Buyometric

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A fresh new look

On Friday we quietly rolled out the first of a series of changes that will transform the look and user experience of our website and emails over the next 4 months.

You might have seen this coming. I’ve been tweeting about the work involved in the rebrand for some time and our blog received the make-over treatment about four weeks ago (alongside the introduction of a companion Tumblr blog). The redesign includes a cleaner looking website that will support more advanced features designed to help you find the perfect deals and offers.

The first thing to receive some simplification love was our logo. The original version was a play on the dictionary definition format, but it’s caused us problems since people struggle to know how our name should be written. We’ve seen Buy-o-metric, Buy.o.metric, Buy O metric to name a few. We are Buyometric, and now that’s exactly what our logo says.

  The site has benefitted from an overall de-clutter and brings us back in line with our philosophy at launch – that our technology should provide the wow factor over fancy graphics. We are an engine designed to save people money by matching them with the deals and offers they will be most interested in. Our technology is sophisticated and intelligent. We want our brand to communicate this message.

Aside the aesthetics, the coming months will see a series of upgrades that will completely change the way that customers will use our website. While the bulk of the changes are being release through-out September, two new features are been introduced today in beta format.

Deal search

You can now search for deals using the search bar at the top of every page. Once we see some search activity we will learn more about how the search should work and what results you are expecting to see, and so this first version is very much a beta release. The search results will still be sensitive to your location and other factors that we know about you to help personalise the experience.

Travel search

The are some amazing online offers to be found for short breaks and holidays. Today we have launched a new Travel section that will facilitate the uncovering of these travel deals. We will be increasing the number of travel deals available in this section over the coming months as we learn what types of offers are most popular.

Improved login

We have improved the login experience after much feedback from users, and have also improved the existing facilities for changing usernames and passwords. Both were proving a little buggy and the user experience wasn’t great.

Expect more

The next wave of improvements will hit the site in about 3 weeks time when will build on this redesign. We hope you approve of the changes so far and would love to hear your feedback.

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Buyometric at the Olympic Park

The Buyometric office is lucky enough to be located within easy access to the London 2012 Olympic Park. A few of us have made the most of this fact, attending a whole range of sports including diving, hockey, weight lifting and athletics. And we're not done yet -  Paralympic tickets are already in the bag. We're proud to be able to say that we were there, and we are proud of London for putting on an amazing games.

Many people have commented on the amazing flower meadows throughout the park.

The Orbit, made up of recycled washing machines, dominates the park.

[buyometric]

We're Hiring: PHP Developer - London

PHP Developer - London Bridge

Up to £25,000 per annum + bens

 This is a fantastic opportunity to join a team of 3 experienced developers in a fast paced, growing industry. Just 2 years old, the business is still in its infancy but already a market leader making this the perfect place to become a part of the foundations.

To be considered for this role, you must have a passion for PHP Development, be entrepreneurial in your approach, willing to do what it takes to get the job done and have a desire to be a part of a growing business in a competitive market place. You must be personable, hard working, resilient and ready to take on a real challenge.

 You will be responsible for maintaining and extending our existing web framework, spiders and email delivery system, as well as taking ownership of improvement of site architecture.

Skills Required:

Excellent knowledge of PHP.

Excellent knowledge of MySQL.

Knowledge of the Linux (shell and scripting).

Understanding of MVC design patterns and frameworks.

Experience with object oriented programming.

Understanding of basic algorithms. Know what big O-notation is about.

Degree in Computer Science or related subject essential (otherwise proven track record with at least 3 years practical experience in a commercial environment).

Additional Skills are Desirable:

Experience with Unit Testing

Experience with Agile Development

Knowledge of PostFix and how Mail Transition works.

Experience with Version Control Systems (ideally Git).

Experience with Doctrine.

Experience with noSQL (Redis).

Experience with Sphinx Search.

If you think you would be right for this position please send your CV to [email protected] along with a portfolio of personal projects (GitHub or a personal website would be suitable).

  NO AGENTS – we do not pay agency fee’s as we have our own in house recruitment team, please don’t waste your time.

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A need for speed. The (ongoing) challenge of email delivery

We have an interesting challenge here at Buyometric. The number of emails we send out on a daily basis is increasing rapidly, but the timeframe we have to deliver them is remaining constant.  Imagine increasing the quantity of breakfast cereal that you pour into your bowl by 5% each morning. One of these days, you’re going to end up in a mess.

