By Patrick Avenell

Harvey Norman has appointed content company Flixmedia, headed locally by industry veteran John Gowland, to furnish its website with content aimed at closing consumers online.

Flixmedia will act as a middleman between suppliers and Harvey Norman, sourcing product content and other relevant information to “create enriched product pages”, according to the marketingspeak, to turn online research into sales in Harvey Norman’s online store.

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With a head office in London, Flixmedia is a global player in content furnishing. It currently divides its business into three broad markets: Asia Pacific, the Americas and Europe/Middle East/Africa (often called the EMEA market).

John Gowland is the Asia Pacific business manager for Flixmedia. During a decade-long career in the consumer electronics industry, he has worked as the retail sales manager for Toshiba, a business unit manager for Samsung and as the national sales manager for Belkin. Gowland has also had stints with Samsung in the United Kingdom, Kodak Australasia, Lexmark and HP.

“Harvey Norman chose Flixmedia as it already works globally with tier one brands such as HP, Samsung, Microsoft, Intel and AMD,” said Harvey Norman E-Commerce manager Gordon Nugent. “Harvey Norman has also worked with John Gowland in varying capacities over more than 10 years, and [he] is well respected and trusted.”

The primary purpose of investing in meaningful content for a website is to turn internet research into a sale. Many consumers will browse retailer websites for product information, and while one retailer’s website might convince them to purchase, they might actually process the sale at a rival website.

Online sales increased by 23 per cent in 2012, according to the NAB Online Retail Index, compared to traditionally retail’s 2.4 per cent growth. Online shopping, however, still only accounts for around 5 per cent of all sales.

“As online research  continues to increase in the Australian market, rich online content will become increasingly more important to close a sale,” continued Nugent. “Harvey Norman will see a volume uplift in sales conversion due to the rich content Flixmedia will supply to the Harvey Norman website.”

“We’re really excited with the rich media content enhancements Flixmedia has provided within our website.

“At Harvey Norman, we are obsessed with making sure that our customers get the most up-to-date product information, giving them the best possible online experience.  We’ll be working with Flixmedia and our key brands on further online enhancements in the future.”

Gowland said Flixmedia does not only provide the content for the site but also statistics on how effective its content is in closing sales. He claimed a level of exclusivity over this service.

“Flixmedia is the only company in the world that can create fantastic digital content, syndicate it to the world’s largest retailers and then report back on how consumers are shopping and buying,” he said.

The London-based CEO of Flixmedia, Scott Lester, said Harvey Norman would be a beachhead for the company, which is also looking to add other large online retailers in the consumer electronics industry to its client base.

 “We are proud to be a partner of Harvey Norman and look forward to driving their online sales conversion with our services,” Lester said. “Asia Pacific is a target region as more and more of our brand partners recognise the online growth potential, compared to other regions.

“The brands are using us to deliver consistent sales and marketing messaging, globally, and on an automated basis.”

UPDATE: Flixmedia's rival in this industry, ClikFlip Digital, has contacted Current.com.au to contest one of the claims made by Flixmedia in this article. ClikFlip Digital is the local licensee of the Webcollage system of content delivery. Webcollage was sold recently to Answers.com, realising multimillion dollar losses for its private equity owners.

Edward Cooper, sales director for ClikFlip, said John Gowland's claim that Flixmedia is the only company in the world that can create fantastic digital content, syndicate it to the world's largest retailers and then report back on how consumers are shopping and buying is "simply false and misleading".

Cooper claims that ClikFlip/Webcollage can also perform this function.

"Companies like Walmart in the USA, ASDA in Europe, along with over 500 major retailers and over 1,000 manufacturers use the Webcollage system to deliver their content every day," he said.

Gowland countered this by saying Flixmedia provides, sources, creates and delivers content in a method unique among industry rivals.