The Fish Farm links to the best new posts and articles, related to commerce, that Salmon have found on the internet in the past month. This is February 2011′s fresh catch.

Exciting Commerce : Bonobos, Birchbox & Others: Who Has The Stuff To Become The Next Zappos? [Jochen Krisch]
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, and adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo, we are told that US investors are seeing the next Zappos as something more like a Bonobos, Birchbox, ModCloth or Shoedazzle. Krisch explains that these ventures have business models which employ unique and difficult to copy components.

Hitwise Blog :  Which retailers are leveraging the marketing power of Facebook? [Robin Goad]
Hitwise UK’s Research Director Robin Goad analyses which merchants are making the most of Facebook’s enormous marketing potential, highlighting 10 brands doing better than most.

Practical Ecommerce : JC Penney Incurs Google SEO Action : How to Protect Your Own Company [Jill Kocher]
How far should a company trust an SEO agency to act on its behalf?  Recent stories of Google blacklisting of JC Penney and Overstock.com might make retailer’s take stock of their SEO outsourcing arrangements.

Locayta Blog : eBay launches augmented reality fashion app [André Brown]
Augmented reality technology is finally being embraced by the retail community. Whilst many merchants are still investigating its potential, Ebay is forging ahead with a fashion app that mimics (replaces? lol) a traditional offline shopping habit  i.e. trying something on, with a virtual try-before-you-buy feature for sunglasses shoppers. Nice.

Econsultancy.com : Six reasons why your brand should hop on the api bandwagon [JD Lasica]
In this JD Lasica explains how APIs can take a brand into promising new directions by harnessing the power of a community.

ReadWriteWeb : Amazon Prime includes streaming video service [Audrey Watters]
Audrey Watters examines the new benefits of Amazon’s premium service, Amazon Prime, which has been expanded beyond its initial focus of cheaper and expedited shipping.

ReadWriteWeb : Eye Tracking & User Testing Made Easy with YouEyetracking [Audrey Watters]
Audrey Watters looks at user testing and in particular ‘eye-tracking’ which ordinarily is an expensive undertaking. However startup YouEye may offer a way to simplify that process – both in terms of cost, testers and technology.

Logic + Emotion : Social Search Will Force Your Business To Recalibrate [David Armano]
As a result of Google’s latest foray into indexing social network content in its search results [Quora, Flickr and Twitter content for example], David Armano highlights how businesses might want to evolve to stand a chance of being found in the future.

Media Futurist Data is the new oil [Gerd Leonhard]
Having had the privilege of seeing Gerd Leonhard present ‘Data is the new Oil‘ at eConsultancy’s Future of Digital marketing, I was delighted to see an online version where Gerd explains the concept during a discussion on media innovations for AME Info [Dubai].

Web Strategist : Beyond social: disruptive technologies to watch [Jeremiah Owyang /Charlene Li]
Altimeter’s Charlene Li presents her viewpoints on disruptive technologies to watch –and those to ignore.  Charlene used ‘Zipcast’ a no-download video+slides technology that allows anyone to give a ‘keynote’ speech to an online audience in real time. Nice.

FutureNow / Grokdotcom : Testing: where to begin [Natalie Hart]
Natalie Hart highlights how testing can yield a great amount of insight & revenue.  But where do you start?

In No Particular Order : Growing pains etailing in the noughtweens [Ian Jindal]
Ian Jindal reflects on a trend seen in the etail sector to move to a more pan-channel, commercial set of demands from ecommerce professionals.

Wired : HTML5 will be done in 2014: What Comes Next? [Scott Gilbertson]
Scott Gilbertson says the web doesn’t move at the pace of standards bodies, but at the pace of web browsers and innovative developers. So now that the web’s governing body have announced that HTML5 will be complete by 2014, what come next?

Retail Week News : Games new strategy aims to triple digital revenue by 2013 [Nicola Harrison, Requires Retail Week Registration]
Nicola Harrison highlights how Game aims to triple its digital revenues as part of a three-year strategy to evolve into a fully multichannel business.

Guardian Newspaper : Is this the start of the second dotcom bubble? [Dominic Rushe]
Loss-making Twitter has been valued at $10bn. Facebook is said to be worth more than Ford. Now, for some investors, the alarm bells are starting to ring. Dominic Rushe investigates.

