The MIT Technology review put up a video about an iPhone app created by Modiv Media that lets grocery store customers “scan items while they shop, presents them with personalized offers as they go, and speeds up their checkout” by transmitting the completed order to the register. The app and system is currently being deployed by the supermarket chain Stop & Shop at its 375 stores in the North East.
From the Modiv Media site: “From check-in to check-out, they expect a seamless experience that provides them value. Value that is delivered through personalized offers, the ability to shop and scan with their smartphone and self-checkout that’s fast and without waiting in line. And, in return, they’ll spend more, 10% – 17% more.”
The MIT article noted:
The app uses data from the loyalty card to present offers based on the user’s past purchases and current location in the store. It works in addition to the existing loyalty program, offering savings on top of the deals already advertised on store shelves.
When the user has finished shopping, the app sends information about the contents of the shopping cart to the store’s point-of-sale system. The user can go to any register, scan the loyalty card, and pay for the order.
Modiv Mobile provides retailers with a white-labeled platform on which to build a personalized shopping app that is integrated with your POS and targets offers based on data from your loyalty program or customer data.
Let me know if you think this is the future of grocery (all?) shopping?
Google, having first introduced the hotel booking feature in November on a limited test basis, has now pushed the ability to procure a reservation to the front page of the main search results for both blended and 7-pack displays. The test from Google has included a limited number of travel sites and a few high end independent hotels on a pay per click basis. Google has not been forthcoming about how to participate in the program noting that the program would be available to all someday.
The option to book directly from the page is visible in both the blended results and the 7-Pack.
Interestingly, when the results present themselves in the 7-Pack, there is an option to view the pricing by a given range of dates that can be selected. When the dates are changed the pricing changes accordingly. (click to view larger):
Clearly Google is still developing around the 7-Pack display, implying that it is not going away anytime soon. Also it shows that Google continues to experiment with ways to monetize local. I am sure that Trip Advisor is not happy about this one.
Reader Matt Feldman of Yelo.us has pointed out a new feature in Places where Google is now integrating venue events into their Places Pages. It allows an individual to add the event data to their personal Google calendar and to “invite friends using the ‘Add to calendar’ link that appears alongside the event”.
Google has confirmed that they are adding these events to venues “in a few major cities across the globe, including New York, San Francisco, London, Paris (and others)” and this “information is based on data from rich snippets markup“.
Wcities and Zevents events use the RDFa based Open Graph data structure. Other events appearing on the National Museum of the American Indian Places page from NYC.com are sructured with the event microformat (vcard) formatting. Although it does not seem to matter which format you are using, if you are operating a local site that includes events and you want your event information included in Places, you should be formatting the data with rich snippets.
We don’t know the number of additional claimed Places listings but we do know that it lead to a dramatic uptick in their ratings and reviews, moving them to near parity with Yelp in the important restaurant industry within several months.
It makes sense that they would leverage this visibility to introduce their new 50% Offers beta. Over the weekend we started to see general purpose Offers videos, help files and end user and business sign up forms. Now they have added end user and business sign ups to Google.com/portland, the main landing page for their Hotpot Places marketing in Portland.
Google Offers BETA will get you great deals in your city on things you like and things you need. Whether it’s half off a title at the corner bookstore or a meal at a local restaurant, the offers will be delivered right to your inbox.
We hope to bring Google Offers to New York and the San Francisco Bay Area in the near future, so stay tuned. In the meantime, if you don’t see your city here,you can let us know you’re interested and we’ll let you know when we come to your area.
We’re working hard to get Google Offers up and running in Portland. Soon, you’ll start receiving emails with great local offers if you have signed up with Google Offers.
Google Offers will bring new customers right to your door by introducing an attractive offer from your business. Visit our business page for more information.
If you are interested in running an offer you can let us know here. One of our representatives will reach out to you for more information about your business and answer questions you may have about our product.
In addition to our plans to launch in Portland, we also hope to bring Google Offers to New York and the San Francisco Bay Area in the near future. We haven’t confirmed our plans in other cities, but if you are interested in the product, you can let us know here.
Any business trying to attract new customers can participate in this program. You can submit your information here and we’ll contact you when we are ready to launch in your city according to your eligibility.
