Sleepy’s, the US based mattress professionals, is a family-owned company that has grown from a single Brooklyn location to nearly 700 stores in 50 years.
Earlier this month our sister company in the US, Salmon LLC, announced the complete development of a new transactional website using SAFE™ (Salmon’s Application Framework for eCommerce).
Their success is covered (albeit briefly) in this IBM video [head for the 3min 25sec mark]
In our statement to the press Chris Cucuzza, VP of Technology, said “Salmon LLC did an excellent job in understanding our business, delivering a solution that matched our specific requirements and delivering a sophisticated new website in a very short time. We have had a great response from customers who like the option of buying online when it suits them. We are already beating forecasted sales and doing better than projected online, taking significant sales through the website in the first 2 weeks and we have no doubt that our eCommerce initiative will contribute to a significant portion of our revenue in 2009 and future revenue growth.”
This week we announced the delivery of the first phase of an eCommerce project we have been working on with the team at Pets At Home.
K9 magazine were first to take the opportunity to review the site and their thoughts are very positive, together with a glowing video review. In it, Ryan O’Meara [K9 Media's CEO] says “other online pets retailers probably have the Pets At Home website as the benchmark by which they’ll be compared”
…..we like that a lot.
But let us know what you think of the site.
The rationale for the site is captured in Matt Stead’s [he's the Director of Multi-Channel at Pets at home] comment. He said, “It’s important we offer the convenient and enjoyable web experience that our customers demand. Combining our online and offline services is going to be a contributing factor to our success over the next few years. In the coming months we will look to trial additional functionality to meet our customers’ expectations.”
In a move that will send shudders through the established eCommerce Search providers, Google has launched Google Commerce Search.
In summary Google Commerce Search delivers the following:
Retailer access to the same, fast, Google search technology we know and love, to surface their own retail data
A scalable hosted [cloud based] solution that aims to meet seasonal volume spikes and drops, in a cost efficient way
Search grouping
Search driven promotions
Display configuration and customisation
No additional administrative cost for deployment and maintenance
Configurable reports
Integrated Google Analytics
The result?
Visitors can find the right products faster
Visitors can filter results by category, price, brand or other attributes
User-friendly spelling options and synonyms
Increased website conversions and sales
Easy deployment in days, and scale effortlessly
Yes there are many features missing when compared to the Enterprise / eCommerce search capabilities of an Endeca, Autonomy, Omniture or SLI Systems.
Yes uploading product data to the Google Merchant Center is not going to work for some.
But I wouldn’t want Google on the patch my product operates! Not when you bear in mind the impact they can have by providing information services for free – just ask Garmin or TomTom.
And yet already the blogosphere is a-wash with speculation that this is another ‘building block’ in allowing anyone (i.e. not necessarily a company) to create their own online shop. Where does that leave the SME merchant or the eCommerce Platform provider who focus on SMEs and the lower end of the midmarket?
Wow. For the 2nd year in-a-row Salmon have been named Rackspace EMEAs [Europe, Middle East and Africa] Partner of the Year.
The EMEA region sure is big, and to get the accolade for a second time is simply great news. But to be fair, we do feel we are achieving great things. Rackspace’s ‘fanatical support’ for hosting solutions, combined with our insatiable desire to continue building the very best eCommerce sites in the World, combines beautifully to provide merchants of all kinds with a unique opportunity to forget about infrastructure and not have their focus or attentions diverted by eCommerce technology issues.
Instead they get to focus on what they do best: retailing & merchandising. And to use a horrendous, but appropriate, phrase – that’s a win-win-win.
Salmon’s eCommerce partner IBM has announced the release of WebSphere Commerce Version 7.0, delivering a market-leading “customer interaction platform”, which enables companies to provide a rich, customer-centric experience across multiple channels and touchpoints [more here: opens 521kb .pdf].
Webcredible’s 2009 eCommerce usability for high street retailers’ report has been updated. This latest version updates the highly popular ecommerce usability reports of 2006, 2007 and 2008.
The report evaluates the websites of 20 of the UK’s leading high street retailers. Based on Webcredibles experience of usability testing with over 1000 people on a variety of ecommerce sites, they have devised 20 essential guidelines that all ecommerce websites should adhere to, evaluating each site against these guidelines.
Webcredible’s 2009 eCommerce usability for high street retailers’ report has been updated. This latest version updates the highly popular ecommerce usability reports of 2006, 2007 and 2008.