Six Revisions : Anatomy of an Effective Product Page Design [Kean Richmond]
Kean Richmond outlines that to overcome the inability to touch or try a product, pureplays have to be better than brick-and-mortar equivalents. He outlines how providing as much information , being price competitive, and providing a flawless user experience is essential.

Social Media Today :  Why Facebook Could Dominate the Next Generation of Ecommerce [Matt Ambrose]
Matt Ambrose says that day by day, Facebook’s tentacles continue to spread and pull in more of the web into its domain. We’ve already seen the announcem,ent of Facebook Deals, but what is the wider impact on the world of ecommerce. He says competitors need to be afraid. Very afraid.  Are you?

Did we miss anything important?  Please let us know.

Salmon is delighted to be sponsoring and participating with Team Cobia at this year’s London To Paris (L2P) bike ride.  L2P is one of the world’s most exciting cyclosportives in the cycling calendar (and the closest the amateur rider can get to a Tour de France experience) spanning a 520km route, from Hampton Court to The Eiffel Tower.

Competing in the team is our own Mike Hill, a senior technical architect and equity stake holder in Salmon.  Mike’s experience of completing the L2P last year, and participation in numerous other events (including marathons, Iron man 70.3 and adventure races) will undoubtedly help the team in one of the Daily Telegraph’s top 25 mass participation events.

Read more »

And today, 6 short years since the YouTube domain was first registered, the daughter of video – online video – is simply blossoming.  Some would even say exploding. So I propose that today, video saves the eCommerce stars, giving leading and innovative merchants a renewed basis for differentiation and online growth.

Why?

To set the scene, first and foremost, lets look at some generic online video statistics:

1. YouTube counted more than 112m unique viewers in the U.S. alone in Jan 2011, and served up nearly 8.5bn streams (Nielsen).
2. The total U.S. internet audience engaged in nearly 4.9 billion viewing sessions during the course of the January 2011. (Comscore)
3. 171 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in January for an average of 14.5 hours per viewer (Comscore)
4. 83.5 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in January 2011, with the average duration of the average online content video being 5.0 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes (Comscore)
5. Home and work online video usage rose 45% in January 2011 as compared to January 2010 (Nielsen).
6. The number of unique viewers increased by slightly more than 3% (Nielsen).
7. In January 2011 Google Sites (stats driven predominantly by YouTube.com) , ranked as the top US online video content property (144.1 million unique viewers), VEVO was no. 2 (51.0 million), Yahoo! Sites no. 3 (48.7 million) and Viacom Digital no. 4 (48.1 million viewers) (Comscore)
8. In January 2011, the average time spent per viewer was 283 minutes – 4.7 hours (Comscore)
   • However the average Netflix viewer spends far more time engaging – 11 hours and eight minutes (Nielsen)
   • Hulu’s viewers spent on average five hours and 35 minutes viewing video (Nielsen)

(Hat tip to Patricio Robles for publishing some of these stats here)

As Patricio outlines, point 6 is massively important.  It means that rising online video viewing is happening on the back of greater consumption, by broadly the same audience.

And lets not ignore some anecdotal evidence which also suggests its an exciting time for online video – lovefilm just got gobbled up by Amazon after all.

So what do these statistics imply for merchants?

Well certainly online video is a huge business, spawning new industries (streaming, video on demand, P2P, vodcasting) and is cutting across other types of media consumption (like TV). But what is also becoming clearer, is that professionally developed online videos are already far ‘stickier’ than many perceive. And with viewers able to engage in online video properly (in many more places, on many more devices) a pretty seismic shift is occurring in the way merchants can merchandise and communicate with their customers.

Why merchants must adopt online video.

1. Video is a rich absorbing way to help build up a brand’s ‘backstory’ and can be used to build up brand equity
2. Video can help ‘engage’ customers more deeply – brands can develop ‘how to’ guides, provide advice and tips, and develop video galleries with ‘ask & answer’ style formats
3. Merchants can leverage increasing thirst for online video, and increase page views on key pages with promotional or relevant video placement
4. Merchants can leverage and increase time spent on key category or product pages (as a result of video placement) and seek to up-sell or cross-sell and display (in situ) clear ‘call to action’  overlays in online video (e.g. promoting 10% off if ordered today)
5. Merchants can provide deeper / richer merchandising capabilities on product pages, potentially leading to better conversion.  For example videos can display 360° views of a product, assembly instructions, customer service videos, or even customer or celebrity endorsements.
6. Merchants can look to re-purpose or re-use online video assets across other channels  (e.g. Blogs, affiliate websites, email [remember html5's role here] or even within interactive newsletters)
7. Merchants can tie QR codes (offline) with online video (e.g. catalogue -> web, instore -> smart phone).

