Our clients are now displayed in what we call our “Client Wall“, which provides the user with a brief description of the work we’ve undertaken with each client. Each client logo links to a dedicated page that contains more information about the projects we’ve completed for them, case studies and links to the projects.

Websites should constantly be evolving and as such we’ve been tracking and analysing our own site in order to make some improvements and so it’s not just a new client page that has changed on the KMP Digitata website. The top navigation has been edited slightly to include links to our social media profiles and a roll out menu for our clients. We’ve also updated the home page design to focus on a key message for each client. In addition, it randomly rotates through our featured clients, meaning that visitors to the site see a different client each time they arrive at kmp.co.uk. The footer of the website has been redesigned to include our client extranet and space to promote our achievements, such as our Recommended Agency certificate.

We believe that the refreshed KMP Digitata website provides visitors with more information on our projects and now has a cleaner and easy to use interface. There are still more improvements and content on the way but with this update we’ve built the foundations. We would love to hear your thoughts about these updates, so please leave us a comment below of send us a tweet @KMPDigitata.

Renold is an international engineering group, that produces a wide range of precision engineering products, operating in nineteen countries worldwide. The principal activities of the Group are the manufacture and sale of industrial chains and related power transmission products.

The digital revolution is growing at such a pace that many companies are struggling to keep up with the astronomical rise of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, however, Renold were able to identify an opportunity for them to utilise mobile at the correct time. As with many websites these days Renold was experiencing more and more traffic to their website from mobile devices so it was an obvious decision to create a site designed specifically for mobile devices.

The new mobile site will not only be used as a mobile optimised website for incoming web traffic but will also become an important tool for reps out in the field when large brochures and spec sheets are not ideal as well as on the factory floor during client/customer tours.

The new Renold mobile site

The challenge of creating the new mobile site came from trying to host the whole Renold product range in a clear, easily navigated site that would work on a wide range of mobile devices.

To make the user’s experience of the site as easy as possible, the search feature is emphasized to help the user avoid navigating through the menus. Although the search box is a key feature the menu is kept simple with the Breadcrumb Navigation at the top of the page so that the user knows the path they took to arrive at their current page and reduce the need for the back button.

Product pages on the website were of vital importance, so they contain an image, brief description and most importantly a link to download the stat sheets, which then open in the mobile device’s document viewer, making it easier to read and keep it with them rather than repeatedly visiting the Renold site to see the information.

The mobile device allowed us to create a more engaging “Find Us” page with links that open up map and navigation options within the device and in doing so help users not only find out where the offices are but also be navigated to them (dependant on software on the device). Users can now find their closest office, view it on a map and then get directions to the location all on the move.

David Turner, Marketing Communications Manager for Renold Plc. said of the new site:

Renold is determined to pursue innovation both as a manufacturer and service provider and we’re the first industrial chain manufacturer to launch a mobile site. KMP’s team kept the structure and design simple to make it quicker and easier for our customers and sales teams to access product information while on the move. We’re very pleased with the result.

This new mobile site is an exciting step forward for Renold who understand that mobile is quickly growing into one of the most important digital sectors and they are now perfectly positioned for the further increase of mobile devices used to view the web.

Visit the new Renold Mobile site here and if you’re interested in mobile strategy then feel free to contact us to discuss it

KMP Digitata was awarded the business following a selection process that initially included agencies from all over the country.

Martyn Ladds, Head of Marketing at Sue Ryder, praised KMP Digitata for their understanding of the Sue Ryder brand, for providing creative solutions that exceeded the Charity’s brief and for their passion throughout the entire pitch process.

Put simply “KMP got it spot on” said Martyn Ladds. He continued, “We were very excited by KMP’s strategic thinking and creativity and we are now keen to continue the process of change we have already begun within Sue Ryder.”

KMP Digitata’s work with Sue Ryder will incorporate the definition and implementation of an entire new digital strategy. Web and mobile channel offerings will be designed, delivered and integrated into a new CRM system. Business critical areas such as volunteering, fundraising, event management and donating will benefit from KMP Digitata’s 20 years of online expertise where delivering “Return on Investment” is always paramount. Functionality including personalisation and ecommerce, together with creative and technical support for new systems serving the Sue Ryder estate of over 350 shops and 14 hospices and care centres nationwide will be introduced and facility managed 24/7/365 by KMP Digitata.