Our goal is to deliver an individually tailored email to every one of our users by 10am at the very latest. The email contains some deals that are only available for one day, so the earlier you receive the deals the longer you have to ponder a purchase before time runs out – or the deal sells out. Our classification and email creation processes is completed at around 8am, which gives us a 2 hour window to deliver the emails.

That’s no problem when your sending 10 emails, or 100, or 1,000 or 10,000. But what happens when you are sending hundreds of thousands of emails?

We’ve been finding out. Recently our 10am deadline has been slipping. Some days our mail server would crash altogether, and on others it would grind to a halt after chewing through all the available memory. Sometimes emails can’t be delivered and our server needs to keep trying. On these days, the extra load of repeated delivery attempts would cause something of a nuclear reaction and kill our sending processes dead.

The problem peaked about two weeks ago, where the last emails to be delivered were being received at around 2pm. This was totally unacceptable for us - something had to be done.

The fine folks at Catn, who provide and maintain our infrastructure, worked with us to come up with a solution. First we tried switching to a memory based mail server, but that didn’t cut it, so we ended up moving the server to a machine with a faster disc and much higher memory allocation. We've also started compressing our emails prior to dispatch to reduce the overall file size and eliminate any unnecessary overhead.

The result are looking good. We’re back within our target window, with email currently being fully dispatched shortly after 9am.  That enables us to roughly double in size before we need to look at a further upgrade. At this rate we’d better book that in right around Christmas time...

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Living Social Completes The Picture

Good news! After 18 months of discussion, Living Social have finally come on board and now complete the picture to ensure that Buyometric really is providing a selection of ALL the best deals from across the UK.

Living Social has a huge range of offers to suit every type of deal fan and now those offers are available in your “daily dose of deals” courtesy of Buyometric. From local offers on restaurants, spas, and haircuts to national brand products, luxurious escapes and fantastic family experiences – there’s something for everyone.

So, what took us so long?

Living Social are a US company, and in early 2011, a decision in their Washington DC head office was taken to steer clear of working with deal aggregators. However the popularity of Buyometric in the UK has reached across the pond, and with the support of the Living Social UK team we’ve joined up with them in a strategic partnership that will see our users benefit from more choice than anywhere else.

We went to meet the guys and girls over at the Living Social UK head offices, and I have to say – I was impressed.

Signing in on a brand new iPad, before being shown to the “Social” bar was great, but passing the games room – Table Tennis, Foosball and Arcade Dance Machines – before dropping by the “picnic” meeting room (grass floors, picnic tables and sundrenched skies), made me realise that our own humble London Bridge office has a long way to go.

 There was a definite sense of pride and achievement and we’re confident that this will shine through in the quality of the offers we’re now sharing with you.

To celebrate this new partnership and to show how ecstatic we are to be working together, we’re giving away £100 worth of Living Social vouchers to one lucky winner to be selected at random from anyone who purchases a Living Social deal through Buyometric before the 9th July 2012. Terms can be found here.

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Behind the camera

Little did we know that Dan, the latest addition to our development team, was secretly taking photos of our last glamorous photoshoot. Our amazing photographer has finally been unmasked...

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Fundraising for Prostate and Breast Cancer: My London Marathon story

Last Sunday I ran the London Marathon, and it will go down as one of the greatest experiences of my life. You might be reading this as a veteran marathon runner and find yourself nodding in agreement, but if you’re someone that has never considered it before, I would urge you to give it a go.

At the beginning of the month we started a campaign to raise funds for The Prostate Cancer Charity and Breast Cancer Care. Together they are the most common forms of cancer in the UK and will have touched many of our lives. Within the last few years I lost my Grandfather to prostate cancer, so it’s a cause particularly close to my heart.

To help the charities with their work in prevention and education we decided to make a donation for every transaction processed through Buyometric during April. I also signed up to run the London Marathon for the charities to personally contribute what funds I could raise from my cash strapped relatives and friends.

