ETails

Why is advice so hard to take?

2009-10-15T02:47:00.001-07:00

Consultant Martin Newman has just published a blog post of top tips for selling more over the Christmas period. All his advice is sound and I recommend that anyone in charge of a retail website should read his blog post.

The interesting question is why aren’t merchants already doing all the things suggested? Selling online has been going on for 15 years now and yet many merchants persist in following bad practices indentified many years ago. I suppose I shouldn’t complain – both Martin and I make our livings helping merchants improve their sites and that’s easier if the sites have obvious failings – but it seems odd that so many ecommerce web sites are still, frankly, not very good.

It can’t be just money, though clearly it often is. Tesco aren’t short of cash yet their site doesn’t follow many of Martin’s tips. We’ve had clients at Digivate who’ve refused to make changes we’ve suggested despite clear evidence that the investment would be recouped in months.

Perhaps people just fear change. Perhaps people feel that they already have enough to worry about and so decide to leave a ‘good enough’ website alone.

What do you think?

Home Delivery Network fail again

2009-10-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

Last week I was stunned into silence (if you know me you’ll know how rare this is) by a second utterly failed delivery by HDN. They left my parcel – without asking me in advance or telling me afterwards – in the care of a neighbour. And I don’t mean next door, I mean someone I don’t know who lives half a mile away. (In my part of the country that counts as a neighbour as there are only four houses between us.) To make it even more extraordinary, my house was occupied all day and I had given my mobile number to the merchant. So as far as I’m concerned HDN have no excuses.

This wasn’t an innocent error. HDN rang my neighbour to arrange delivery of a parcel to her. When the driver arrived he said that he had a second parcel – mine – and would she mind if he left it with her. Despite being new to the area and not knowing me, she felt she wasn’t able to say no. No one contacted me about this unexpected plan. My neighbour didn’t know me or where my house is – our village has no street names or house numbers. HDN evidently feels that a promise to deliver a parcel is kept if the parcel ends up somewhere in the vague neighbourhood of the delivery address. Why bother with the correct address or telling the addressee what you’ve done? Sooner or later they’ll realise that something is wrong and chase it up.

A day after I expected the parcel to arrive I rang HDN to chase my parcel; the agent had no idea why it hadn’t been delivered to me but he did give me the name and address where it had been delivered, and a lame apology. Now at that time I did not know my neighbour, but I did know that she had only moved in a few weeks ago so wouldn’t be listed in the telephone book. Luckily I did know the estate agent that had dealt with the let and because they knew me I was able to get my neighbour’s mobile number, saving me the time of driving round with a note. The bad news was that she had taken the parcel with her to work (why?) and her shift ended at 10pm. As luck would have it, I’d driven past her workplace earlier that day in blissful ignorance that my parcel lurked in the car park.

In the end my neighbour – looking rather put-upon – delivered the parcel the following morning, which was just as well because I left the house that afternoon for a five-day trip. And I was relying on taking with me some of the items in the parcel.

So HDN have now failed two deliveries in a row and are henceforth to be known as NDN or Non-Delivery Network. And I will be wary of buying from any merchant that uses them!

What went wrong at Innovations?

2009-09-18T06:08:00.000-07:00

I was reminded of my years at Innovations by getting a tweet about a Telegraph article listing '50 things that are being killed by the internet', with the Innovations catalogue at number 19.

Innovations was where – like many friends and colleagues in the home shopping industry – I learnt most of what I know about mail order and direct mail. The article got me thinking about what went wrong at Innovations. Can the internet be blamed for the fading away of this once ubiquitous brand?

Because Sharper Image, the American inspiration for Innovations, has also foundered, I suspect that the real problem is not the internet. Both catalogues had early success online; at Innovations we took the first secure online order in the UK, and Sharper Image pioneered full integration between channels.

But in both the UK and the USA the vast majority of innovative and exciting products are now consumer electronics or web based services. Few of these work as catalogue products; for example electronic dictionaries were a great product for Innovations but I don’t suppose anyone even makes them anymore. The modern pace of electronics development leaves catalogue production schedules in the dust, with new products being launched every few months. Headlines like ‘longest battery life’ or ‘most pixels under £X’ are almost impossible now because some new product has arrived in the months between the copy being written and the catalogue dropping. The production volumes required to make electronic products price-competitive mean that few importers can offer exclusives to catalogues. The final insult is the meagre profit margins, insufficient to cover expensive print runs, but enough to provide countless web only suppliers.

So I blame the demise of Innovations on plain technological progress, not the internet.

What do you think?

Augmented Reality: profit driver or techy toy?

2009-09-09T07:20:00.000-07:00

You may have read about ‘Augmented Reality’, or AR, the latest techno catch phrase used to denote gadgets or software that superimpose layers of visual data onto ‘real life’. Two examples from the world of ecommerce caught my eye this week and both are worth looking at. But should merchants be adding AR to their list of website upgrades?

The first is an AR application for Glasses Direct:

You can try it for yourself (if you have a PC) by visiting www.glassesdirect.co.uk/video-mirror.

The second is an application that is supposed to help shoppers decide if clothes suit them:

My advice is to avoid this sort of feature for the foreseeable future. It can’t really replicate the experience of feeling and wearing a pair of glasses or a shirt and it is probably beyond the technological capabilities of all but the most dedicated shopper. The best AR can do is replicate holding up a garment in front of you, but holding up and trying on are two very different things. The Glasses Direct application - when refined - might be the exception that proves the rule, but for most other fashion categories I predict that AR will not be useful.

These both remind me of ‘My Virtual Model’, a feature introduced by Lands End in 2005 or so. It was very fiddly to use and although it is still active on the Lands End site it is hard to find and I haven’t seen it anywhere else.

