The Web Showroom – 2012 Year In Review

2012 was a great year for The Web Showroom. Outlined below is a highlight of a few key events throughout the year:

New Clients

On the web side of the business we launched over 300 new website projects. We worked on a range of projects for well-known clients like The Salvation Army, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and NAB (NAB Agribusiness Awards) along with a diverse and ambitious range of SME’s.

Our Online Marketing team continued to work on projects for clients all across Australia. Once again we worked on projects for large clients such as ASX Listed Nick Scali Furniture and Money 3, along with dozens of smaller businesses.

It was fantastic to see a string of striking designs fighting it out every month for our internal ‘Site of the Month’ competition. Equally, it was wonderful to hear about Online Marketing clients generating insane returns from Google marketing campaigns.

Existing Clients

Our e-commerce clients continued to see huge increases in sales. Sales processed through our e-commerce platform increased by over 48% compared to 2011. Across the 500+ e-commerce stores that we support, we noticed an increasing trend towards mobile e-commerce. When we ran an audit of all transactions processed in 2012 we found that 17% of e-commerce sales via our platform came from customers on a mobile device.

New Technologies

We rolled out a range of new technologies, integrations and products throughout the year. These included:

• Email marketing integration with MailChimp and CampaignMonitor
• Mouse movement tracking
• Integration with Heatmapping software
• ERP integration (MYOB, Microsoft Dynamics)
• Mission Control IA overhaul
• Creation of dashboard for all clients in our CMS including Google Analytics integration
• Complete overhaul of Events module (powerful new search options, end users can create events for approval, completely new display engine, customisable categories/groups, recurring/one-off events)
• Aggregated Google Maps displayed in directory search results
• Temando shipping insurance integration
• Customisable reminder emails for site members (birthdays, expiry of membership, expiry of profiles)
• LinkedIn integration
• Integration with service providers who support credit card tokenisation

We have also agreed on our 2013 roadmap with ideas like personalisation, multivariate testing ready, CSV remapping and remarketing plug-ins.

The Web Showroom Awards

It was great to see our hard work pay dividends in 2012. We were very pleased to win the following awards:

Deloitte Asia Pacific Technology Fast 500	Deloitte Technology Fast 50
2012 BRW Fast Starters	Australian Web Awards 2012 Finalist

Industry Associations

We continued to participate in a range of important industry associations. Throughout the year we were members of The Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA), The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Office Move… (Kind Of)

In mid-2012 we were fortunate that our neighbours upstairs moved out! Not that we didn’t like them, but that it meant we could stay in our current location and take more space. After a fierce game of scissors, paper, rock, the Design Team won out and took upstairs. We were able to take the top-level and in effect double our office space. Special mention must go to our ‘Design Committee’ that oversaw the interior design of our new space. The office is looking great!

The Web Showroom Xmas Party

The 2012 Christmas Party was the best one yet. Channelling our inner-Gangster we had a Boardwalk Empire inspired prohibition-era party. Complete with gambling tables, prohibition style drinks and fantastic costumes.

Mission Control Redesign

We completely overhauled the look & feel of our CMS in late 2012. Angela put together a superb new design which was then skinned by the Development team and posted live. The new look & feel looks fantastic and has taken the CMS to a new level.

New website

We had been stuck in the stone-age for too long with our website. In a classic case of the plumber having a leaking tap our website had not been overhauled for almost 3 years… Following a design competition where each member of our Design Team offered a design we moved forward with one concept. A few months later we crossed our fingers and launched our new website. Results so far have been positive!

Minor Style Edits: 06/03/2013