The training was very hard. I’m not a natural runner – nor naturally athletic in any respect – and am far better off with a computer than any kind of gym equipment. That said, running in the dark through snow and sheet ice can’t be anyone’s idea of fun. In the past few months I’ve tripped over fallen branches, cut my legs on barbed wire, and misplaced many a step straight in to deep mud.  And it’s not just physically demanding - my family have suffered from the lack of my presence over the weekends when I’d be out for 3 or 4 hours running then too exhausted to be of any use. On a positive note, the carb loading was truly welcome.

Then the big day arrived. The night before I accidentally melted my charity running vest while attempting to iron my name to the front, so an emergency kit change kept me up late into the night. It was a very early start up to Greenwich Park where the toilet queues were only beaten in length by the number of instructions to remember. How much water to drink, when to take energy gels, and how to pace myself all went out the window when I crossed the start line because all I could concentrate on where the crowds. Tens of thousands of people cheering, shouting my name, willing me on. It was awesome.

They were there the whole time. It’s a strange feeling when your body is screaming you to stop, while your mind is grasping for any reason to continue. It’s those times when you need the crowd.

I reached the finish line in a time of 4 hours 23 minutes, a time that I’m delighted with. It means I beat both Gordon Ramsay and Will Young who both finished along side me. The sense of achievement was temporarily replaced by nausea and I was forced to sit under a tree in St James’ Park for half an hour feeling terrible. A pizza seemed to cure it.

The sense of elation to have completed the London Marathon is hard to describe. The tragic death of Claire Squires at mile 25 is a reminder that this is an extraordinarily demanding feat. Despite the pain and gruelling training, I am already having withdrawal symptoms and am trying to work out how I could improve my time if I were to do it again. Perhaps not next year – I owe my family a break – but I think I’ll probably be back some day soon.

You can ready more about my personal story at justgiving.com/pauljohnfisher, however for now i'd just like to say a very big thank you to everyone who has supported our campaign and sent me direct messages of support - I read each and every one and can assure you they helped me get through to the end!

[buyometric]

VouchMANIA.com launched to bring daily deals to UK students

On Monday we rolled out a new partnership which brings daily deals to the UK student population. The site, VouchMANIA.com, has been developed in conjunction with the 2Study Foundation, a charity that provides university students in England and Wales with 'means tested' hardship awards that range from £500 to £3,000.

Initially the site will be marketed to 250,000 university students from a group of supporting universities over the next few weeks through a new student social networking site money2study.com. Eighty per cent of net profits generated from the site will be donated to the 2Study Foundation.

We're delighted to be working with the VouchMANIA.com team and the 2Study Foundation by providing access to our deals aggregation platform. Students have not been heavily targeted by daily deal websites until now but we expect to see strong uptake, particularly because all purchases will help fellow students in need.

View the full press release here

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Buyometric at the Daily Deals Summit Europe 2012

Yesterday I joined Kate Garraway on stage at the Daily Deal Summit Europe to discuss customer engagement strategies and personalisation in daily deals. The event was attended by most of the key players across Europe and it was a great pleasure to meet both partners and competitors to compare notes and share stories.

Our thanks go to the organising team for putting on the event – we are very much looking forward to DDSummitEurope 2013!

[buyometric]

Buyometric Acquires Hungry Local

We recently acquired the London-based online deals website, Hungry Local....

Hungry Local was born out of Hungry Media in January 2011. The service was launched and piloted in the Clapham and Balham areas, to provide local businesses with a sustainable marketing service, offering deals on a local level. By July 2011, the site was running deals across 15 areas of London.

Following the sale, Hungry Local will be run as a standalone service under the new name, Hungry Deals, where the users will be migrated over to the main Buyometric offering. The typical number of new deals available to Hungry Deals users will increase from 5 to over 200 per day.

The news follows hot-on-the- heels of our partnership with Kate Garraway’s Goodypass, underlining our growth strategy through acquisition and partnerships. We are pleased to be able to offer Hungry Local users a wider range of local deals. We have experienced first-hand how personalisation revives consumer interest in local offers and keeps them engaged in the longer term. We’re confident Hungry Local users will respond positively to the change.

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Buyometric partners with Kate Garraway's goodypass.com

Today we’re announcing a partnership between Buyometric and goodypass.com, the daily deals website founded by Kate Garraway.

Goodypass.com was launched in April 2011 and has established a strong and loyal customer base. In response to subscriber requests for more personalised deals, goodypass asked us to provide a full range of offers from around the web that are targeted to individual subscribers.