None of these applications are playing to the strengths of the internet, just trying (and failing) to reproduce the experience of real shopping.

iPhones show the future of the web

2009-09-04T07:55:00.000-07:00

I was surfing on my iPhone in bed last week. It seems I’m not the only one; although iPhones have only 13% of the smartphone market (as of the end of July 2009), a far higher proportion of web visits from mobiles are from iPhones (this study claims 67%). iPhone users surf far more often and for far longer than users of rival smartphones. Why? Because it is fun. My first smartphone used Windows Mobile and after a few months I stopped using it to surf unless it was an emergency. It was just too painful and frustrating. The iPhone, in contrast, is easy and fun to use and makes surfing rewarding. Make something usable and people will use it. Astonishing.

The speed from pocket to site is also a factor in the joy of iPhone surfing. Moments after you wonder “what’s the going rate for a George III mahogany chair” the answer comes up on your iPhone screen via the mobile version of eBay. Having the web in your pocket embedded on a device that knows where you are enables far more than simple fact checking; there are already iPhone ‘apps’ (software programs) that help shoppers find local merchants, compare prices, read reviews and more.

This kind of surfing shows where the web is going, and ecommerce merchants are well placed to take advantage of this trend: they already have a digital order processing system, a database of product details and a home shopping friendly customer base. All merchants should be looking – right now – at these three steps:

1) Adding customer reviews.
In a world where all shoppers, whether in a store or online, can compare merchants and prices easily and within seconds, good reviews from customers will become one the key differentiating factors between successful merchants and also-rans.

2) Creating a mobile version.
Reskinning an ecommerce website to fit a small screen should be straightforward, requiring little more than a revised layout.

3) Building an app.
The very well received ‘Ocado on the Go’ does what it says on the tin and helps make Ocado’s customers’ lives easier.

The most important task? If you haven’t got one, borrow an iPhone and hold the future in your hand.

Face it, I’m just not THAT into you

2009-08-26T06:34:00.000-07:00

I was emailed an invitation by Mothercare to complete a survey last week. “This simple survey will only take about 10 minutes to complete” it said. I thought it might be interesting so I clicked on the link and set to work.

It started off easily enough, but three pages/questions in I noticed that the progress bar was barely shifting after each question and I began to wonder what I had let myself in for. The third question asked me to tick which of about a dozen baby and child web sites I visit ‘regularly’ and then which I’d bought from; not so hard, though I’ve no idea whether ‘regularly’ means weekly, monthly or what.

Then came the first of several essentially impossible questions; ‘And which website have you bought MOST from in the past 12 months?’. How the **** am I supposed to know? I have a baby. Do they think that I have the time to create a spreadsheet with all my purchases coded by merchant and product category so that I can run a report to identify where I’m spending the most? A few more easy questions, and then: “Roughly how much do you spend on kids and baby products each month both online and in total?’ Few people – when faced with a question like this – could do more than make a wild guess. At this point the progress bar was scarcely more than a quarter of the way to 100% and if I weren’t professionally involved with ecommerce then I would have bailed out. Three or four questions later and my patience had run out, with the progress bar still stubbornly below the halfway mark. I just couldn’t face trying to remember what the Mothercare site was like, and so wasn’t in a position to score it on 8 different factors.

I can’t believe that this survey will yield any useful results. It is not credible to imagine that a significant percentage of customers will make it all the way through to the end. Those that do make it will surely represent a skewed sample, and most will have guessed many of the responses.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Mothercare and I dread to think how much money they make from the Meath Baker household. But I don’t love them enough to get brain ache trying to answer questions for 10 minutes, not least when I don’t know the answers.

Why spend precious management time on a survey that will be reliable as a Met Office weather forecast? One of the beauties of online retail is that pretty much everything can be measured, and therefore tested. If you want to improve your website, don’t waste money on a survey; get some multi-variate testing software and test, test, test.

Report: online shoppers hunting more, paying less

2009-08-14T09:51:00.000-07:00

A recent survey into US online shoppers has identified some interesting behaviours and attitudes, many of which are likely to be shared by UK consumers.

Three in particular drew my attention:

- Web surfers are spending more time hunting for bargains than they were six months ago.
- Many shoppers don’t seem to realise where they’re buying – 17% claim to have bought from a search engine and 7% from a comparison site.
- Free shipping is the feature most likely to influence buying, followed by product ratings or reviews.

The first finding shows the fragility of building a business based on gathering traffic from search engines and comparison shopping sites; many of the sales made via this route will be from consumers who won’t buy again. There is no point ‘buying customers’ if the result is one-time purchasers. Many home shopping experts only regard a prospect as being converted into a customer after the second purchase.

A multi-channel approach to prospecting and reactivation is vital. This means that the traditional key benchmark for mail order businesses – the size of the ‘house list’ (number of unique active customers) – is still the best indicator of a healthy home shopping company in 2009. To bring the concept up to date, just include email addresses as well as postal addresses.

The second finding shows the importance of effective branding across all the material seen by customers, from web site to packaging to order notification emails. A whopping 17% of those surveyed thought they had bought from a search engine, so some merchants must be failing dismally. If even your customers haven’t heard of you, then you have a branding problem.

The third finding shows that even if you don’t offer free shipping to all your customers then you should at least offer free shipping with conditions such as a threshold spend. And it would probably be sensible to run a test to see if free shipping gained more in profits on new sales than it lost in costs.

Anyone who wants to download the full survey can do so here

Product reviews will change the world

2009-08-07T03:35:00.000-07:00

Despite my professed dislike of real shops, I ventured into Comet at the weekend for an essential electronic gadget that couldn’t wait. On the way to the till I spotted the Tefal Actifry, which was described as being able to make 1kg of chips using only a tablespoon of oil. Sounds good, huh? Who doesn’t like the idea of low-fat chips that taste just as good as normal chips?

I was tempted to scoop it up as I went past, but mindful of the propensity for kitchen gadgets to disappoint – and the fact that it’s pretty pricey - I resolved to check out the online reviews first.