Hogwash? The results are already becoming clearer for merchants who are early adoptors of online video. For merchants who have begun to explore the use of video to develop deeper, more compelling user experiences (particularly for Gen-Y [18 to 34 year olds]) they have found online video helps them reach their revenue growth aspirations.  This is already being echoed in research:

1. According to Comscore, brands using online video have seen lifts of anywhere from 20%-40% in terms of incremental buying.

Online video Innovation – A quick merchant showcase [click on any image to enlarge]

M&S

Marks & Spencer have an advanced M&S TV section on their website, with enough gravitas behind it to merit a key placement on their eCommerce website homepage navigation (see circled in yellow below)

The TV Channel is powered by Adjust Your Set, a full service video production agency with its own ‘video commerce’ ­platform.  M&S’s TV Channel page has a gallery style, with all the ‘Channels’ displayed in a familiar way.

However, when you pick a channel, the eCommerce potential of M&S TV becomes much clearer. As a video is played, the right hand side reveals thumbnails for each respective garment during video playback.  The correct colour of each garment is displayed, as is the price. And I noticed that if the product is out of stock it displays it as such at this stage (albeit not all the time). Customers can click the product thumbnail to reach the full product detail page, containing more detailed information such as delivery & returns info or detailed product reviews.

I think the potential of M&S TV is best exemplified on their Wine Channel.  Clearly M&S is in the business of selling bottles of wine – but their wine channel explores areas of wine that customers will be interested in; namely wine of the week, wine making, top tips, wedding wines etc.  This demonstrates the value-add and wow! factor, that video can bring to customers.

Moreover M&S constantly promote a show reel of the most popular videos, displaying both runtime and more details on rollover (Chianti video rollover highlighted below)

And M&S’s use of video does not end there though. On the product details page, videos are once again used to support product copy.  Notably the same videos are used in store (evidence of multi channel marketing in operation).

Amazon.com

As always Amazon are a pioneer in the video space.  They have been placing videos on product information pages for some time as characterised on their Kindle page.

But their use of video is being driven into other areas, and they have chosen to embellish their (already ludicrously rich) product information pages with user generated video content.  Participation levels I would suggest are quite low, but what better way to foster impartial advice?  Hopefully Amazon customers won’t be seeing this image too often.

I remember both Lush and Comet asking for similar user reviews in the past, with mixed success.  It will be interesting to monitor how user generated video content grows with smart phone growth. I’d also expect to see video reviews surfaced across multiple channels (e.g. Amazon could leverage videos across its mobile channel or its iPad interface as well as in its price comparison App’s in due course. No doubt 4G services will play a big part in the adoption of video across mobile properties.

Kiddicare

UK based Kiddicare (now owned by Morrisons) have really been pioneers in the use of video on their eCommerce site.  They have over 2,335 videos (at the time of writing) on their Kiddicare.com Television channel, and also large video representation on YouTube, their affiliate sites and various sites they syndicate to.  They partner with Liveclicker.

The Television Channel promotes a number of different genres of video, tips & advice, reviews, accessories, buggywalks, product features, help, and promotional.  What I really like is the categorisation too.  Customers who are interested in a particular brand can easily navigate to the appropriate video, equally a customer who may not know what type of booster seat is needed for 4-11 year olds can easily find what they need.

To facilitate sales, embedded within each video featuring a product is a clickable thumbnail, which links out directly to the eCommerce website and the respective product details page.

Casting further afield, and pulling people into Kiddicare.com, Kiddicare’s Youtube Channel has 750 subscribers (796 Friends) and a total of 11,980,349 total upload views to date.

(Disclaimer, Kiddicare are a  Salmon client, and our work with them is viewable here)

ASOS

ASOS also promote videos on their site, these include ‘latest’, ‘Celebrity’, ‘Cover Shoots’, ‘Designer Interviews’, ‘Fashion Week’, ‘Music’ and ‘Events’.

Interestingly though they are already re-using video in one particular iteration of their digital magazine.

Their product detail pages also include video, which displays professionally shot catwalk style videos but also (nicely) highlights the background music you were listening to; which adds to the experience and depth of the ‘ASOS lifestyle’ customer experience, in my opinion.