The website is now powered by Buyometric and makes full use of our deal targeting technology. It’s a big change – but a very positive one.

In Kate’s words: “We launched with the aim of bringing the kinds of discounts celebrities enjoy to people up and down the country. Over the last 12 months, we have seen an explosion in the popularity of daily deals, and an increase in the number of companies providing deeply discounted products and experiences. We think it’s a logical step to start bringing these deals to our members, but in a highly personalised way.”

We’re all delighted to be working with Kate and her team, and hope the users will be too!

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What better way to spend a Friday afternoon than crunching some serious statistics.

[buyometric]

Say hello to Panos

Our development team has just doubled. Panos hails from Greece but has come to us by way of the University of Bristol, where he graduated with a Masters Degree in Advanced Computing. He’s a specialist in machine learning and data mining – a perfect fit for Buyometric that has behavioural profiling and data aggregation at its core.

Panos is already busy improving our code base and will be instrumental in elevating our platform to the next level.

[buyometric]

Kidoo - Our latest Addition To The Family (Sector)

We knew we were in safe hands when we met with Kidoo and discovered that the founders had previously been involved in the world of Daily Deal aggregation. Like us, they understand that not everything is for everyone and that makes keeping you up to date on deals by your favourite children and family brands all the more straight forward.

Kidoo cover everything from baby essentials, children’s and maternity fashion, healthcare, toys, to soft-play activities, unique experiences, family holidays and everything in between.

We know they’re going to fit right in and look forward to working closely with them to really improve our family deals offerings.

[buyometric]

Retiring the favourite deals feature

Those with keen eyes might have notice that we’ve retired the favourite ‘starred’ deals feature. Initially we had envisaged users starring deals that they were interested in so that they could find them again easily, and compare them with others. You could also favourite a deal and then compare future deals to it, to check whether they offered the same kind of value. Alas it wasn’t to be. Less than 1% of our users have ever used the feature, and those that did tended to use it once and then forget about it.

So as of today favourite deals have been retired. This gives us a bit of space to introduce some new features – more on that later.

[buyometric]

Hungry Local Hits Buyometric Headlines

The Hungry Local team are taking the Group Buying model to a new level. For them, it’s not just about massive discounts and impulse purchases. They wanted to create a community feel about their business and it looks like they’re doing a great job. After a long chat with their founder – Tom Spink – it became abundantly clear that Hungry Local is built upon a simple idea…”empowering the customer”.

Hungry Local use the same, familiar model wit time sensitive offers up to 90% off but combine this with their focus on providing information on “what to do and see in your area”.

When asked about this, Tom was very clear, “we want to provide our community with more than just a “daily deal”, we want them to know about what’s going on in their area, discover hidden gems and experience things that they might miss out on otherwise, and if we can save them money in the process – even better”

As Hungry Local get set to launch their service across the UK, I look forward to working closely with Tom and the rest of the team to offer Buyometric members the same great benefits and help spread the word up and down the country.

[buyometric]

Savvy Mummys Makes Its Debut

With all the fantastic new Daily Deal and Group Buying businesses starting up, it was only a matter of time before someone I knew set something up. So when I heard about Savvy Mummys and saw the name of the founder I was straight on the phone. Savvy Mummys is a great concept – it takes the existing group buying model, but targets a very specific niche – as the name would suggest – expectant, new and more experienced mums can expect to find a fantastic array of discounted offers that really do target those things that mums need, want and deserve. Savvy Mummys was founded by Ali Harriss and a few other University friends. I spoke to Ali and got the following response:

” We’re part of a big group of Uni friends living in Clapham (AKA Nappy Valley), and we’re at that age where one by one we’re all walking up the aisle, having babies and buying prams. Being the entrepreneurial group that we are, we wanted to set something up together that would offer value to us, our families and our friends.”

Well, I can certainly say that they’ve created a gem, it’s targeted, relevant and genuinely useful, and the response they’ve had from the local community has been overwhelming. They’ve insisted that they aren’t rushing to branch out but there are plans in the pipeline. They want to make sure they’ve developed a great product that really does serve the community before delivering the concept to a wider audience and I for one look forward to helping them expand when the time comes.