Jon Keefe KMP Digitata’s co-founder and CEO commented “To be appointed digital partners and entrusted by a national charity as prestigious as Sue Ryder with steering, delivering and supporting their digital strategy is a huge vote of confidence in our people, their expertise and skills and our philosophy of delivering real return on investment for our clients.”

It is an exciting time for both KMP Digitata and Sue Ryder. We will keep you posted on all future developments and news.

KMP Digitata helped Manchester Airport set up their hugely successful Twitter account and aided them with their strategy for the first few months. Here at KMP Digitata we had already had success with TrekAmerica‘s 8 Mates Across the States and VIE at Home Facebook applications and we knew that there was an opportunity for Manchester Airport to take advantage of the popularity of Facebook.

The Task

Manchester Airport came to use with 2 objectives that they wanted to achieve through any means that we saw appropriate. Following on from KMP Digitata’s and Manchester Aiport’s success with Twitter and the Tweeting Departure board we felt that something with Facebook was the next step.
The first objective was to inform people of all the destinations that the public can fly to from Manchester Airport outside of the destination map on the Manchester Airport website.
Secondly Manchester Airport wanted to increase the number of contacts in their CRM database in manor where the contact would be happy to provide their details.

The Solution

Drawing inspiration from a campaign run by Manchester Airport back in spring 2010, featuring a piggy bank, KMP felt there was a game in the concept of an airport making a pig fly. The idea of pig-a-pult was born and to fulfil the objectives given by the airport. The aim of the game is to launch the pig (named Piggles) via a catapult from Manchester

Airport and get him to land at one of their many destinations and in doing so subtly inform the user of where Manchester Airport can catapult them to. By applying a scoring system that rewards those who get nearer to the furthest destinations we can create a leader board and give a top prize to whoever scores the highest then smaller prizes to randomly selected players. To be entered into the competition the player enters their email and so fulfils the 2nd objective.

The Prizes

With Social Games the main pull is getting the bragging over your friends as to who have the highest score. To add extra incentive to play the game, Manchester Airport is giving away an iPad to the person who gets the highest score. In addition to the iPad there is also a lucky draw to win £500 worth of holiday vouchers.

So if you want to win an iPad or £500 give pig-a-pult a go and make some pigs fly.

With TrekAmerica Live KMP Digitata wanted to develop a place that brings past, present and potential trekkers together to share their experiences. TrekAmerica Live is not in competition with Facebook (where Trek already has a strong community of nearly 15,000 fans) but integrally linked, allowing for content to be published across both networks.

How It Works

After booking themselves onto a TrekAmerica tour each passenger receives a unique URL, linking him or her to their own individual Trekker Profile on TrekAmerica Live. The system pre-populates the page with the Trekker’s details and loads an interactive map of the tour they have booked themselves on.

The system is designed to allow the Trekker to invite their family and friends to login and keep track of their progress during the trip. The interactive tour map displays exactly where the chosen Trekker on any particular day and provide the users with extra information on all the destinations they visit.

In addition to allow friends and family to follow Trekkers the site encourages users to interact with people who will be travelling on their chosen trip or speak to previous Trekkers to receive advice.

The personal profiles allow passengers to upload photos and videos, write travel blogs, post comments to Facebook and send Twitter updates whilst on the road. To save time on uploading photos the site is able to publish photos the user has already uploaded to their Facebook account, avoiding the issues of uploading the same photo multiple times on different sites.

TrekAmerica Live is fast becoming a reliable resource for anyone researching travel in North America and the site has been designed so that none members can still browser the site and find information about the tours in addition to that of the main TrekAmerica website.

The Results so far

TrekAmerica Live launch on and has over 500 active users who have uploaded 1200 photos and 85 Trekkers writing their blogs as they travel at the moment of this release.

With a 99 per cent satisfaction rating, comments about TrekAmerica are overwhelmingly positive. This what some of the current users had to say about the service;

• “Seen a couple of the blogs on here, so I’m making a little diary of what we did – hope it will be useful to other Trekkers”
• This is a really great feature for the website, I hope I can find some fellow travellers…!”
• “Would love to find out a bit more about the people we are travelling with. It makes it easier when we meet for the first time, no strange looks hahaha”
• “I’ll be taking my camera and netbook as I was planning on making a blog about the trip anyway, so this will be very handy for me.”
• “Loving this new site. Joined up straight away”

We are excited to see how the community around TrekAmerica Live continue to embrace this new platform and look forward to more and more user generated content being uploaded to the site.

