“Internet Retailing” magazine (n.b. takes you to the  July/Aug 2011 digital edition) is focused upon serving the UK and Europe’s leading multichannel and pureplay retailers. Inspired by the very best, and commercial to the core, Internet Retailing analyses, stimulates and challenges the etail community with news, analysis, events and insight.

In the latest edition, we are delighted that a Salmon retail project, Halfords has been showcased.  Emma Herrod speaks to Jon Asbury, Channel Development Manager, Halfords, about how system integration has improved customer choice and encouraged mobile interaction. The interview covers Reserve & Collect, Text & Reserve, Advice Centre, Order & Collect, Distribution, M-commerce site, iPhone and Android apps.

To read the full story click the image above, or simply go to Internet Retailing Magazine. (The Halfords/Salmon story starts on pg. 10 of the digital magazine).

With the impressive returns apparent for those retailers who have optimised their web sites for access by smartphones and the inexorable rise in smartphone adoption, the debate has moved beyond the ‘why’ and ‘when’.**   The question now is ‘how to optimise your web site for mobile devices’.  Here’s a summary of the pros and cons of the main options to help you navigate your way through this key decision.

Option 1.  Building a mobile store – developing a set of pages specifically optimised for mobile devices

Pros:  Fancy something (relatively) quick to market and with easy access?  Then a mobile store could be just what you are looking for.  No snazzy touch screen smart phone needed, even if your customers have a Nokia e71 they can shop on your mobile store, plus with auto detection and re-direction, accessing your store couldn’t be simpler.

Read more »

Salmon have developed iPhone and Android apps for Halfords, extending their current mobile and multi-channel proposition.  The apps allow customers to shop, scan products and find their nearest store.

Mobile phone shoppers will receive a better online experience with the ability to research, locate and purchase products via the apps. The apps combine both web and app capabilities, providing Halfords with a cost effective solution and customers with a better online experience.

Jon Asbury, Halfords Channel Development Manager said: “We aim to give customers an even better online shopping experience through cutting edge technology. The apps are a natural progression from our successful mobile site. Customers will find the apps versatile, functional and easy to navigate.”

Read more »

Tesco: Homeplus in South Korea offer customers a new way of shopping via their SmartPhone and QR Code technology.  It’s proving popular with customers there.  I’m not sure we have the same issues in the UK as Korea do to warrant this here, they are quite a unique market, but this does offer customers an alternative shopping method and is a great visual reminder.  See for yourself here.

For more information Econsultancy have a list of 10 ways marketers can use QR Codes in business, whether B2B or B2C.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…”

The memorable opening of Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities came to mind today as I reflected on the wide variation in customer service we all experience day-to-day.  First a couple of contrasting examples:

Read more »

“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.

Here’s a Salmon front-end authored post, that aims to highlight 10 important front-end considerations that should be made when developing mobile eCommerce solutions.

1. Make a beeline for the streamlined – With unpredictable 3G connectivity and download speed, it’s important that pages use as little bandwidth as possible to ensure the customer is not waiting ages for a page to load. The ways this can be achieved are:

• Use CSS3 properties instead of images - where possible use CSS3 properties instead of images, to reduce the number of images that need to be downloaded. We did this with the buttons on Halfords’ mobile optimised site. If the browser doesn’t support border-radius it gracefully degrades to square corners.
• Use image sprites – Use image sprites to reduce the number of HTTP requests.  Reducing the number of HTTP requests can make a web page load much faster, and we all know that when it comes to enterprise eCommerce online revenue – every millisecond counts. Further to this, WDL [Web Design Ledger] has a useful how-to Sprite guide)
• Optimize your images - Use 8-bit PNGs over GIFs to reduce the file size.
• Avoid inline JavaScript and CSS – Developers should avoid inline JavaScript and CSS as much as possible, as this increases the size of the HTML file, and thus could prevent it from being cached by the browser. Instead, keep your JavaScript and CSS in an external file.