I’m glad I did.

The Comet site didn’t have very many reviews but the Amazon site has plenty; and the vast majority are positive. But - and it is a big but – the negative reviews are very damning, full of stories of endless broken hinges. That would be bad enough, but it seems that a “small proportion” of Actifrys burst into flames on occasion, and that BBC Watchdog ran a program about this immolation tendency in late 2008. Now I’m sure Tefal will say that the fires were minor and that anyway the current model has been modified, but I’m not ready to take the risk.

This episode illustrates how product reviews have the power to keep manufacturers on their toes. Gone are the days when a few faulty products wouldn’t be noticed! Both the BBC comments page and the Amazon review page are full of would-be buyers posting messages to say that they will not now be buying an Actifry.

Inside AdWords: Announcing Google Insights for Search

2008-08-06T01:11:00.000-07:00

Inside AdWords: Announcing Google Insights for Search

63% of UK buyers plan to get 50% or more Christmas presents online

2007-12-14T14:12:00.000-08:00

A recent survey has found that a massive 87% of UK consumers will buy some Christmas presents from the internet this year. And a staggering 63% say they will get at least half their presents online.

Why? "Saving time", with convenience, ease and price also cited.

Action: make sure your site has present giver functions like present finder, gift wrap and delivery notes with no price printed.

Surfers bail fast if products unfindable

2007-12-10T09:03:00.000-08:00

A survey by US search provider SLI Systems has found that online shoppers will leave a site within a couple of minutes if they can't find the product they're looking for.

Action: make sure your home page is uncluttered and that the search and browse functions are easy to use. I was looking for jewellery boxes yesterday and failed dismally. On too many sites a search for jewellery boxes found a mass of jewellery & browsing wasn't much better: should I be looking under jewellery, accessories or home?

"3D" virtual shopping still doesn't work

2007-12-07T13:39:00.000-08:00

US gadget multi-channel retailer Brookstone has launched a 3D virtual shop. I'm not impressed! The software takes five minutes to install and the end result is almost impossible to navigate. Nice try, but it won't catch on. The web should be embraced as a new medium in its own right, not forced to replicate existing media, whether page turning catalogues or 3D virtual stores.

High Street gaining on ecommerce only retailers

2007-12-07T12:24:00.000-08:00

Recent Hitwise analysis has found that the web sites of High Street retailers are getting more visitors than the sites of online only merchants such as Amazon. In previous years most ecommerce traffic has been to online only merchants - except for the Christmas and January sale period. This year the High Street retailers got more than half of ecommerce visitors in September and the gap seems to be widening.

We have long argued that the ecommerce game would be won, in the end, by the old-established retailers. Looks like we're right.

Broadband now 88% of UK internet connections

2007-11-25T07:28:00.000-08:00

The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show that nearly 9 in 10 of UK internet connections are broadband. This is great news for those us who design websites. But there are still 39% of households that don't have internet access; merchants can't ignore old-fashioned media yet.

Royal Mail study: home shopping still rising

2007-11-16T13:11:00.000-08:00

The annual Home Shopping Tracker Study 2007 from the Royal Mail puts some flesh onto the theory that ecommerce is growing the overall size of the home shopping market. 61% of the population - the highest recorded - now shop from home, and two fifths shop online. In addition, customers ordering online spend 25% more if they browse a catalogue first.

At Digivate we've always predicted that ecommerce would add to home shopping and not cannibalise it. Nice to see that we were right!

Consumer advocates take the reins

2007-11-12T13:49:00.000-08:00

Primark announced today that it won't set up a Facebook group. Why is this a story? An existing Facebook group - "The Primark Appreciation Society", set up by Oxford Broookes student Sophie Bellchambers - is deemed by Primark to be "...of far more value than anything we could do."

Primark recognise that independent advocates have more credibility than official campaigns. This is part of the 'Open Brand' trend that is both terrifying and exciting: get it right and your customers will promote you for nothing, but get it wrong and your errors will be spread far and wide.

Comet launches video demonstrations

2007-11-12T13:32:00.000-08:00

Comet has created about150 product demonstration videos in a bid to help shoppers choose what to buy this Christmas. It will be interesting to see if the initiative lasts longer than Dabs TV which launched about 4 yeas ago but fizzled soon after. (The announcer's voice is very annoying to me, but perhaps I'm in a minority.)

Now that YouTube has made watching video online a normal activity, I predict that Comet will find the videos both watched and helpful sales tools. How would you get product demonstration videos onto your site?

US electronics buyers get more satisfaction online

2007-10-10T16:20:00.000-07:00

Most consumers prefer to research electronics online but buy in a store. US based Consumer Reports (similar to the UK's Which? magazine) surveyed 90,000 US consumers about their electronics buying preferences. The majority found shopping online more satisfying than visiting shops due to the wider choice and better prices. But most still go to a store to complete the purchase.

This survey reinforces the idea that most actual buying will remain on the high street. But it also highlights why retailers need excellent websites that provide all the answers researchers are looking for. Why is it better? What is the difference? How will it make MY life easier? If shoppers can't find the answers they want on your site then they'll keep looking and you may lose a customer.

Half of US web users will buy online this Christmas

2007-10-10T15:27:00.000-07:00

A survey by Burst Media has found a dramatic increase in the percentage of US web users expecting to shop online this Christmas season - in 2006 37.6% bought online and this year 50.7% plan to buy something from the internet.

I wonder what are the equivalent figures for the UK?

Why you need to have an "open brand"

2007-09-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

Kelly Mooney, a thoughtful analyst of marketing trends, has identified and named the "open brand" as a crucial strategy for success. The concept - set out in detail on her microsite - refers to the idea that the brand leaders of tomorrow will embrace dialogue with consumers enabled by the internet, and move away from old ideas of controlling a brand.

Fascinating stuff. What are the implications for your brand?

