Salmon have delivered an eCommerce optimisation service for Kiddicare.com which has resulted in an 86% increase in repeat purchases, and a 500% increase in customer opt-in for email and newsletters.  £165,000 of incremental revenue from second purchases, has been observed in just two months since Salmon’s recommendations were implemented.

The next stage of Salmon’s project with Kiddicare is to understand the impact of these changes on customer lifetime value and to further improve the relevancy of the email marketing activities based on the data captured.

About Salmon and Kiddicare

You can read more about Kiddicare here (Retail Week article, requires registration), and more specifically about its recent acquisition by Morrisons here (FT.com , requires registration) and here (Guardian.co.uk).

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.

Earlier this year, Salmon implemented a new online store for City Beach, Australia’s largest surf, skate and lifestyle fashion retailer, which has over 60 stores across Australia.

And at last we have a video testimonial to describe the work undertaken with the brand.

Now customers have the choice to buy City Beach products and engage with the City Beach brand online whenever it suits them, making CityBeach.com.au one of Australia’s hottest online destinations.  And it was all delivered in less than 100 days, using IBM WebSphere Commerce.  You can read more here.

SAFE™ is a series of preconfigured, reusable and customisable eCommerce components that allows a merchant to deliver a production ready eCommerce solution very quickly. SAFE™ speeds up and simplifies the delivery of an IBM WebSphere Commerce based eCommerce solution. It also lowers the risk associated with launching a new eCommerce capability or replacing an existing eCommerce application:

“From day one the relationship between Salmon and Barratts to deliver our MC strategy has been immense. Through the six month period of development, through every single project that we’ve progressed including Reserve & Collect, Bazaarvoice product reviews, from the technical expertise, to project management, through to expert analysts their development and expertise has been paramount.”
Ken Platt, Head of eCommerce and Customer Services

Since we launched the new eCommerce infrastructure and websites, we’ve helped Barratts Priceless trade the websites and grow their revenues online. In fact Barratts.co.uk have been shortlisted as finalists for the Drapers Footwear Etailer of the Year Award 2010.

We’ve also helped them introduce new channels to their customers for instance their iPhone strategy and mobile strategy generally.

Here are links to more eCommerce customer stories, where SAFE™ has been implemented:

Press Release: Hawkshead, Craghoppers and Dare2b brands gain online advantage
Press Release: Kiddicare aims to triple online sales with SAFE™
Press Release: Scotts & Co. seeks new markets and growth opportunities with SAFE™

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.”

We sure are excited to be working with them.

Hat tip to the eCommerce delivery teams at Salmon – they have just received a well deserved shortlisting for “IT Team of the Year” at the Retail Systems Awards.

Now in their fourth year the Retail Systems Awards look to recognise excellence and innovation in the field of information technology within the UK retail sector. The primary criteria for judging are the delivery of definable and significant business benefits, innovation and originality of application, ROI and project management issues such as delivery on time and within budget.

Salmon’s entry demonstrated excellent technical expertise and foresight in delivering eCommerce solutions for retailers, as a result of using our Application Framework for eCommerce (SAFE™) – a repeatable eCommerce solution which extends IBM WebSphere Commerce and can be implemented in just 35 days.

In the last 12 months Salmon has successfully implemented and supported the launch of 25 branded eCommerce websites for leading brands including:  Barratts Priceless Limited, Ben Sherman, Boots, Hotter Comfort Concept Shoes, Scotts & Co, Sleepy’s and the Regatta Group.

Today we announced the formalisation of a long standing relationship, in the form of a commercial partnership with Experian QAS, the international provider of contact data management (CDM) solutions.

QAS Pro Web, the address verification tool, has been fully integrated into SAFE™ (Salmon’s Application Framework for eCommerce). SAFE™ is a fully developed, tested and pre-configured eCommerce solution which extends IBM’s WebSphere Commerce™ platform, enabling the rapid delivery of a production-ready enterprise class solution.

Salmon’s customers already benefitting from using QAS Pro Web include, Argos, Ann Summers, Boots, Homebase, Barratt Priceless Ltd, Scotts & Co, Smartlandlord.co.uk and The Regatta Group.

Chris Bulmer, Group IT Director from The Regatta Group said, “QAS Pro Web was seamlessly integrated with our websites catering for our UK and US customers whose online experience is key to our success. QAS address verification ensures the addresses our customers provide are correct and verified, saving our customers time, minimising undeliverable goods and customer complaints and reducing costs associated with deliveries to mistaken addresses.”

Neil Stewart, Commercial Director at Salmon said, “The partnership helps us deliver even greater value to our customers.  As QAS Pro Web is now a pre-integrated component of SAFE™, we can provide our customers with an eCommerce solution that offers the best in address verification and ongoing data quality.  Customers will benefit from being able to capture online customer information accurately, the first time, critical to providing a professional first impression of their website and ensuring the smooth, quick and accurate entry of customer details.”

From minimal information provided by the user, QAS Pro Web returns a complete and accurate address that has been validated and formatted against the relevant country data file. This offers the following benefits:

• Quick, accurate data capture, with search prompts to guide users through each stage of the process.
• Effective profiling with enhanced data.  Contact data records are captured accurately, validated and consistently formatted, making database analysis simple, with reliable results. Valuable information can be added to residential and business records, allowing customers to effectively profile their database for future marketing activities.
• International datasets for 240 countries and territories worldwide are available.
• Speed of service – critical to online customers, ensuring their details are captured correctly and quickly first time round, increasing site conversions and reducing “drop-off” rates.
• Online customers receive a user-friendly and efficient first impression, inputting minimal information and ensuring they return to the website.
• Regular data updates ensure ongoing accuracy of data and support organisational decisions that are based on firm valuable information.
• Cost efficiencies are made as contact data is captured correctly first time round, saving money on wasted mailings to incorrect addresses and reducing volumes of returned mail.

There is more information about SAFE™ here and about Experian QAS here.