There seems to be a great divide between the real world of retail and the corresponding world of e-commerce. In the real world, developing relationships and return customers is a huge focus. Online, the focus is to get new visitors into contact with popular products, without consideration to who might be landing on the website, and where they’ve been before. Is it a lack of sociological awareness? Or a fear of new and enabling technologies and their cost? Either way, there’s a lot of room for small businesses to bring personal and relevant information to each of their visitors.

In retail, marketing for repeat business is more cost effective than generating first time buyers. Recognizing that word-of-mouth is always the most effective advertising, retailers work hard to develop customer loyalty through rewards programs, CRM, and creating positive shopping experience. So much so, that repeat customers can expect a degree of personalization at the shops they frequent. When I buy my morning coffee, I’m pleased when I’m presented with my regular order without having to ask. When I go to my favourite clothing store, It’s nice when the sales clerk greats me by name, and presents me with new stock I might be interested in.

I often note how customers are treated at the establishments I visit for the first time. Are the products merchandized in an intuitive, intriguing way? Is the staff approachable, friendly and respectful of the needs of those in their domain? In other words, is the retail environment conscious of individual needs? When I tell my friends where I shop, it’s usually more about the shopping experience, than it is about what I actually bought. Is it such a leap to imagine that the online experience of a retail business should mirror that same attention to detail?

Today’s technology for generating interactive online content has come a long way since the first business risked creating an online presence. While there are still hurdles getting the perfect creative ideas online, the prevailing question is no longer “is this possible?” but “how difficult and expensive will this be to implement?” Yet for all the technology available, there are still some e-commerce and retail sites that err more on the site of creative content than productive functionality – in some cases, leaving personalization entirely in the realm of email communication. Microsite development has become even less personalized because it often comes at the expense of the main site.

For some, the main concerns seem to focus on whether their site is Search Engine Optimized (SEO), and whether they have analytics tools to track the effectiveness of their sites. But what are they doing with all that information? How is that information being fed back into the website to develop a relationship and generate a more personal experience. Sites have the potential to be Consumer Optimized, but how many sites actually are?

Technology today allows marketers to not only collect data about their users, but to sort and filter this information to personalize what they offer back to their visitors. Developers have access to a suite of tools that can bring personalization (and relevant experience) to a new level. Though perhaps not the most efficient organic storage tool, XML has served a very important role in advancing website capabilities: most popular are the various RSS and news feeds that websites offer for sharing information with similar sites. Even newer are the organic storage dbs such as Mongo, Redis and Cassandra, these non-SQL storage solutions approach data storage far differently than a relational database, offering developers new and better tools to bring specific, high-quality content to users faster. Rather than forcing data into a system that is not optimized for it, developers have access to much more effective data storage and sharing tools than ever before.

Another major innovation is the ability to add natural language searching to websites. A number of projects, both enterprise and open source have sprung up to offer search engine indexing to everyone. While not technically databases, these tools offer the means to sort through and retrieve from huge amounts of relevant information very quickly, factoring in geographic location, incorrect spellings, multiple languages, gender biases, previous searches, content filters, etc.

Using these new technologies to specifically target consumer needs is necessary to take a website from being a high tech brochure to an engaging and satisfying experience.  Consider the power of intelligently altering content for consumers who tend to look for service and support information. Or offering user reviews and ratings to those who do their research. Consider your best, most recent experience with a retail marketer. Do any of those personalized details feel superfluous?

There is risk involved. New ideas often cost more than the stuff everyone else is doing already, and they don’t always visibly help the bottom line. It also takes time to create all that extra content. There is also consumer adjustment to factor in. But some industries have already bought into the powerful world of adaptive site development. Some online travel booking systems offer alternative itineraries that save their consumers money or factor in rewards points. Starbucks that allows me to pay for my coffee from my phone, and show me my rewards as soon as I earn them.  There are fewer and fewer reasons why online companies serve up the same thing to everyone.

When I visit your website, I would love to find that you took notice of what I looked at last time, and maybe serve up less content i’m not likely to be interested in, and more content that I am.

A few years ago, augmented reality (AR) experienced a brief but gimmicky insurgence. Every brand looking to innovate their communications wanted to integrate AR into everything from website features to direct mailing pieces. The trouble was, no one had a distinct vision for how they could evolve the magic of AR beyond the awkward task of printing out a code and manoevering it in front of a webcam.

Recently, the applications of AR have diversified and refined to the point where it has coupled charm and surprise with practical utility. Yelp and Google use it in the context of mobile wayfinding. The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology has been developing wearable augmented reality to help guide new workers through complex tasks.