Amazon launch widget

2007-09-18T10:29:00.000-07:00

Amazon have launched a range of 16 widgets that can be added to any website. Sales made via clicks on a widget earn the site owner up to 10% commission.

We think: This development is yet another pointer to the future of selling online - etailers will increasingly use tiny elements on other sites (ie widgets) to drive traffic into the buying process on the etailer's own site.

"Spoiled shoppers" expect cross-channel integration

2007-09-07T08:30:00.000-07:00

A survey of 5,000 US shoppers provides numbers to support the feeling that modern shoppers expect a high level of integration between retail channels.

For example;
* 57% want to be able to return or exchange at a store items bought online or by telephone
* 65% want to be able to change or cancel orders in a different channel to the one used to place the order

Full integration is tough, but retailers can no longer afford to duck the issue. I'm looking forward to the day when all retailers' websites allow me to search for which local store has stock of the product I want.

Print still alive and kicking

2007-09-07T07:56:00.000-07:00

A survey of US 'millennials' (13-24 year olds) by the Harrison Group for Deloitte has found that despite their massive use of new media, the millennial generation still enjoy reading magazines and watching TV.

This comes as no surprise: reading print is still easier than reading a screen. The lesson is that a business strategy needs to combine all possible channels, including print.

Ofcom: over-50s are quarter of web users

2007-09-07T07:49:00.000-07:00

Ofcom's 2007 report into the UK communications market has plenty of stats to chew on. What struck me were the figures on 'silver surfers' - the over-50s comprise a quarter of web users and account for 30% of all time online. 16% of over-65s use the internet.

It is time to lay to rest the myth that only businesses with younger customers need a web strategy!

Large study proves online advertising increases offline sales

2007-08-09T13:04:00.000-07:00

US web behaviour monitor ComScore & search engine Yahoo! have released the results of a large scale study that demonstrates the link between online advertising and buying in stores. 175,000 consumers were tracked over 9 months, with some being exposed to online advertising from the five brands in the study.

The results were conclusive. Store sales were an average 41% higher for the consumers who'd seen both display and search ads for the tracked brands. For every incremental $1 spent online, $6 was spent in a store. The group exposed to online advertising looked at an average of six more pages while researching online compared to the group that didn't see the ads.

What does this mean? It shows that brands must operate both on- and offline to maximise the effectiveness of their promotional spend. And that consumers are using the web to "pre-shop" so even if you don't think you will sell much online, you still need a website (and online ads to drive traffic to the that site) to catch these researchers.

Asda to sell clothes online

2007-07-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

Asda has announced that it will sell the George range online from February 2008.

It is getting harder and harder for UK retailers to claim that "our customers aren't online" or "our prices are too low to sell online" or even "we have so many stores that our customers don't need to buy from us online". All these are excuses I've heard in the past.

Wal-Mart adds reviews

2007-07-27T10:28:00.000-07:00

US retail giant Wal-Mart (owners of UK's Asda) has just added customer review functionality to its website, in response to customer requests.

Few UK retailers have dared to add customer reviews despite mountains of evidence that customer love reviews, that reviews reduce returns rates and that most reviewers give high ratings to most products. I wish I knew what was holding UK retailers back!

Over half of UK shoppers value reviews

2007-07-13T06:52:00.000-07:00

A recent survey by US review provider Bazaarvoice has found that 53% of UK shoppers have more trust for retailers if their sites include consumer reviews. This is significantly lower than in the US, where 78% felt the same way.

I personally love reviews and when I researching any potential purchase of an unfamiliar or expensive item rely on reviews to guide me.

Action: Add reviews to your site. If your products aren't really appropriate for reviews (furniture, for example) then show reviews of your customer service.

Mobiles get comparative shopping edge

2007-07-13T06:32:00.000-07:00

US mobile phone provider Sprint Nextel has launched a product search service for GPS enabled mobiles that allows users to find suitable local stores. GPS enabled mobiles are becoming standard in the US since the FCC ruled that mobile companies have to provide location details in the event of an emergency call. This has lead to a drop in the price of GPS chips and experts agree that sooner or later mobiles in all countries will include GPS features.

If consumers start to use this kind of service then it will bring the same relentless price pressure seen online into high street stores. It will also bring promotional opportunities for retailers to use hyper-targeted keyword search advertising.

Action: If you haven't already started getting your store inventory into an accessible format, do so now. Whether consumers are searching at home using postcodes or on the move with GPS, retailers will need to be able to provide shop by shop stock and price data.

Searchers spend 10% more on electronics

2007-06-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

Research by Yahoo! and ChannelForce has shown that US buyers of TVs and cameras spent 10% more if they had searched online first than if they'd just walked into a store.

This shows that the informed customer will, on average, spend more money than the uninformed customer.

Action: make sure that your website clearly explains why the more expensive products are worth the extra expense.

Why customer reviews improve profits

2007-06-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

US retailer Petco Animal Supplies has revealed that customer reviews reduce return rates by an average of 20%, and that more reviews means even lower return rates. Products with more than 50 reviews have a 65% lower return rate than products with no reviews.

Action: even if reviews aren't as relevant to your product area as for others, you should still have customer service reviews. Potential customers can't get too much information to help them decide to buy from you. And if you're scared of what your customers might write then you need to improve your customer service!

US survey: web essential to most women

2007-06-27T08:04:00.000-07:00

A survey of 1,800 women by US publisher BurstMedia shows that over half of women turn to the internet first when researching products and two thirds say that their lives would be disrupted if they didn't have online access for a week.

Even amongst the over 65s 31.8% turn to the internet first for product research - showing that there are no age segments where the internet is unimportant.

Action: even if you can't sell your products online, you should ensure that you have a comprehensive website.

PwC: 'nearly all under 55 will buy online in 2011'

2007-06-18T08:53:00.000-07:00

A report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers provides some hard numbers for the general feeling that ecommerce has plenty of growth left.

