Have you noticed that WebSphere Commerce feature packs seem to come out much more frequently than they used to?  Our friends in the IBM development labs seem to have changed their approach slightly in bringing these out much more quickly, even if this means partial releases.

Management Centre is a good example where this much-improved business tooling was brought to market relatively quickly without replacing Accelerator 100% i.e. there was still functionality within Accelerator that wasn’t available in Management Centre.  Cleverly though, they developed the marketing focussed elements early so most business users only need to see Management Centre.  Meanwhile, Accelerator is still used for the more technically oriented facilities.  Wins all round and it’s a philosophy that we greatly support.

So Feature Pack 4 is the latest one, what’s in it?… In summary, it includes these new, main features:

• Mobile commerce extensions
• Facebook integration (like button and activity feed)
• Precision marketing enhancements
• REST services

Mobile commerce extensions. The Mobile commerce extensions enhance the current mobile starter store and bring to market device-specific applications for Android.  There are also new location-based services, including an ability for the shopper to check-in to a local store so that marketers can provide store-specific marketing materials and an “eFlyer” feature that can promote location-specific advertising in the store.  More information on the mobile starter store can be found here and on location based services here.

Facebook integration.  New Facebook integration features extend this general direction into “social bridging”, a posh way of saying integration to social networking sites.  The new “like button” provides a simple, but effective link into your social network on Facebook updating your “likes” and sharing.  Similarly, the activity feed will show other liked items that have been shared by your network.  More information can be found here.

Precision marketing enhancements.  Precision marketing is the huge leap forward that has been made in marketing and merchandising in WebSphere Commerce version 7.  In a nutshell this is the ability to modify content driven by behaviour, for instance, if a shopper is tending to browse a particular category heavily during their session then the system can promote merchandising that is associated with that category.  It’s a lot more complex than this obviously, comprising a number of triggers, events and actions across a wide area of customer journey.  We’ll be doing some posts around this soon as it represents a hugely powerful area.  Enhancements in Feature Pack 4 include tying precision marketing into some of the features above (location-based services for example) and enhanced triggers and targets.  More information can be found here.

REST services. Lastly, Feature Pack 4 releases a new suite of REST services.  REST is the trendy way to integrate through web services.  REST services have taken off because they are simple – and this of course means more widely understood easier to implement, and therefore quicker!  More information can be found here.

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.

We were delighted to announce earlier today that Halfords (the UK’s leading specialist retailer for automotive parts and accessories, cycling and leisure) has launched its first ever transactional mobile website, a project we have been planning and working on since the summer.  The project builds on the success of Halfords’ dotmobile site, which went live in August 2010 and is reported on here.

Since the launch of the dotmobile site, Halfords has seen mobile visitor numbers increase to 8% of Halfords’ dotcom total. Conversion levels have also doubled.  However, the announced enhancements enable customers to pay for orders via their mobile phone.

Chris Corbin, Head of Multichannel at Halfords said:

“More and more of our customers are accessing our site via mobile and we want them to have the same experience as they have from a computer. Smartphones point to how trends in shopping habits are changing fast.”

What was pioneering about this project was that the initiative makes Halfords the first retailer in the UK to offer such a variety of delivery options via a smartphone.

To support true cross channel shopping habits, mobile customers have access to Halfords’ extended range of products – but importantly the same fulfilment options that are offered on the main Halfords.com site, offering a compelling and ultimately valuable shopping experience. This means that mobile customers can choose from a variety of ways to shop;

In addition, mobile customers can search for products, read customer reviews, compare products, and find their nearest store with stock.

Payment for goods, a hot topic in mCommerce circles, also saw the Halfords and Salmon teams provide customer choice.  Shoppers can pay by credit/debit card, or by using PayPal; the same payment methods supported by Halfords.com.  In another first, Halfords is the first mass UK retailer to offer PayPal as a mobile payment method.

For those readers who like even more detail, the mobile platform was developed using the same underlying architecture as Halfords.com, namely IBM WebSphere Commerce. Developing the transactional capability involved complex integration by Salmon between the mobile site, DataCash and PayPal to offer 3-D Secure.  Salmon also integrated the mobile site with Multimap (now Bing Maps) , SAP and Store6.

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.

***Update: 14:22 PM Aug 24th – Halfords: Mobile Site Review by eConsultancy
***Update:  2:52 PM Aug 16th - Since Friday’s launch mobile conversion has doubled!***

Today we announced the successful development and launch of Halfords’ mobile platform, enhancing the retailer’s multi-channel proposition and delivering a unique and compelling mobile shopping experience for its customers.

A staggering 5% of traffic to www.halfords.com is from internet enabled mobile phones, and Halfords have reacted by having us develop a mobile platform such that visitors to Halfords.com using a mobile device will automatically be directed to the new mobile platform.

The solution allows visitors to;

• Search for products
• Read customer reviews
• Make product comparisons
• Locate their nearest store that stocks the desired product
• “Reserve and Collect” the item.

Customers benefit from the same common design elements and features that make Halfords.com so successful.  Here is what the Head of Halfords.com had to say this afternoon;

The internet enabled mobile is becoming the essential tool for shoppers. We are seeing a huge increase in customers who are researching products and making shopping decisions while on the move.  We see a huge opportunity for growth of our online business by improving the shopping experience for mobile visitors. So we are aiming to make our site more relevant to the way people want to shop.
Chris Corbin, Head of Halfords.com

Halfords.com is already growing fast, with online revenues up 70% year on year in the first quarter, with visitor numbers now running at over one million people a week.  Early results from the Halfords mobile platform show that visitors really appreciate the new lay out and easier access to essential information and conversion rates are significantly up.

We’ve been helping Halfords implement their eCommerce and multi-channel strategy since 2005, delivering “Reserve and Collect”, “Home/Work Delivery”, “Text and Reserve” and more recently “Free Delivery To Store”; all of which leverage Halfords’ existing IBM WebSphere Commerce based architecture.

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™

As many of you know, Halfords have been a Salmon customer since 2005. We have worked with the brand and their in-house teams on establishing a strategic eCommerce platform, and subsequently on helping them execute against their sophisticated multi-channel strategies.

In light of all this activity, we finally created a couple of video’s to capture what a successful client / supplier partnership this has been. Enjoy.

Short Video

Long Video