Net-a-Porter

Just this month, Net-a-Porter also launched their own TV station. Visitors are able to shop, browse and comment on four channels: ‘Runway‘, ‘Who’s Who‘, ‘Trends 101‘ and ‘Flashbacks‘.  Net-a-Porter are using the Brightcove video platform.

In the interests of multi channel, Net-a-Porter have taken the time to ensure their TV station can be viewed online, on mobile devices and on the iPad. Notably, however, the company is already making strides with regards to Interactive TV, and will launch in the US on Google TV-enabled devices. It’s already available to view on the internet

Alison Loehnis, Net-a-Porter’s VP of Sales and Marketing, said after its launch, “We have taken our original concept of a shop-able magazine one step further with the addition of shop-able TV.”

On Net-a-Porter.com, video is used in a different way to M&S, video content ‘connecting’ to products in the eCommerce catalogue via a link like, “Shop the Current Collection” or “Shop the Claudia Schiffer look”.

This approach ‘groups’ products on related landing pages as opposed to driving customers to a single product details page.

As video commerce matures, analytics will show which approach (driving customers to a landing page or a single product detail page) converts highest.  Net-a-Porter’s current approach brilliantly irons out ‘back’ button issues (i.e. when a customer is clicking in and out of pages based on video or thumbnail content) which doesn’t transition well on other sites.

Interestingly, however, on Net-a-Porter.com online video is also used on product detail pages, although in this merchants instance the customer currently doesn’t benefit from an embedded player to pause, rewind etc.

Knicker Picker

Although it has been around for some time, Knicker Picker is an eCommerce site that has had online video as part of its merchandising strategy for some time. I show it simply for one reason: the company has really tried hard to use video to heavily contextualise their product; showing customers what the items are like on ordinary people, outside of a fashion catwalk.  I think it’s an interesting case study even today, as it illustrates the flexibility that video provides in terms of developing a brand story.

Video platforms – what’s needed?

There are many video platforms available, each with their own twist and particular orientation. For some of the companies in this space, their origins lie in video production and so there remains a skew towards this aspect of their businesses. However for many other vendors, the emphasis is on technology, streaming, eCommerce, social media and simply using online video to sell. For merchants choosing an online video platform, getting the correct balance between the technology platform and production quality can be hard, and requires serious investment across potentially multiple suppliers and in-house operations. And production and technology platform aside, merchants also need to think hard about how best to integrate into already sophisticated eCommerce customer journey’s.

Video production aside, here’s a quick checklist of what merchants should be looking for from their online video platform.

1. Flexibility of branded & unbranded embeddable player
2. Built-in accessibility
3. Ability to integrate (potentially in real time) video content with eCommerce product catalogue databases and flexibility to link to either a singular product thumbnail and a single product detail page, or to a relevant and broader landing page)
4. Clickable and customisable video overlays, again harnessing integration with eCommerce catalogue content – price, description, ratings & reviews, stock availability, call to action and importantly a ‘buy now’ procedure
5. A full suite of social media and sharing options
6. Automated video publishing – uploading, encoding
7. Video SEO
8. Video serving optimisation via CDNs (Content Delivery Networks)
9. Video Analytics, including A/B testing, dashboards, reports
10. Video content management and production workflow
11. Video distribution, syndication, synchronisation
12. Livestreaming capability (e.g. for customer service video chat)
13. Options for advertising and monetization
14. Support for HD and HTML5
15. Video migration tools (you might change your mind – don’t get tied in)

Which video platforms are attracting merchants?

Each merchant has different needs and aspires to different goals with their use of online video. Here is a short list of companies that merchants should look at in more detail in my opinion.  I am sure I have missed some off this list (but this reflects how fast-moving and dynamic the online video space currently is);

Adjust Your Set
Brightcove
Buto
Buystream
Flixmedia
LiveClicker
Overlay.tv
Qoof
Scene7
Treepodia
ViCommerce
VideoClix.tv

What’s the future for online video?

Clearly online video is moving very quickly and adoption rates are surging, reflecting customer thirst.

One of the key future issues is likely to be better distribution and delivery of video content to mobile devices.  But additionally, how online video connects with and integrates with Interactive TV is an area worth monitoring.

Whilst user generated video is being throttled by a lack of desire by customers to either ‘live stream’ or be be the ‘star of the show’, this mentality is slowly changing – so support for uploading and livestreaming seems to be increasingly important.

And as online video matures still further, there is no doubt that it will be worth observing trends toward HD and potentially 3D formats too.