PwC surveyed 1,500 consumers and studied online penetration by product category to come to their conclusions. They cite three reasons why ecommerce will continue to grow rapidly:

1) As web-savvy youngsters age they'll bring their online habits with them
2) At all ages there is a sizeable group intending to start buying online soon
3) Greater online confidence means consumers will tend to increase the variety of categories they buy & the size of each purchase

Overall PwC predict that online sales (excluding eBay & travel) will account for 10% of retail spend by 2011.

Action:

1) Remember that 10% is the average across all sectors. Some sectors are already seeing significant high street impact from online sales - cameras being a good example, with Jessops announcing the closure of 25% of its stores this week.

2) Don't wait until your online competitors have the size and strength to hurt you, as it may be too late. Why isn't Jessops selling more cameras and prints online? They didn't start early enough.

What you need to know about multi-channel shoppers

2007-05-17T08:16:00.000-07:00

Multi-channel shoppers are fast becoming all shoppers.

As buying online becomes a mainstream activity amongst internet users (currently at 78.5% in the US - see eMarketer) and as the world of 'internet users' gets closer to 'everybody' (85% of UK adults earning more than £20,800 accessed the internet in the 3 months preceeding April 2006 - see ONS, and 79% of all connections are broadband - see ONS), multi-channel shoppers are increasingly the same group as shoppers.

The ONS reports that the most frequent online activity is 'searching for information about goods and services' - carried out by 84% of adult internet users. Yet only 44% of adults had bought online in the 3 months preceeding the April 2006 survey.

This shows (if you didn't know already) that there is an immense amount of online shopping research going on though much of it results in real world buying.

What does this mean? Success in retail will depend on creating informative and up-to-date websites to empower consumers to get the answers they want. All of them!

Finally - a measurement scanner to ensure clothes that fit!

2007-04-11T13:35:00.000-07:00

The science fiction fantasy of a machine that takes your measurements has arrived in the form of Intellifit. So far there are only 13 such machines (Most in the US, but there is one in the Regent Street Levis store). The machines take 200,000 measurements from your fully clothed body in about ten seconds.

The company charges nothing as it collects a commission from the retailers (so far only 8, all US brands) it suggests you use.

This sounds like a very interesting device though limited in usefulness until more brands have bought into the system. One to watch.

Who else wants lower returns for clothes?

2007-04-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

Newly launched MyShape.com claims to have half the return rate of the average fashion retailer. The secret? Only showing clothes that both fit AND suit your body shape. The site asks women for their measurements and style preferences. This allows MyShape to present clothes chosen specifically for a shopper's shape, size and lifestyle.

Getting sizing right is rare. My wife found the Boden website very hard going when searching for sale items because she had to open every product page to see if her size was still in stock. In the end she just gave up. A 'filter by size' function would have made her experience much better.

Traditional mail order is dying. Long live mail delivered retail!

2007-04-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

Verdicts' latest report about the UK mail order business shows that traditional mail order is fading away. The 'Big Books' such as Shop Direct, Littlewoods, Otto, Freemans, Grattan and Redcats relied on local agents and an ability to offer credit. Now that credit is freely available to all and with the rise of discount retailers on the high street, this once dominant sector of the mail order market seems to have few prospects.

And yet more and more customers are buying remotely and getting products delivered.

I've always maintained that the most interesting figure to examine would be the split between delivered retail sales versus sales of goods collected from a store. Sadly no-one seems to be capturing or estimating this. I'm confident that if the delivered/collected percentage was calculated over the last decade it would show that although mail order is in steep decline, mail delivered retail (which would cover ecommerce, TV shopping and catalogue sales as well as multi-channel sales from high street brands) is rising.

Verdict - over to you!

IKEA ecommerce rockets towards the top

2007-03-12T08:57:00.000-07:00

Despite launching a pilot scheme with no fanfare and restricted to the East Midlands & Cambridgeshire, IKEA's ecommerce website has crashed into the UK's top 50 ecommerce websites at number 49, as measured by Hitwise. Given that about half of the entries are for travel or ticket sellers this is more like becoming the 25th biggest etailer in the UK.

This goes to show that the latent demand for ecommerce from well known retail brands is huge & that the etail laggards are leaving substantial sums on the table by refusing to play.

Online shopping research gaining ground

2007-03-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

Research into the shopping habits of US broadbanders shows that the internet is now the primary source of shopping research. The study showed that 50% were influenced by the internet in a recent purchase. Other sources of shopping influence were: ecommerce websites - 36%; search engines - 15%; TV ads - 11%; user-generated content (reviews, blogs etc) - 9%; print ads - 6%.

What does this mean for retailers? Don't judge your website by online sales alone. Find ways to measure the pounds and pence effect of your website on your high street sales.

Borders video: brand building or cash wasting?

2007-03-09T09:45:00.000-08:00

US bookstore giant Borders - which has outsourced ecommerce to Amazon - is none-the-less using the internet for marketing. Following hot on the heels of Borders Book Club videos, the company has launched 'Borders Live at 01' (warning: link will start a video with sound), a series of videos taken at the original Borders store in Ann Arbor Michigan. On a decent broadband connection the quality is far superior to YouTube, though viewers will need the latest version of Flash.

This type of retailer produced event could be the future of brand building. In a multi-channel world where consumers are looking for authenticity, relevent videos could serve to both draw in suitable prospects and demonstrate the retailer's credentials.

The questions are:
* Will people shift from TV to watch specialised content like this?
* Will enough of them go on to visit the retailer's website or physical store?

Until Borders reports on the success or otherwise of this experiment we won't know the answers. But any forward looking retailer should be thinking about what sort of content would be suitable to help create and sustain their chosen brand values. And any product creator (think author, designer, factory) needs to think about their role in creating content that can be used by retailers.