2. Do not rely on JavaScript – Not all mobile devices (currently) support JavaScript, so allow users to navigate your mobile site without it, and only use it to enhance the user experience. On Halfords’ mobile optimised site (more about the launch of this solution can be found here), our main use of JavaScript was for showing and hiding the product description and customer reviews on the Product Details pages – so as to reduce the amount of scrolling required to get to the bottom of the page.

3. Keep it semantic – If your HTML is structured semantically, any users of older devices with little, if any CSS support, will still be able to use your site.

4. Get both ‘Size’ and ‘Spacing’ correct – With different mobile devices offering different ways of navigating a web page (touchscreen, trackball, directional pad, etc.), it’s essential that all users have an easy time clicking/selecting the buttons and links they want. This means ensuring click-able items are both ‘big’ enough and that there is enough ‘space’ between links to reduce the likelihood of a customer clicking on the wrong link. This can be seen in the header on Halfords’ mobile site and in the lists of products and categories.  Also bear in mind that a top / down approach to the layout (as opposed to top/down & across) is more usable.

5. Make forms as easy to fill out as possible. Completing forms is arduous and difficult on mobile devices. This means reducing the number of fields to what is absolutely essential is worth debating. But also ensure that the customer can easily see the label of the field they are on if the mobile device automatically zooms in on the current field. We were able to achieve this on Halfords’ mobile site by placing the labels above their respective fields. We also made use of the new tel and email HTML5 input types to provide (on supporting devices) users with an onscreen keyboard specific to that type of data.

6. Liquefy your layout – With each device having its own screen resolution, some of which allow you to change orientation from portrait to landscape, it’s important that your pages not only work in the space available, but also take advantage of any extra space available after an orientation toggle.

7. Remember ‘Designing for mobile’ isn’t the same as ‘Designing for mobile phones‘ - Mobile phones, and in particular smart-phones, are rapidly becoming mainstream gadgets.  But that’s half the story.  Consider other mobile and pervasive devices as part of your mobile strategy. The iPad is already popular but new Android powered tablets such as the Motorola Zoom (which was hailed as 2011′s must have gadget – see Engadgets Best of CES2011 post) raise the mobility stakes considerably higher. We haven’t scratched the surface of where in-store pervasive devices are going in 2011 and beyond either.

8. Consider providing telephone assistance every step of the way – We all make mistakes or have questions when buying items online.  As FAQ’s or very detailed searches are harder to make and drill into on a mobile device, consider a regular ‘Click-to-Call’ call-out as part of the page design, or a ‘Find your Nearest Store’ capability, in particular if you have already integrated your sales channels effectively.

9. (Re)Consider ‘font’ and ‘colour’ – Because phones are used in areas where laptops and PC’s are not (in highly reflective or poorly lit circumstances, perhaps), be aware that contrast is an important consideration to make. Additionally bear in mind that customers ‘scan-read’ heavily on mobile phones, so avoid upper case (WHICH, BASED ON RESEARCH FINDINGS IS HARDER TO READ) wherever possible, but particularly on product details pages or during the check-out process.

10. Think ‘Cross-Channel’ – Despite the fact we’d all like to close a sales immediately via mobile devices, chances are its not going to happen all of the time.  This can be for many reasons, most notably because consumer confidence in mobile payment is still low and because the mobile channel is simply a single component of a complex cross-channel engagement cycle.  As a result you should make the interaction between channels simple and seamless. We’ve already mentioned potentially adding a prominent ‘Click-to-Call’ button, but additionally make ‘Find your Nearest Store’, ‘Stock Level’ and ‘Reserve & Collect’ intrinsic aspects of appropriate page layouts to optimise overall conversion rates.

11. *Bonus* -> Leverage baked-in Social Networking – Bear in mind that with mobile devices comes built-in Social Networking opportunity.  Consider optimising pages to allow shoppers to ‘Share’, ‘Comment’ or ‘Like’ products as readily as possible.  

Have we missed anything? Hopefully these front-end focused points highlight the salient front-end considerations for mobile eCommerce today but please share any additional ideas; we’d love to hear your comments.

Finally, confused about the opportunity m-commerce brings? You may find this worth reading (subscription required) “Mobile Statistics – An eEconsulting Report “