Finally what is absolutely clear, for merchants at least, is that standalone online video will fall away as fully integrated video commerce solutions prevail.

Suggested further reading: Comscore : The State of Online Video

Good to hear that Morrisons are keen to develop the grocer’s etail operation.  In an announcement today regarding the purchase of Kiddicare (a Salmon client) for £70m, Dalton Philips, Chief Executive of Morrisons said;

“This acquisition brings not only a respected, successful and fast growing specialist retailer into the Morrisons group but also a robust, scalable and highly advanced technology platform around which we can begin to build our e-commerce offer.”

Kiddicare’s platform leverages SAFE™ (Salmon Application Framework for eCommerce) and IBM WebSphere Commerce, as well as a number of other complimentary technologies. Here is more information regarding Kiddicare’s technology platform.

Retail Week’s announcement about the sale of Kiddicare is here [requires registration].  The Guardian’s cover the story here.

“The Retailer” magazine (n.b. hyperlink opens up the Jan/Feb 2011 digital edition) is established as essential reading within the retail industry – featuring an entertaining mix of interviews, news and features with contributions from industry experts, retailers and government figures.

As The Retailer is authored by the British Retail Consortium, we are delighted that a Salmon retail project has been showcased; namely our Multi Channel work with Pets At Home.

To assess the full story click the image above, or simply go to www.theretailermagazine.com (the Pets at Home / Salmon story is on pg. 16 of the digital magazine). Alternatively you can read more on http://www.salmon.com/CustomerPetsAtHome.aspx.

Trying to keep my head above the January deluge of posts on eCommerce trends for 2011, I thought it might be interesting to look back on previous years’ forecasts.

I found a post from eCommerce Times (published in 2002) called “Five E-Commerce Trends” and have been reflecting on the issues from a 2011 perspective.

1.    Multi Channel retailing arrives

Nine years on, has Multi Channel retailing actually arrived? While it is certainly true that most retailers do now have multi(ple) channels, they are still on a journey towards offering a truly joined-up Multi Channel experience. With the ongoing proliferation of channels and technologies, retailers are having to work very hard to figure out what is right for their customers and how to prioritise the huge number of possible initiatives. One of the key challenges in 2011 is cross-channel optimisation, both at the customer facing end of things and within back office systems and processes. Legacy product, stock and warehouse systems, designed to meet the needs of ‘old-style’ retail and manual processes that cut across traditional department boundaries, are a huge inhibitor to cross-channel success.

2.    More satisfied customers

Hmm, an interesting one. It’s probably worth putting this one into the context of the time the article was written. In 2002, eCommerce was still recovering from the shake-out of companies that followed the ending of the dot com bubble and there were some high profile customer satisfaction disasters. The 2002 article refers to research showing that ‘eCommerce companies made consumers happier than offline retailers’. Interestingly, in 2010, internet pure plays again outperformed Multi Channel retailers in customer satisfaction (Christmas 2010 Online Retail Customer Satisfaction Index).

While still a key issue for all retailers, customer satisfaction is not normally headline grabbing compared to technology-related topics that typically feature in trend lists. Part of the challenge for retailers is that customer satisfaction is ‘only as good as your last order’ and it’s always relative.  The impact of their customers’ ‘hyper-connectivity’ is a key challenge in 2011. Customers now expect much more than they did in 2002 and can share poor experiences quickly and easily with large numbers of people.

3.    Consumers do their own thing

While there certainly are many sophisticated tools on the market to track and analyse online customer behaviour, it is still difficult for retailers to grapple with the vast quantity of data and translate it into meaningful insight. They are struggling with both the volume of data available and the challenges of making sense of data across channels. With the speed of technology innovation, it’s hard to predict precisely how customers are going to use each new device and how and when retailers should develop new services and offerings.

Personalisation has been talked about for a long while but still very few retailers execute successfully on this.  The holy grail of a ‘single view of the customer’ is a long way off for most Multi Channel retailers.  With the arrival of social commerce, consumers are revealing (consciously and sub-consciously) a lot more about their likes and dislikes, so this should enable retailers to make their offers more relevant. However, as humans we will always do our own thing – thank goodness !

4.    Death of the mid-size e-tailer

Well, since 2002, we’ve certainly seen large e-tailers like Amazon, eBay and Play massively grow and develop their operations. As well as organic growth, they have developed their offerings in ways no one of could have predicted – via massive range expansion, as well as business model and product innovation (e.g. Kindle and eBay’s own brand fashion).