What everybody ought to know about vouchers

2007-03-08T08:37:00.000-08:00

One of my colleagues emailed me yesterday with details of a £5 off voucher from Habitat - from the Barbican Art Gallery website - that appears to be intended just for Barbican members. But although the voucher page can't be found by searching on the site, it isn't password protected so the page can (and clearly has been) emailed to all and sundry.

No word yet on when this voucher was posted or whether its 'escape' to the wider world of non-Barbican members has led to increased sales at Habitat.

This reminds me of the Threshers voucher intended for suppliers that was distributed virally to millions of consumers in December last year. But there are significant differences - Habitat's is only for £5, & 40% off booze is much more appealing than £5 off homewares!(NB: The Threshers deal isn't as generous as it appears because they have a long running '3 for 2' offer that is effectively a 33.33% discount.)

But both vouchers have found themselves emailed to people not (officially) intended to get the offers. So the action point is: ensure that if a voucher 'goes viral' you'll make money. Simple, really.

Dixons' boss: ecommerce heading for 20% of UK retail sales

2007-02-22T09:12:00.000-08:00

Hot on the heels of the Toys 'R' Us CEO's prediction that ecommerce growth will level off when it represents 10% of total retail is much more bullish statement from John Clare, the CEO of DSGi (a group which includes Dixons and Currys). They already get 12% of turnover online and expect this to rise to at least 20%.

The percentage of goods sold online varies by product category; both electrical goods and electronics are categories with fierce price competition and strong manufacturer brands so in some ways it is not surprising that DSGi is getting far more online sales than Toys 'R' Us.

Toys 'R' Us boss: ecommerce to rise to 10% of retail

2007-02-22T07:18:00.000-08:00

At the recent ETails 2007 conference and exhibition, Jerry Storch (the CEO of Toys 'R' Us) predicted that ecommerce would top out at 10% of retail spend. His argument seems to be based on the idea that the cost of driving to a store is much less than the cost of shipping items to homes.

But this is only true if customers place a minimal value on their own time. It is hard to spend less than 15 minutes in a shop and if the trip entails driving, parking and then searching within the store it can easily stretch to 45 minutes. Even at the minimum wage of £5.35 per hour, 45 minutes is 'worth' £4 - a figure that is close to a typical P&P charge. Add in more time, petrol and parking (not to mention other car costs) and costs can easily exceed P&P.

If the item you want is out of stock then you either have to come back or find it somewhere else, adding even more time to the transaction. Buying online can also remove risks from the process - research is easier and you are much more likely to find your item in stock.

So perhaps ecommerce will go well beyond 10%.

US survey: bad websites drag down high street stores

2007-02-07T12:50:00.000-08:00

A recent email survey of 638 US online shoppers found that 41% said yes to the question "When you have a frustrating shopping experience online, does it make you less likely to shop at that retailer's physical store (if they have one)?"

This is markedly up from the 29% with the same answer last year. The increase in respondents saying that a bad site negatively affects their opinion of the brand was up from 55% to 59% and the number claiming that a bad site means they're less likley to return to the site stayed level at 82%.

So it seems that - as one would expect - bad sites don't just waste money and leave money on the table. A "frustrating shopping experience" also makes it less likely that a shopper will visit a brand's high street stores. Given that online shoppers are getting more demanding and expecting ever more complex functions on ecommerce websites, it is clear that high street retailers need to work hard just to stand still.

Profit by segmenting web-acquired customers

2007-01-29T11:32:00.000-08:00

A US commentator writes that it pays to segment web-acquired customers before treating them like more traditionally acquired mail order customers.

Although the average web-acquired customer has low average order values and a low lifetime value, the figures vary significantly depending on the exact source: search, affiliate link or whatever.

Action: segment like crazy and make sure that your data file contains multiple flags to keep track of where your web-acquired customers come from and what they were doing on-line. Once you have identified the lifetime values for your web-acquired segments, factor that in to your online marketing decisions.

More evidence that customer reviews are good

2007-01-23T15:03:00.000-08:00

Building on the experience shared by BazaarVoice in September last year, Forrester Research has just revealed the results of an analysis of 4,000 customer reviews on Amazon. 80% of the reviews were positive, and the negatove reviews were almost all rated as "useful" by other shoppers.

I love reviews and wish I could persuade more of our clients to offer them!

Jupiter predicts online's share of retail in 2011: 10-15%

2007-01-23T14:36:00.000-08:00

Jupiter Research has published a report "US Online Retail Forecast, 2006 to 2011" . I haven't paid $1,500 to get it, but apparently Jupiter is forecasting a number of interesting figures:

* Online's share of total US retail in 2011 - 10-15%
* Percentage of offline sales influenced by online research in 2011 - 40%

Jupiter claim that most future growth in online sales will be from existing buyers spending more online, and not from new online buyers.

My view of this?: The 10-15% is an average, of course, so some product categories will have the majority of products sold online. If you're a merchant you need to assess what percentage of YOUR market will be online and act accordingly.

Christmas figures reveal importance of ecommerce

2007-01-19T12:10:00.000-08:00

The figures are mostly in and it is clear that the rise of ecommerce in December 2006 was even greater than most commentators expected.

The John Lewis Partnership saw online sales rise by a staggering 88.5%, which compares very favourably with the national retail growth by value of 4.7%. Average ecommerce growth figures for December 2006 vs December 2005 seem to vary between 50% and 30%, but both are pretty impressive numbers.

More significant is the fact that almost all of the retailers in trouble - Woolworths being a good example - don't have a working internet strategy.

Despite the relatively small proportion of total sales that ecommerce represents, it is clear that all retailers need to have an integrated multi-channel approach if they wish to succeed.

M&S trip proves value of ecommerce

2007-01-12T09:12:00.000-08:00

I visited 2 different M&S stores recently - one of them twice - looking for a known garment in a certain size and colour. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was passing the stores in question & just nipping in appeared to be an easy option.

