Internet World 2009

I spent the day at Internet World, at Earls Court, hoping to learn a bit more about ecommerce best practices and also gen up on online marketing.

On my way there I was given two salutary reminders of the real world, the one that's still running in parallel with the digital world I inhabit for much of my time. Coming off the tube I saw my first evidence of the swine flu scare - two women in business suits sporting face masks. Ten minutes later, sitting in a café across from Earls Court, there was live coverage on BBC of a memorial ceremony for troops killed in Iraq - one by one platoon leaders would stand at a lectern and read the names of those who died fighting for us - very moving and of course just the thing to set me up for a day here.

They're all the same, these exhibitions. A mixture of clever companies trying to get noticed; desperate salesmen trying to drag anyone they can onto their stands; market leaders using their huge stands to brag to their industry; promotional girls and over-priced food.
First off, I realised that I had a practical need for a notebook, so I feigned interest in an email marketing solution - for the cost of five minutes of my time I gained a couple of brochures to bin and a handy notebook for the day.

My strategy was to concentrate on the seminars and keynote presentations. I always think that I'll learn at least one thing that makes the day worthwhile - I just don't know what it is and where I'll learn it. And so it turned out.

The first seminar, 'Innovate or die; lessons from 10 years of the internet, was pretty dull - the CEO of Cheapflights throwing a few facts and opinions around. Nothing I didn't know. The next one, on website usability, was far more useful. No rocket science, but a valuable round-up of some best practice in search and browse, product pages, basket and checkout. Some of it is available at www.webcredible.co.uk/ecommerce2008.

I treated myself to a shoulder and head massage before walking the floor for a bit, and then forking out the best part of a fiver for a sandwich. After lunch, a keynote by Justin Moodie, head of online at HMV, on multi-channel retailing. Really interesting, this one. He spoke about HMV's strategy of Messaging, Measurement and Improvement - aimed at achieving measurable improvements for a reason, not change for change's sake. And having demonstrated some of the testing they've done, the biggest shock for me was that they use the free Google Optimizer rather than an expensive tool to manage all of this activity.

I queued to get into a Chartered Institute of Marketing seminar on SEO. Fast, furious and a good top level overview of how search is evolving from keywords and links to more sophisticated measures of trust and user experience. Ten minutes later I was back in the same hall listening to the same speaker talk about SEM, and it hadn't got any cooler. The same format - an overview of things to consider when formulating and executing an ecommerce strategy.

Finally, I managed to talk to one of the developers at webjam about some bugs I'd found when setting up a webjam site for the Chiswick Casuals. Always thinking of my friends.

So was it worth the day out? The exhibition itself had very little to commend it but yes, I did find some nuggets that I'll take with me - enough to make it worthwhile. It's a draining way to spend a day though - right now I could do with a stiff drink...