But there’s also been significant consolidation among online only operations, notably Amazon’s recent acquisition of LoveFilm. With the availability of open source and software as a service platforms, it is still possible for small-scale businesses to operate successfully in niche areas. However, for medium sized retailers, the middle ground is a dangerous place to be; lacking the scale of the large players to compete effectively, but with a higher cost base and less differentiated offering than the smaller (more agile) niche businesses. We’ve certainly seem some of the mid-sized Multi Channel retailers struggle and go under in recent years – e.g. Woolworths, Zavvi – and there will be further challenges ahead I believe.  To be able to survive beyond 2011, it seems you need either massive scale or a distinctly niche offering.

The internet start-ups that have made it big since 2002 (Facebook, Netflix, Zappos and Nakedwines for example) have tended not to be traditional e-tailers (now there’s a phrase I never thought I’d use!) but have created brand new business models around social commerce, streaming media or a service culture.

5.    More profits

This was very much an issue in the post dot com bubble days and remains an issue for companies like Twitter and Facebook, where investment to achieve operational scale still runs ahead of profits.  However, for Multi Channel retailers it’s becoming increasingly difficult to separately measure profits from online sales.  With the eCommerce market still growing, channel usage and technology still evolving rapidly, online success needs to be considered across a range of key performance indicators, including the contribution made to the overall business.  With the growth of cross channel transactions (e.g. Reserve and Collect) this should become easier to monitor and report.  However, in the current economic climate, strategic investments with long payback periods will be difficult for mid-sized retailers to justify.

Conclusion

So, what does this all mean for merchants today?  Three thoughts stand out from my brief journey back to the future.  Firstly, while the detail may have changed the topics are still relevant nine years later.

Secondly, so many elements of 2011 eCommerce that seem important today just weren’t on the radar in 2002.

And thirdly, a question: what will happen in the next 9 years that doesn’t feature on any of the 2011 trend lists?

I was lucky to squeeze in a full day at Retail Bulletin’s Multi Channel Summit 2011 on Wednesday.  In this post I thought I’d document a few take-away’s from the key presentations, and additionally high-spot a few quotes from the various speakers and panels .  All in all it was a good day, and I recommend you add it to your calendar for 2012.  Enjoy the notes.

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Session: A Profitable Future Strategy in a Multi Channel World. Speaker: Simon Russell, Head of Multi Channel, John Lewis (JL)

To begin here are a few quotes from Simon’s presentation:

“Multi Channel does not mean online”
“What is key, is a seamless experience across the very many channels”
“Customer shopping habits are dramatically changing”
“How quickly can you change your business – to be able to sweat the asset – when the foundation is there to do so?”

Simon also highlighted the three typical categories of customers;

1. Acquired
2. Retained*
3. Reactivated

*Simon said notably that Retained customers spend “by far the most” with JL.

I also liked his graphic about the life-cycle of Multi Channel, this is my sketch of it.  This graph is an adaption of the Kübler-Ross model.  Where are you on the graph?

Delving deeper, Simon highlighted three key ‘tensions’ in evolving to a Multi Channel operational model and culture;

1. Internal competition
2. Channel profitability
3. Systems alignment

In terms of culture I was fascinated to hear that JL will introduce WIFI into their stores “and not shy away” from their price promise of being ‘never knowingly undersold’.   This is a very brave and bold stance given consumers hyper-connectivity to competitor pricing via smart phones. However, get it right, and JL will clearly engender a great deal of trust with shoppers by taking this approach imo.

Profiling JL’s inroads into systems alignment, Simon mentioned JL’s 130% yoy growth for their ‘Click and Collect‘ service – additionally naming it as JL’s fastest growing Multi Channel fulfilment method.

My ultimate takeaway was that JL are getting Multi Channel right.  We all know that anyway. Furthermore it’s so refreshing to see a Head of Multi Channel talk so little about technology.  That might seem strange coming from a CMO at a global SI but its been obvious to us at Salmon for some time that ‘cultural’ and ‘people’ based issues are far more complex than ‘technology’ when it comes to leading, steering and delivering any programme of change, particularly a transition to Multi Channel Commerce.

