MorrisonsCellar Home Page

Salmon, has helped Morrisons to launch its first transactional eCommerce site, MorrisonsCellar.com, which focuses on selling a comprehensive range of wines and offers customers a unique, personalised and enjoyable shopping experience, including:

An interactive Taste Test allowing customers to discover those wines most likely to suit their palate via three simple questions

The case builder tool giving customers the ability to build and keep track of a mixed case of wine

Integration with Facebook allowing customers to share information with their friends

The new site is built on the same infrastructure as Kiddicare.com, (part of the Morrisons family) using WebSphere Commerce, Coremetrics, Endeca and advanced content management functionality developed by Salmon.

Since the site went live:

• Repeat customers average 15 percent
• All KPIs have been greatly exceeded – visitors, conversion and sales
• Conversion is above expectation, due to the success of the taste test and the depth of the product range

Discussing Morrisons first venture into eCommerce, Scott Weavers-Wright, Kiddicare CEO and Kiddicare and Morrisons.co.uk General Merchandise Managing Director said; “This is the first step in Morrisons branded eCommerce and will enhance the overall wine offering for Morrisons. It will also provide valuable lessons on business processes and systems which will support the launch of other web sites and multi channel services. We knew that the underlying platform, WebSphere Commerce, and functionality would enable us to deliver the new site quickly and yet be scalable for the future.”

Ken Platt, Head of Multi Channel eCommerce Delivery for Morrisons.co.uk, added: “Morrisons has a late mover advantage. By creating a scalable platform, focussed on user experience, the rapid roll out of further categories is certain and promises to set Morrisons.co.uk apart from its competitors.”

Salmon has provided a wide range of eCommerce services to design and implement the site and will provide 24/7 application support. Salmon used innovative working practices and approaches which combined Morrisons’ deep understanding of wine and customer behaviour with Salmon’s extensive eCommerce expertise. These enabled Salmon to deliver an innovative and functionally-rich site in a short period of time, which not only matched Morrisons business vision but also enhanced it.

Craig Harper-Ashton, Director of eCommerce at Salmon said; “Salmon played a key role in making MorrisonsCellar.com a reality. We are delighted to see Morrisons realise the benefits of the new working practices adopted for this project.”

About MorrisonsCellar.com Taste Test
A clever, interactive test to help guide consumers through the mystery of wine, the Taste Test is based on a scientific principle relating to the number of taste buds any one person possesses. Consumers will be asked three simple, non-wine related questions, the answers to which are then converted by a complex algorithm and a piece of clever technology to reveal a score and flavour profile. The four profiles are sweet (0-3), fresh (4-6), smooth (7-9), intense (10-12).

The entire range of Morrisons’ wines has been tasted by a six-strong team with calibrated palates and awarded a score against agreed criteria to enable it to fit within one of the four profiles. Red, whites, sparking and fortified have all been judged using the same scale so if a customer is a score 4 it is expected that wines within the fresh category of all colours will appeal to them.

“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 Video

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.

Deep links into QR (Quick Response) codes are becoming ever more popular.  Retailers are beginning to use deep links into their content on another channel using QR codes. A QR code is a specific matrix barcode – or two dimensional code , readable by QR barcode readers and camera phones.  The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background and the information encoded can be text, URL or other data.

DIY retailer B&Q uses it in stores around physical products allowing customers to scan the QR code to watch the “how to video”.  At Christmas, supermarket Waitrose used QR codes in TV and magazine adverts allowing customers to deep-link into recipes.  Halfords, a Salmon client, has been using QR Codes in press advertising since Christmas with links to its mobile home page.  It has also used them in-store to promote specific product ranges.

Meguiars use QR Codes

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. Read more »