The geography of the name York has an illustrious history in Maine. The Town of York was settled in 1624 and the county of the same name was established in 1636. The Town of York has four villages, York Village, York Harbor, York Beach and Cape Neddick, commonly known as …. The Yorks. So if one searched for York, one would logically think that you would be taken to the town…
But York has a somewhat inglorious past in the virtual world of Google Maps. Like Sunrise, it’s one of those towns that just can’t seem to stay found, reflecting both the vagaries of Google Maps AND the oft times frustrating, Report a Problem system.
Here’s Su from the Inn at Tanglewood Hall in the Town of York to explain the situation from her point of view:
As you may recall in March- May 2009, Google Maps mistakenly coded the Town of York Maine for the York County seat, 26 miles north of us near Sanford/Kennebunk Maine, sending all of our town’s tourism business to our competitors in Kennebunkport.
Beginning in August 2010, Google Maps once again shifted the Town of York to the same exact wrong location. When you first clicked on Maps, results were correct, but a click to the second page of results sent you miles north. If you actually search directly on Maps for the Town of York, it is pinpointed in Sanford, theYork County seat .
Beginning April 12, Google Local results are also being shifted Kennebunkport. Google “York Maine Bed & Breakfasts” or “York Maine Doctors”, etc. We are desperate now to have this resolved. Our personal business has dropped 38% for the month of April and our busy tourism season is about to begin. Bill, who reports below, is also in the same situation as is the entire Town of York’s tourism business. Google is destroying livelihoods with its neglect to fix this and doing its customers a huge disservice by providing totally inaccurate search results. Fixing this needs to be escalated immediately.
Listed below are copies of all the Google Map Problem Reports filed since last August. There are at least 9 Different Case Files assigned and after EIGHT months of reporting, the Town of York Maine is still lost!!!
~Thanks, Su
Whether this problem could be solved with the newly released US version of Map Maker is not quite clear to me as I am still struggling with learning the interface (and it is certainly too difficult for most Inn owners to learn).
Note to readers: here are the many Report a Problem requests, they are included in oldest to newest date order for reference. It is not necessary to slog though them all but if you read the first and last one and scroll through the rest, the point will be patently obvious…. (more…)
Yipit reported yesterday that Google is rolling out an expansion of their Offers program with Groupon like features in the test markets of NY, San Francisco, Oakland and Portland. Users may sign up Google.com/offers and if you want to be notified of future launches you can leave your email with Google on this form. When you do sign up in one of the targeted cities you receive a email that notes:
Once Google Offers is available in NYC Downtown we’ll send you regular emails letting you in on amazing offers in your area.
The rollout of the Groupon Like Offers Beta, first reported as in development in January, allows user to subscribe to receive email notices to “Get 50% off or more at places you’ll love”. Yipit notes that Google Offers seems to be taking a very similar approach to existing daily deal sites:
50% off or more. Google states that they “partner with some of the best local businesses in your area to bring you great deals at 50% off or more.” The lower bound of 50% off is one of the key underpinnings of Groupon and LivingSocial’s offerings. Google clearly wants its users to perceive these offers very differently from regular coupons.
Email distribution. Google will be distributing these offers via email. Google states that they’ll “send you regular emails letting you in on amazing offers in your area.”
Opt-in. Google is not auto-subscribing their users to this program. They are asking user to sign-up for Google Offers via the Google Offers landing page.
Offers, Google’s rebranded Coupon product, has been seeing a slow but steady emergence from the dark shadows of neglect. This new beta test comes on the heels of their nationwide expansion of the their Check-in Offers test in Latitude.
Exactly who and how companies participate in the latter two is a bit of a mystery. After the Check-in expansion was announced I emailed Google the following to see if they were willing to share any additional information:
Can you give me any more details about rollout of the Latitude incentivized upgrade offers? Free or paid? Plan for wider access? Success in Austin?
I’m sure you’ve seen that already, but just wanted to relay that message. We’ll let you know if and when we have more details to share.
With the cancelation of Tags, Google now has 3 flavors of Offers; free via the Places Dashboard, the Check-In Offer and the new Email version. How many and what final form Offers will take in the Google paid product mix is unclear and there are likely more changes on the horizon.
