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.

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).

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.

Read more »

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.

We often find ourselves saying the words ‘eCommerce platform for life‘ with prospective clients, because we are very much in the business of developing and shaping longer term or strategic eCommerce plans and solutions – as opposed to providing band-aid or stop-gap solutions.

Which is why it is particularly gratifying to see multi-channel retailer Kiddicare’s online offering moving forward in leaps and bounds as reported in various circles (it was also covered here).

When we first starting working with Kiddicare in 2006 (they are still a customer today) they were using an eCommerce platform and provider that fell short of their requirements.  We helped them change that and continue to provide expert eCommerce advice and 24x7x365 application management and support.

This is what Kiddicare Partner, Scott Weavers-Wright had to say back in July 2008.

“We replaced our existing platform with SAFE™ as we needed to obtain control of our eCommerce business.  Our online plans are sophisticated and we need to address our requirements with a higher degree of autonomy, flexibility and responsiveness to change.”

It never ceases to amaze me how empowered a business can be when it has a true handle on its eCommerce infrastructure and architecture.  And when the eCommerce platform itself (as part of that infrastructure) is capable of scaling to be ‘an eCommerce platform for life‘, merchants really can focus on thse aspects of eCommerce that really matter…….like helping customers with regard to merchandising, product imagery, navigation, product page layout and the shopping basket and checkout process.

Hot on the heels of our announcements concerning the nine Scotts & Co brands (here and here) – I wanted to flag an announcement we made today relating to Kiddicare.

Kiddicare are the leading online supplier of nursery products, and they purchased SAFE™ with a view to evolving its online capabilities and optimising the customer experience whilst significantly lowering the risks traditionally associated with launching or replacing an existing eCommerce platform.

Our online business accounts for 80% of our revenues and our plans for growth are aggressive.  We replaced our existing platform with SAFE™ as we needed to obtain control of our eCommerce business.  Our online plans are sophisticated and we need to address our requirements with a higher degree of autonomy, flexibility and responsiveness to change.

Scott Weavers-Wright, Partner, Kiddicare

Since the new eCommerce solution went live, Kiddicare have been voted online nursery retailer of the year by Mother and Baby magazine and a recent online survey completed by 30,000 customers highlighted 98% would recommend Kiddicare.com.

The complete press release is here.