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Session: Driving wallet share and conversion through a consistent customer experience across every channel. Speaker: Jonathan Wall, Group eCommerce Director, Shop Direct Group (SDG)

Jonathan began by providing a brief review of SDG and their 8 marketing channels [catalogues, web, tablet, phone, mobile/sms, social, email, paid search].  What was fascinating was the revenue split by channel;

1. Phone – 30%
2. eCommerce – 67%
3. mCommerce – 3% (based on 5% visitor sessions)

Jonathan highlighted that according to Forrester 13% of clothing sales in UK will be bought via mobile – increasing to up to 15% in 2015.  So you can see a great shift already taking place for his customers, no doubt replicated elsewhere (n.b. lets remember Simon Russell’s earlier quote - “Customer shopping habits are dramatically changing”).

Jonathan also mentioned Facebook deals, and Facebook check-in’s being ‘sponsored’ in the future.  I could not agree more.  Its exciting, scary, fun and fast moving all in one.  I can easily imagine checking in at ‘Westfield’, ‘Oxford Street’ or ‘London South Bank’ and receiving vouchers, recommendations and deals for fashion brands, restaurants and museums. Taking it further into the Semantic web, a restaurant could offer discounts based on known table availability in real time etc. Awesome.

I found it very interesting that at SDG, mobile commerce AOV’s are 2% higher than traditional eCommerce! (although that is NOT the same in mobile Apps.)

Looking at near futures, Jonathan presented his belief that ‘images’ and not just QR codes have a big future in Multi Channel commerce, highlighting Google’s lead in this space. He described mobile if-you-like ‘connecting’ the Multi Channel experience. He also championed Amazon Windowshop as a great customer experience on tablets and slates which I share.

As an aside, it was interesting to hear from a predominantly ‘online’ retailer on his particular perspectives on Multi Channel. Understandably, in the absence of a high street presence, the emphasis was very much on mobile, but I imagine that pop-up stores, tablets and the complete integration of call centre operations are very high on the agenda at SDG (or is already an area where they have unique expertise).  It would be interesting to hear more about that. I’d also like to see SDG perhaps present on digital catalogues and their integration into the marketing-mix in the future. I am sure they are a critical component of their overall Multi Channel strategy.

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Session: Improving Customer insight and loyalty through a single customer view of the Multi Channel shopper. Speaker: Derek Ecclestone, Research Director, eDigital Research

Being a marketer I lean in favour of market research – and I do like the concept of ‘listening’ and turning ‘data’ into actionable ‘insight’; and then listening and learning again. Derek’s presentation provided a decent insight into the state of the nation – with the audience contributing their own contribution via WIFI voting handhelds.

71% of the conference audience (n.b. this will skew results, but still) said that their business was NOT fully capitalising on the mobile commerce opportunity.

Derek went on to say that, “Multi Channel integration was an EXPECTATION rather than a DELIGHT factor”, a scary thought for merchants just embarking on their Multi Channel journey.  This belief, combined with the fact that ‘Out of Stock’ remains the Achilles heel of reserve and collect models, illustrates just how critical systems alignment (right back into the supply chain) is vital for developing an excellent customer experience.  According to Derek, “2/5ths of all failed reserve and collect and home delivery transactions will see the shopper purchase from a competitor.” (Stats from Nov 2010 eDigital research study)

Derek offered up his simple way to measure lost sales:

% of potential Customers who fail to to buy due to integration issues
X
% who were lost to competition
X
Average shopping basket
= Cost of Integration fails / per month

On a positive note Derek says, “Obtaining Customer feedback is cheaper than ever” and that measuring, listening to, and responding to “continuous months of performance KPIs is key.” It was certainly food for thought.

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Session: Delivering a seamless reserve and collect service that delights your customers across any channel. Speaker: Chris Corbin, Head of Multi Channel, Halfords Group

(Disclaimer- Halfords are a Salmon customer, and we delivered the projects that Chris presented about)

“Stores and Service are at the heart of Halfords’ Multi Channel strategy”
“Online sales account for around 10% of total sales”

Chris started his presentation by highlighting Halfords, its trading model and what has worked in terms of Multi Channel.  This included these four areas;

1. Reserve & Collect advertising
2. Delivering a good site experience
3. Gaining in-store commitment
4. Meeting customer expectation

Chris went on to say that “cross functional commitment” is key to success.

I could go on more – as Chris’ presentation was excellent (one of the best on the day imho) but regular readers will have seen we’ve written lots about Halfords on this blog already.  For more info on the projects Chris discussed, simply follow these links:

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Other highlights

Mobile
One of the highlights for me were the various discussions on mobile, that filtered in throughout the day.  In the panel session entitled “Integrating Mobile into your Multi Channel Strategy” a few interesting perspectives were aired.  Mobile commerce still polarises people (and therefore organisations) and the apps vs. optimised mobile commerce website debate simmered gently.

