly confidential.
• The Email broadcast interface distributes information to a wide range of potential customers fast and at the scheduled time
• Multiple campaigns complementing each other at relatively low cost
• Emails are personalised for better meaning, boosting return on investment, which can in turn be tracked accurately using reliable click-through and conversion tracking mechanisms
• Key messages in the Email are placed in prominent positions to promote them effectively
• Layouts are designed using high end graphical design techniques to insure that a correct and clear message is pushed to the recipient without clutter
• Emails are designed and coded to appear as pleasant to the recipient and trustworthy to spam detection engines. Messages comply with the CAN-SPAM act
• Emails are coded to trigger further Emails or custom events such as updating customer profiles depending on where the recipients click
• E-mails are tested against a variety of clients
• A very friendly and helpful service is provided to all clients

Typical 3TM E-mail services pattern:

Customers may choose to use all or some of the services shown above.

For more information please visit the Email Marketing page.

The future of the internet depends on the extra bandwidth users will demand to keep in contact with their friends, paying bills, and virtual retail therapy. Much more investment is needed to feed the massive growth online in the months and years to come. Echoing a sentiment President Obama made in his inaugural speech, with continued investment in fibre optic networks, the internet will help us to trade ourselves back to stability and lead a new era of growth.

However in recent months, there has been a huge upsurge in the popularity of netbooks owing to its relatively low cost and mobility. The dilemma is that these netbooks bring to the mix a different set of screen resolutions to contend with. Most netbooks have a 1024×600 screen resolution and while this won’t affect the width of pages, the key space above the fold will be reduced. Websites currently optimised for resolutions 1024×768 and above all of a sudden may find that important marketing messages and call to actions appear much further down the screen than intended.

While netbook’s share of the computer market is relatively small in comparison, it is the fastest growing segment in our increasing desire for more portable web access. Designers will soon have to face issue of how to design for a wider spectrum of screen sizes that range from the small netbooks to the ever increasing popular large widescreen desktop monitors. Using multiple websites designed for netbooks and desktops is not ideal. A more realistic approach would be to design with these users in mind and have the key content contained in an area of the page that is highly visible to all resolutions.

Layouts for page interiors can be customised and built within minutes thanks to the simple-but-powerful Template Builder interface. It can then be shared across pages, which can in-turn be built within seconds. This provides users with consistency across pages, whilst having ample choices for the look and feel of each page.

Precise technologies and design patterns that support spaceCMS have been carefully chosen as a foundation, in combination with expert coding and factorisation of data pieces to allow for a lightning-fast data retrieval mechanism that displays pages rapidly to the front end user. However, speed and efficiency are not the only rare elements here; due to its flexible nature, it is possible for spaceCMS to act as a back bone for any kind of web site and it can be tailored to support all unique features that depend on its application.

Web sites produced by spaceCMS are automatically built using available Search Engine Optimisation techniques, ensuring that all content and pages are easily acquired by typical search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Generated pages are W3C compliant and conform to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. They are also loaded with security features to ensure a bullet-proof front-end interface protects all server-side components.

Currently a spectrum of spaceCMS packages are under trial runs with existing 3TM customer web sites. The rollout of version 2.0 will call for a deeper analysis - so watch this space!

More information can be found on the spaceCMS official page.

Why the relief? For those readers that are clients and friends of 3^rd Time Media, you’ll know exactly why I’m relieved. Our previous website never reflected us, the work we do – the work we don’t do, the environment in which we work and who we are - on any level.

Why? It’s simple, the work for our clients comes first, which is the same for all agencies. It’s taken three long years to find the time to put our own house in order. 

It’s been a tough ride over the past few weeks, trying to get this new website up and live before the Christmas and New Year break, but we knew that if it didn’t happen now we’d not get another chance for another 12 months or… possibly three more years!!

Our new web site is a great end 2008 for us, we’re all looking forward to the exciting work and challenges of 2009.

As always, we have people to thank, firstly our clients, thanks for your continued support, it’s been a great year full of interesting projects. And of course to our friends and families who have all played such an important role in where 3^rd Time Media is today.

Happy 2009.