The report evaluates the websites of 20 of the UK’s leading high street retailers. Based on Webcredibles experience of usability testing with over 1000 people on a variety of ecommerce sites, they have devised 20 essential guidelines that all ecommerce websites should adhere to, evaluating each site against these guidelines.Retail Systems Blog comments on the “biggest improvement” in 2009 being Boots (you can read about Salmon’s work here), which saw its website usability score increase from 64 per cent to 80 per cent, pushing it up to joint fourth in this year’s report from joint 17th place last year.
Last year’s report saw a drastic improvement in the website usability of top UK High Street retailers with an average score of 67.8 per cent. Salmon customers’ Argos and Boots scored 73% and 80% respectively.
Today we announced the development of a “Text and Reserve” service for Halfords that extends their multi-channel strategy to mobile phone users. The unique service allows customers to look up products, locate their nearest store with the recommended product in stock and reserve & collect the product; all using their mobile phone’s SMS text messaging service.
Here is how it works. I am sure you can imagine usage scenarios:
Customer texts an appropriate keyword, followed by their vehicle registration number (e.g. “bulb, vfo3yjc”) to Halfords, where the vehicle make, model, engine size and body type of vehicle are established using registration lookup services.
An SMS message is returned to the customer saying: “Halfords recommends Halfords Super Brilliance Blue Bulb Single HBU4775BBH7, 802561, £22.99 for your AUDI. Check stock in your nearest store by replying with your postcode.”
Upon receipt of a customer reply message the system searches for the nearest store with the required product in stock, and forwards this information to the customer. “From Halfords. Your nearest store with product in stock is Redditch, 2.04 miles away. To reserve the item reply YES to this message.”
Having replied ‘yes’ the system processes the request and sends a reservation message to the customer and to the store warehouse systems. e.g. “Halfords reservation ref 8601043751 – Order reserved at Redditch B98 0DE 01527 584488. Check www.halfords.com for store opening hours.”
As I have no idea what bulbs, oil or wiper blades any of my two cars need, I’ll definitely be using this service. And I doubt I am alone even in our household! Hey presto, no more having to worry, and no more wasted trips to a store that doesn’t have the items I need in stock!
To give you a little more insight into the solution, the service has been specifically tailored by Salmon to integrate with Halfords existing back-end IT systems that hold vital information on products, vehicles and stock inventory. The solution benefits from the following integration:
Itim Zygon Product Information Management System – for identifying vehicles from their registration plate and recommending the right product for each car
SAP – to provide product and pricing information
Multimap – to establish the stores nearest to the customer
BT Expedite Store 6 – to check store stock availability and ultimately accept the customers reservation
In the piece he profiles Video Solutions, Customer Service, Real-World Guided Selling, Multi-Store Retailing, User-Interface Design, Navigation Tools, Effective Merchandising, Social Shopping and Customer Loyalty. Pete’s core messsages are “if you’re unsure which cutting-edge e-commerce innovations are right for your operation, plan, test and evaluate results – and then move forward“. And importantly, “don’t be left behind by a fear of the unknown. Embrace innovation.”
Crikey. News stories are coming through thick and fast out of Salmon HQ. And this is quite incredible. Halfords have surpassed their one-millionth “Reserve and Collect” milestone. Yes. 1,000,000.
Here is the full press release – but in essence Halfords “Reserve and Collect” proposition continues to be a resounding success with Halfords customers; driving 90% growth in multi-channel revenue in the year to 3 April 2009. Halfords.ie has also recently launched the “Reserve and Collect” service and initial sales in Ireland have been encouraging and are growing.
Much is said about the “Customer Experience” at the moment, and rightly so. But a compelling customer experience is not about visual design as the headlines too often infer. Jon Asbury, Channel Development Manager for Halfords sums it up just perfectly;
“The benefits of “Reserve and Collect” are plain. The channel is a powerful tool in driving incremental sales and one we will continue to develop with Salmon over the next few months. We believe it offers customers what they want, choice! It allows customers to do their research online and secure items for collection in store. Many of our customers don’t want to wait at home for a delivery, or pay delivery charges. By checking stock on line and reserving in store they avoid the disappointment of turning up to a store to find the item is out of stock, it also caters for those last minute buyers who don’t have 24 hours to wait for an item to be delivered.”
Crikey. News stories are coming through thick and fast out of Salmon HQ. And this is quite incredible. Halfords have surpassed their one-millionth “Reserve and Collect” milestone. Yes. 1,000,000.