Because each merchant has a different target audience with different affiliations to smart phones, its easy to see why this polarisation occurs. But four key retailing themes emerged, that transcend a debate about apps or optimised sites or iphone and android. Demographics aside, the context of mobile in retail involves these topics and I hope they weren’t lost on delegates.  They were;

1. Loyalty
2. Location
3. Personalisation
4. Localisation

Whilst Fergus Boyd (Acting Head of eBusiness, Virgin Atlantic Airways) said that it was his belief, “an app maintenance bubble is arriving” (a great point in my opinion) he also went on to discuss the true merits of mobile which was refreshing.

Culture
Simon Forster, Director of Debenhams.com came out with a beauty : “Multi Channel is an ‘AND’ culture.  Not an ‘OR’ culture.”

Priorities
IMRG say the top four priorities for 2011 in retail are;

1. Having an effective Multi Channel offering
2. Innovation
3. International
4. mCommerce

Legal
A discussion on “Cookies, Customers, Consent“ was very interesting.  The presentation by Mike Butler (Partner and Head of Commercial Law, Squire Sanders Hammonds) centred on the “Data Directive” [Directive 95/46/EC] and the e-Privacy Directive [Directive 2009/136/EC] which are as ‘grey’ as legal matters can possibly be it would seem!  The take home was that ‘Cookies’ sit at the centre of the debate with regard to privacy; and that the debate centres on ‘harvested’ vs. ‘collected’ data ['harvested' being unknown by the customer, 'collected' being known by the customer].  Bluring the regulation further is the issue of ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ IP Addresses.  At the moment a static IP address are deemed ‘personal info’ in the UK.

Whilst it is blurred regulation wise, any complex eCommerce implementation comes into sharp collision with regulation, so it can’t be ignored.  Here’s two instances that will stop you thinking ‘what’s the fuss?’

1. Internationalisation – clearly brings with it different regulation per geographies. France and Germany for instance (and increasingly Holland) have strict privacy regulations compared with the US and UK.
2. Personalisation (incl. behavioural targeting) –  clearly brings to bear key issues such as ‘transparency’ and in particular ‘transparency’ vs. ‘consent’.

Interestingly as the US is coming more inline with the UK with regards privacy (Yes, you read that right) , the legal side of Multi Channel eCommerce remains as fast moving as ever. Watch this space……

Social Media
I have to say I was disappointed with the social media content at the conference.  Being told social allows a merchant “to have 1-to-1 conversations with customers”, felt like I’d been thrown back 4 years and unfortunately it tethered the debate at a level that was perhaps too high level from the outset.

However, Fergus Boyd (Acting Head of eBusiness, Virgin Atlantic Airways) at least offered more detail, highlighting Virgin’s strategy around the 3 S’s – Selling, Socialising and Servicing.  I also felt that Kiddicare‘s Simon Harrow (disclaimer:  Kiddicare are another Salmon customer) did more than most to explain how social media actually lowers costs (hooray – its not just about selling) in areas like customer support.  For the record, Kiddicare has created customer self service areas and FAQs together with a searchable database of support and service issues, directly integrating their forays into social right into their overall eCommerce strategy.

Perhaps more interestingly, Simon also suggested delegates should take a look at charities and their social media exploits, because they typically have a culture built around ‘helping’ and that they now benefit from a self fulfilling prophecy around the culture of ‘service’.

Whilst the debate about social media was generally high level, areas like SEO benefits were also mentioned, as were the usual suspects in terms of ‘Who is getting it right‘ – take a bow once more ASOS [Community site], M&S [facebook], TopShop [facebook]and Next [facebook].  Also huge credit to Charles Tyrwhitt, whose directors we were told, actively engage in social media circles and fold consumer feedback as far into the brand as is possible – product design. For the record other brands mentioned positively were BestBuy, Eurostar, SouthWest Airlines and JetBlue.

Other

“uCommerce” was mentioned. I’m not sure what it means but I’d hazard a guess at ‘ubiquity’, ‘uniqueness’, ‘universality’ or maybe even ‘unison’.  All the words seem applicable!

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I think that is as much as I can document.  As always the networking was very useful too.

Did you attend the conference and did I miss something big?  I’d love to hear from you.