To that end, I’d like to present a couple recent examples of ways some intriguing brands have been revisiting augmented reality as a means of capturing and elevating their consumer experience.

Tesco AR retail enhancement

Tesco, the U.K. supermarket megalith, has been experimenting with augmented reality both online and in-store. In-store, webcams will allow consumers to generate 3D images of products, and explore their specifications prior to purchase (with emphasis on bulky items, like Tesco’s line of consumer electronic products.) Online, Tesco shoppers will also be able to generate models of products, fostering a slightly more “tangible” interactive experience to abet purchase intent. This is not the first example of a British store using augmented reality, but it is a notable example of giving consumers a chance to thoroughly investigate what Tesco offers. Packaged good and retail brands, take note.

Starbucks augmented reality Xmas Cups
The promise of AR on your mobile device has yet to be fully realized for a number of reasons: (1) low consumer awareness; (2) the small learning curve to understand how it works; (3) the  cost to develop, and (4) requirement to have a mobile app installed on your smartphone device. And those reasons are just to name a few. However, leading edge mobile marketing adopter Starbucks will be releasing a new mobile app to activate unique AR experiences triggered by their famous red Xmas cups. The idea is to find, activate and share all 5 special Christmas characters that appear randomly on the red cups. The new app will also showcase special offers and provide the opportunity for eGifting. Starbucks already has a loyal following and entrenched user base with Starbucks apps on their mobile device which will hopefully bring the masses into the wonderful world of augmented reality.

National Geographic AR Installation
National Geographic created an augmented reality installation to tour shopping centres and promote their TV specialty channel. The AR installation enables passersby to engage and interact with the type of content they would find on the National Geographic channel, from dolphins and dinosaurs to leopards and astronauts. Unlike a personal AR experience that requires the user to download an app to their smartphone,  an AR installation works by placing a huge digital screen and high-powered camera in front of an augmented reality marker that is affixed to the ground. As people step onto the marker, the content is triggered to play on the big screen in front of them and enables them to virtually interact with the content they are seeing.

With so many new avenues of thinking about augmented reality, we are slowly learning to liberate this magic little technology from the bonds of its printed codes.

The question is whether advertisers and marketers will be willing to adopt and push the envelope even further.

Google took a big step toward becoming a social branding channel by launching Google+ Pages for Business this week. Will they succeed in attracting brands to set up their own identities and getting consumers to engage? Here are 3 reasons why it would be tough to bet against them.

Reach

Google.com attracts over 1 billion unique visitors per month. It’s the web’s most visited website. If we think of Google+ as the social child of this immensely popular parent then we see a platform set up for success if the relationship is strong. And thanks to Direct Connect, it works well.

Type +Pepsi in the Google search field and you’ll see their logo, name and description in the dropdown. You can’t miss it; the row is twice as tall as the autocomplete results underneath and the logo adds the only colour in the field. This open door to Pepsi’s Google+ brand Page is the layup and the prompt that follows – “Add this page to your circles?” – is the slam dunk. It’s a heavy enough push to a brand’s Google+ page that some are even raising the anti-trust flag.

Targeting

The web’s early promise to advertisers of hyper-targeting based on demographics and location never really came true to the extent we thought it would. Targeting paid ads in Facebook is easy but when it comes to Page content, most brands are blasting the same status update to their entire audience – or at best, countries and languages.

Google+ makes it pretty easy to sort followers into groups (they call them Circles) and send targeted, relevant messages to these smaller audiences. Brands can create robust content calendars with posts intended just for certain cities, ages, gender and languages. Imagine Pizza Hut sending a family dine-in update to 35-year old mothers in Toronto and a take-out offer just to 22-year old guys in Thunder Bay. To brands, that’s gold.

Design

Remember how shockingly simple Google looked in the early days 10 years ago compared to other sites? Their logo and clean white background stood in stark contrast to other search engines with 600 words cluttering the page. Google+ looks to maintain that clean design and simplicity by showing just 4 tabs and 1 or 2 posts. The comment threads are compressed to a few lines and users can only respond, not post, so there’s no spam or angry uploads cluttering the wall. It’s easy-to-use and intuitive. They have a few bugs to iron out but overall this has been a solid launch.

Unprecedented reach, breakthrough targeting, and simple design. Add in the engagement potential of Google Hangouts, the social power of the +1 button, and the possibility of a robust Google+ Analytics package and you have the makings of a massive, effective, and unavoidable brand channel.

For a video compilation of our best ads in 2011 and pics of some delicious Grip-branded cupcakes please visit Grip Limited’s own Google+ page at https://plus.google.com/101210193967222377028/posts.