I didn't get what I was looking for, but I did learn a lesson. The customer service at the stores depended heavily on the assistant I happened to talk to. One was very helpful, one tried to be helpful and one was simply not interested.

In the end, going to the website provided me with the item I wanted, as well as a smooth buying experience untainted by the variability of shop assistants' moods.

This story highlights why even a ubiquitous retailer like M&S needs an ecommerce website - until every store carries every item in every colour and size variation, customers have to gamble that what they want is in stock. Going online has a much higher chance of finding what you want without wasting time.

US surveys: people like commercial emails & free shipping offers

2007-01-10T07:14:00.000-08:00

A recent US survey asked 2,541 online adults various questions about commercial emails. Amongst other findings, three-quarters found emails from frequently used companies to be 'valuable or very valuable' and 30% had bought something after getting a promotional email.

A second US survey found that free shipping is the most preferred type of offer, and that more customers claim to prefer a percentage off to an amount off.

These customer-reported figures match the experiences of our clients, who are still finding promotional emails to be a very profitable source of business.

US catalogue industry: 44% of direct sales via web in 2006

2006-12-15T08:53:00.000-08:00

According to the 2006 Multichannel Marketing in the Catalog Industry Report by the US Direct Marketing Association, US catalogue merchants expect to get 44% of their 2006 direct sales via the web, up from 39% in 2005 and 38% in 2004.

But don't think that this means that print is dead - far from it! The same report shows that although respondents estimated that 40% of web sales were incremental, 74% of respondents considered their catalogue to be the primary sales vehicle.

As Digivate has consistently argued for the last 10 years, all channels have role to play. The trick is to focus each channel on what it does best, and to consider each new channel's strengths and weaknesses before deciding how to exploit it.

Bad websites could make you ill

2006-12-15T07:55:00.000-08:00

A recent survey by The Social Issues Research Centre found that most test subjects forced to interact with abysmal websites displayed symptoms that could lead to stress related conditions.

“Some changes in muscle tension were quite dramatic…While this was happening, the participant's faces also tensed visibly, with the teeth clenched together and the muscles around the mouth becoming taught. These are physically uncomfortable situations that reduce concentration and increase feelings of anger”

So a good website isn't just good for the merchant's financial health - it is also good for the health of the customers!

Online shoppers driven by convenience more than price

2006-12-13T15:00:00.000-08:00

A new report by Questus shows that just over three-quarters of the 575 US shoppers surveyed said they shop online to save time, two-thirds cited the ability to shop 24/7, and three-fifths liked the lack of crowds. Just under half said they shopped online to save money.

All this shows that it is convenience not price that is the main driver of online shopping, despite the two-thirds saying that better prices would increase their likelihood of buying online.

Underscoring this conclusion are the figures for various changes that respondents said would increase their propensity for buying online:
38% - better product descriptions,
35% - better pictures,
35% - no registration,
31% - easier navigation, easier checkout and better return policies,
25% - reviews and customer ratings.

Action: All the items on this wish list are within your reach. They don't even require much investment, just some attention.

Waitrose capturing market share online

2006-12-13T14:32:00.000-08:00

According to a report by Lightspeed Research, Waitrose has 14% of the online grocery market yet only 2% of the offline grocery market.

This shows how important it is to look at market share. Anyone looking at turnover would think that Tesco was doing pretty well online, but the figures show that Waitrose is punching above its weight on the Internet.

Action: Look at how your site compares to your competitors. If you're not better than them you're probably losing customers.

UK consumers want mobile web now

2006-12-04T14:17:00.000-08:00

According to recent research by Harris Interactive, 51% of 16-24 year olds would prefer to access the internet via their mobiles. Given the apparently permanent connection between the young and their handsets, this doesn't surprise me.

Yet as I wrote in my blog of a few days ago, very few brands have mobile ready versions of their websites. Given that sooner or later all brands will need a mobile site, why not start now?

US research: consumers ready for mobile shopping, merchants aren't

2006-11-30T07:36:00.000-08:00

Recent US research by Boston based consultants Molecular shows that whilst US consumers are ready to buy using their mobiles, the sites just aren't up to it.

As a recent user of the mobile web, I too get very frustrated by how few sites have mobile versions. The Google one is the only one I've found that is specially designed for the reduced screen size of a mobile device. Even Barclays Bank doesn't have a mobile specific version of their site, meaning that although it can be used, the process involves endless scrolling left and right as well as up and down to see the pages.

My bet is that UK consumers are even more ready to transact online than their US cousins.

Lysander Meath Baker

Consumer generated videos boost sales

2006-11-22T08:04:00.000-08:00

ShopWiki, a US comparison shopping engine, started a campaign to add user-created product videos to product pages in July this year (2006). Kicked off with an offer of $50 (about £26 at today's exchange rates) for the first 500 videos submitted, ShopWiki is considering extending the offer to all videos. There aren't any figures for the effect on sales of the videos but ShopWiki makes its money from accepting Google ads so can't measure sales.

Not all products are enhanced by the addition of video, but for some it could be a godsend - take a look at the latest Tickle Me Elmo (http://www.shopwiki.com/wiki/Elmo) - I'm sure you'll agree that this will help you decide whether you want one in your house...

Action: If creating your own videos seems too daunting & expensive then why not copy ShopWiki and simply offer your customers cash or vouchers for uploading theirs? The results might be uneven but they'll have an authenticity you can't match for a cost that can't be bettered.

Lysander Meath Baker

Email outclasses all else

2006-11-15T08:55:00.000-08:00

According to the US Direct Marketing Association, promotional emails yielded a staggering $57.25 for every dollar spent in 2005. In contrast, $7.09 came from each dollar spent on print and $22.52 from dollars spent on other internet marketing. You can read more about this research on DirectMag.com.