We have been recognised once again by the Digital Industry as a leader in our field resulting in two of our projects being nominated for “Best e-business”. As categories go “Best E-business” is one of the most fought over, because those that get nominated have proven that they have not only met targets but went beyond them, created new business and produced amazing ROI.

Our two projects that have been nominated for the “Best E-Business” 2010 are the Jetparks website and ASDA’s virtual assistant, Amy.

Jetparks

The JetParks project was created to help Manchester Airport break into the competitive offsite parking market and establish itself as a provider of cheap Manchester Airport Parking on the search engines. Since its launch a year ago the project has exceeded all targets and produced an ROI of 465%.

Asda’s Amy

Asda launched their new online grocery platform in July 2009 and required a web application that would guide customers through the new interface, encourage the shopping process, handle queries online and decrease the inbound calls. The result of which would subsequently improve customer service, their business process and profitability.
Our Virtual Assistant, Amy, fields over 20,000 conversations a month, 23% of which Asda believes would previously have resulted in a call being made to the call centre and produced a ROI of 185%, which is expected to increase to 1013% by the end of the 2nd year.

As it happens

If you’re interested to see if we won then be sure to return to the blog on Friday to read the post awards entry although we ask for forgiveness if it is late, especially if we win because we are only human and sometimes suffer from sore heads after these award nights.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter to receive the latest developments as they happen on the night.

People to follow:
@KMPDigitata
@JonKeefe
@Gezd
@DanielAshcroft

Well we developed an app for that…

The free Manchester Airport iPhone application is an essential tool for those flying out, flying in and even collecting friends or family from Manchester Airport. It has been designed to save both time, money and enable the traveller to plan their journey and time in the terminals more productively, be it exploring the many retail outlets or airport lounges.

The Manchester Airport iPhone application is the perfect accompaniment for both business and leisure travellers.

The key features of the application allow you to:

• Explore each terminal through the interactive map
• Car park booking – Save money and time by pre-booking your car parking
• View a Google map of each terminal and get directions to and from the airport
• Get real time flight information for arrivals and departures.

The Manchester Airport iPhone application is available to download from the AppStore now for free and more information about the app can be found at the Manchester Airport website.

Trek America specialize in small group adventure holidays and their style of travel offers something different to the usual holiday packages.We’ll be working on a strategy and tools to encourage travellers to share their experiences and content with others online.

Everyone’s aware that engaging with customers through the social web is becoming increasingly relevant and essential to modern marketing. It was obvious to us that enabling Trek to actively promote, reward and support customers in sharing their experiences with friends, family, colleagues and others was the right move. The fact that Trek are willing to let us create a direct point of contact between past, current and potential customers is truly bold and innovative step for TUI Travel plc. It’s a step which will benefit not only the thousands of Trekkers who fly into the Americas each year, but also the countless thousands more who are interested in embarking on an adventure themselves.

The portal encourages interaction between the two groups in a bid to encourage potential customers to talk to previous trekkers, ask their opinions, seek their advice and experience their previous treks. Delivering a return on investment congruous with quantitive business objectives is critical to any projects KMP Digitata works with our clients on. Social medial and UGC is not just a shiny buzzword to be echoed across twitter and promoted recklessly within companies; it should be a tool honed to deliver a measurable, though not always fiscal, return on initial investment.

Working carefully with Trek America and the wider TUI Travel plc, this consideration will drive our implementation and ensure that everyone benefits from the project. As a previous trekker myself I can’t wait to start talking to people about my experiences and as a proponent of digital marketing I can’t wait to see the benefits for Trek America.

Full details of the Trek America portal will be announced in the coming months.