It wasn’t clear why Google was deprecating MyMaps over the past several months; removing the ability to search them from Maps in January and removing them from Places last month. Now we know. It appears that MyMaps is being deprecated in the US in favor of Google’s much more robust community map making tool Map Maker.
First released in August of 2008 as a way to engage the public in the creation of maps in the 3rd world, it went mainstream in February of 2009 when Google integrated ugc from the Map Maker community into the Google Maps in 16 countries. According to Google “Using Map Maker, people have built out and edited the maps for 183 countries and regions around the world, and now, due to the contributions of citizen cartographers, 30 percent of people have detailed online maps of the places they live”. Kenya has been a poster child of this effort with a large swatch of the country having been mapped via citizen generated content. Google has even sponsored a Ladies Mapping Party there to increase awareness.
Unlike MyMaps which was essentially unregulated and abused in hopes of increasing local ranking, each Map Maker user contributions and edits will be reviewed. “After approval, the edits will appear in Google Maps within minutes—dramatically speeding up the time it takes for online maps to reflect the often-changing physical world.” The community design of the system allows for peer to peer as well as moderator inputs on these edits. There also appears to be a trust ranking system that assigns increasing trust to editors who have more experience and a good track record.
Any such system may have users who attempt to abuse it. Hopefully the system of double checks in Map Maker will discourage abuses and will lead to an increase in Map quality.
Google’s ability to keep up with user generated edits seems strained and hopefully this will allow for accuracy and speedy updates in out of the way places that otherwise seem to suffer the most in the new world of digital geography.
To learn more about Map Maker for the United States visit Google’s training and Help files.
The Google Places with Hotpot promotion that started in Portland in December, 2010 is now ongoing in four additional cities: Austin, Las Vegas, Madison and Charlotte.
As a part of the promotion, any business in any of those cities that claims their listing is eligible for a business kit that includes Google bling. Apparently several businesses are having difficulties with the ordering process and reportedproblems in the forums.
I was curious about the process and problems and managed to finagle an order via the online catalog. Here is a slide show of oder process and the (many) items available. Many of the same items available in Portland are also available in the four other cities although it is not clear if Google is using every promotional tactic that they used in there.
Unfortunately Google was out of stock on the neon signs and the fridge magnets but they apparently still have a good stock of the fortune cookies. Not sure exactly what they might be predicting….:
Google’s publicly stated reason that they need to focus their efforts on which technologies they expect will yield the most benefit to users and businesses is very plausible.
I think that the statement is accurate as far as it goes.
At best Tags offered little benefit to businesses that were using them. While it allowed for a listing to be visually highlighted and its difficult to value the benefit of that in terms of additional clicks or calls, the product itself generated a very low click volume. There was little accountability nor possibility for accountability of those actions either.
In accounts that I examined, Tags generated between 1.5% and 4% of the total actions reported in the dashboard compared to all of Google’s reported actions. Once Google stopped allowing a Tag to be directed to a website and those Tag actions were directed inward on Google towards a photo or the Place page, a Tag became even less valuable (and less trackable) for a merchant. The change to blended results further decreased the value of Tags in the Places world. At least the other, free actions like driving directions or clicks to your website in Places offer mostly direct and quantifiable value.
The logic of whether to keep a given product in the mix needs to address not only individual merchant needs but Google’s corporate needs as well. You also have to remember, Google is an large stock held company that trades on the public capital markets.
To keep capital flowing, companies like Google need to show regular and steady increases in their income. Google has generated average revenue gains of over $4.5 billion a year for the past 4 years. If you discount 2008 as a recession year then they increased revenues by an average of $5.3 billion a year.
Google needs that sort of growth and more every year to be a contender in the capital markets. Growth of their traditional ad products has slowed as a % of sales. Everyone, including Google, is looking to Local for the next ad growth market. Some companies, like LivingSocial seem to have found a way to access local ad revenue and are already on track to reach a $1 billion of revenue for 2011.
A fixed price product like Tags puts a very real cap on total potential revenue and growth that can ever approach those sorts of numbers. (more…)
The MIT Technology review put up a video about an iPhone app created by Modiv Media that lets grocery store customers “scan items while they shop, presents them with personalized offers as they go, and speeds up their checkout” by transmitting the completed order to the register. The app and system is currently being deployed by the supermarket chain Stop & Shop at its 375 stores in the North East.