This shows how important it is to collect email addresses from your customers.

But email is no good as a prospecting tool, so don't give up printing catalogues and ads. You'll always need to find new customers as well as sell things to existing customers.

Lysander Meath Baker
Digivate - Ecommerce website design and online marketing

Almost all affluent buyers research online

2006-11-15T08:23:00.000-08:00

Recent research published on eMarketer.com shows that 93% of affluent US consumers research electronics purchases online, most using both search engines and product websites. These people are also buying many of their electronics online.

How long will it be before all major purchases start with an online research session?

We're still coming across up-market retailers who insist that their customers don't want to buy online, and that online shopping is all about discounts. But this study shows that all brands should be creating information rich websites geared towards researchers, even if they don't want to sell their brand online.

Lysander Meath Baker
Digivate - Ecommerce website design and online marketing

Search spending is NOT 'advertising'

2006-11-14T09:28:00.000-08:00

A recent report from Jupiter Research (written about on eMarketer.com) examines the European online advertising market. Jupiter projects that 49% of online ad spend will be search spend by 2011, rising from the current 41%.

Surely search spend is NOT advertising? Apart from anything else, the figures only look at Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and don't take into account the fact that search spending - from a merchant's point of view - will include money spent on site optimisation and link building campaigns.

The whole point of online marketing is that it should be fully accountable and linked directly to sales. Advertising - to me - is a more general promotional activity.

Lysander Meath Baker
Digivate - Ecommerce website design and online marketing

1 week's matchback increases email response by 40%

2006-11-14T08:10:00.000-08:00

A recent promotional email for a client proved the importance of matchback analysis.

7 days sales from visitors who had clicked on links in the email provided a conversion rate of 1.35% - but by looking at the email addresses of orders placed by customers who had navigated directly to the website added an extra 0.54% of conversion. The analysis was unable to include those customers who ordered over the telephone, and ended only 7 days after the email went out, so the real figure for the sales generated by the email campaign was probably even higher.

The average turnover from the one email campaign was £3.12 per email address on the list (not just emails delivered). This gives some idea of the value of having a large email address file!

Lysander Meath Baker
Digivate - Ecommerce website design and online marketing

Customer pictures good addition to reviews

2006-11-09T12:32:00.000-08:00

Not many UK ecommerce sites feature customer reviews, but US best practice has already moved a step forwards. Take a look at EvoGear where customers are being encouraged by the prospect of a $1000 cheque to add pictures to their reviews.

Converting a visitor to a customer is all about providing answers to all the visitor's questions, and reassuring the visitor that their fears about what could go wrong are unfounded. Reviews are a great tool for doing this and adding pictures is clearly the way forward.

Lysander Meath Baker
Digivate - Ecommerce website design and online marketing

77% of US electronics customers research online

2006-11-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

The US Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and Yahoo! revealed recently that 77% of surveyed consumers do online research before buying any of 5 specified electronic items.

The interesting question is: what stops these researchers from actually buying online? And more to the point, can we use these figures to predict that 77% of electronics purchases will one day be online?

Mail order companies long ago concluded that personality type was the key to sorting the heavy home shopper from the average mail order hating consumer. Both groups explained their channel preference by saying 'it is just easier'. It is clear that by reducing uncertainty ecommerce has increased the percentage of the population who've had a good experience home shopping. But the fact that 77% of buyers are researching online yet far fewer are actually buying online shows that ecommerce still seems risky to most people. Whether it is the risk of ID theft or the worry that online pictures don't give an accurate impression, fear is holding back millions of potential online shoppers.

We think: The dramatic growth of ecommerce isn't going to slow down soon. As this study shows, the vast majority of consumers are now researching online. As every year passes, more and more will try shopping online. Most will have a positive experience and this will lead to more online purchases. In the meantime, retailers should add suitable content to their websites to engage and help the inevitable online researchers, and offer enticing promotions to help get resolute offline buyers over the 'fear barrier'.

Lysander Meath Baker
Digivate - Ecommerce website design and online marketing

Source: CEA - Yahoo! survey

Ecommerce impact downplayed by Retail Think Tank

2006-11-08T12:42:00.000-08:00

The newly formed Retail Think Tank (RTT) has just announced that "Online retailing is unlikely to become the mainstream channel of UK retail". Who said it would?

This is simply shooting down a straw man - I don't know any serious commentator who would claim that ecommerce was likely to represent more than 50% of UK retail in the foreseeable future.

The report goes on to say that ecommerce is a variety of home shopping and as many online orders have simply switched from catalogues, stories of the growth of ecommerce shouldn't be taken too seriously.

At Digivate we have always said that the crucial split is between whether the product is delivered or collected, not between whether the order is placed online or by some other method. Ecommerce has had a huge impact on the proportion of sales that are delivered - in some categories, notably electronics, a massive percentage of retail sales are now delivered.

To any retailer who thinks that this report gives them an excuse to ignore selling online, I have news. Ecommerce doesn't need to become the "mainstream channel" to be a threat to high street stores. And any analysis of the impact of ecommerce has to look at promotion as well as transaction.

Lysander Meath Baker
Digivate - Ecommerce website design and online marketing

Source: KPMG/SPSL RTT quoted in Retail Week

Abacus: 25% of home shopping now online

2006-11-04T11:44:00.000-08:00

The latest Abacus trend report shows that the percentage of home shopping sales via websites has gone up from 20% in 2004 to 25% in 2005. Average order size is once again slightly higher online than on the telephone.

I don't think Amazon or eBay are Abacus clients so the 25% figure probably under-represents total online sales. Some long established catalogue merchants have reported up to 55% of orders taken online; if the average is 25% then many merchants must have underperforming websites.

Action: Find a way to measure or estimate cross-channel effects. For example, unless you know how many customers read your catalogue before ordering online you won't be able to assess the profitability of your catalogue.

Read the Executive Summary of the Abacus Report