The Virtual Assistant solution we delivered holds many long term benefits for Asda, beyond the initial solution of guiding their customers through the new platform. It will continue to help online customers through the shopping process, ensure that any complaints or queries ranging from placing orders, delivery, missing items and product quality are fielded appropriately. It will continue to decrease the number of enquires either via phone or email that the call centres would be required to handle and perhaps, most importantly from a customer service perspective, Asda will gain priceless insight into exactly what their customers want to know while they are online and the questions they put forward in their research process. This constant supply of feedback can then be used to increase the customer experience online, whether this is through recognising and correcting navigational difficulties or identifying and dealing with any frustrations they might have. In essence, it has given Asda the capacity to monitor their customers through conversations and not just through clicks.

A number of propositions were presented to Asda as to the design of the Virtual Assistant (VA) should it be live action, 3D animation or 2D? It was finally decided that 2D Vector animation would best compliment the look and feel of the new platform. But who would this Assistant be? What would they be called? What would they look like? What would they do in their spare time? Where would they see themselves in five years? Important considerations for any employer, and so the virtual recruitment process began.

Prompted by a number of considerations we put forward, and in true witness protection style, Asda created the background life and loves of “Amy”, as our VA would now be known, based on criteria that would appeal to the broadest spectrum of their customer base.

Amy is 35, married to Burt with 3 children aged 3, 7 and 11 and although born in Bingley, now lives in Royston (which is just outside Barnsley). Her hobbies include Go-Karting, crafts with the children and baking (for which she has won prizes for her apple crumbles in the Great Yorkshire Cookery Competition, lest we forget). She has a diploma in Customer Services and has been a regular shopper at Asda for years. She applied for the job so she could earn a bit of money on the side and pass on her shopping sensibly tips (doesn’t she know it’s a 24/7 role? I hope Burt can handle the kids?). And although she’ll never be rude to a customer, you’d better watch out, she can deliver the occasional cheeky comment.

So to the appearance of  Amy and to find the virtual face that fits. This process was driven by our Head of Ideas, Greg, and took him and his team to places where many a man fears to tread, the inner pages of the celebrity and gossip magazines! From here we established where Amy should sit on the ‘celebrity persona scale’ and 50 faces were put forward by a model agency for the selection process to begin. These were whittled down to 10 based on the most memorable and identifiable. Keyword attributes that Amy would posses were then introduced, “mother”, “natural”, “wisdom”, “professional”, and “fun” and the remaining candidates scored against each. And so the 10 became 3 and finally 1. 

The next stage was to develop the demeanour of the Amy, how would she respond to certain questions? What would she do in periods of inactivity? To capture as natural a look as possible KMP Digitata put a number of people in front of the camera and noted the subtle nuances, whether this be a physical action such as touching her hair or chin or an expression to indicate surprise or confusion. Once these had been decided upon the model, chosen as Amy, could be filmed prior to animation.

The underlying technology behind Amy is based on a sophisticated word and phrase pattern recognition system, developed by Creative Virtual, which matches pre-programmed responses in the Virtual Assistant’s knowledge base with questions typed in by users. However, it also has the ability to hold the context of the conversation, in natural language and emulate the way people interact with each other. Therefore it was essential now to establish what the most frequently asked questions would be, and the answers given, as well as creating the decision trees that would pull all other answers out of Amy’s knowledge base.

Once she had been fully programmed, fitted into her uniform, and taught how to react to all questions (of both a professional and cheeky persuasion) Amy was ready to hit the shop floor.

We’ll let you know how she’s getting on soon.

It must have been a useful seminar, as ClearDebt have kept in touch with us, and involved us in their rigorous selection process for a digital marketing partner. KMP’s all-round skills including online strategy development, website design and delivery, search marketing and social media expertise helped us to come out on top at the end of the process.

ClearDebt (link to the current, pre-KMP site) is a leading debt management resolution company that helps people with debts to cut the total they owe, freeze the interest they pay and remove any threat to their home. They also provide help and advice on how to avoid bankruptcy.

KMP Digitata’s Managing Director, Jon Keefe said that

“ClearDebt are a very prestigious and respected company, and KMP Digitata are delighted to be working with them to develop their digital marketing strategy”.

Andrew Smith, ClearDebt’s Marketing Director commented

“We are very pleased to be working with KMP.  Their skills in Digital Marketing are central to us building our online presence now and in the future”

We’re looking forward to working closely with ClearDebt over the coming years, and to meeting many more interesting organisations at our seminars in the autumn – the schedule is being planned now!