Archive for the ‘Ecommerce web design’ Category:
01 Feb
At BT Fresca, we’ve just had a peek at the stats from this year’s online Christmas sales. They reveal that retailers delivered their best ever trading figures on our FrescaCommerce Platform during Christmas 2011, with daily sales up an average 46 per cent on last year. 30 November 2011, ‘Whopping Wednesday’, was the most popular shopping day, coinciding with industrial action by many workers across the UK, followed by ‘Manic Monday’ (28 November) and ‘Cyber Monday’ (5 December).
Predictions from some commentators that Christmas Day would be more popular than Boxing Day (when post-Christmas sales are officially launched) were dumbfounded, with 26 December continuing to be the most popular post-Christmas shopping day.
We work with a whole host of retailers, having created online stores for leading fashion and lifestyle brands such as Coast, Great Little Trading Company, Habitat, Jane Norman, JJB Sports, Karen Millen, Matalan, Matches Fashion, Oasis, The Perfume Shop, Snow+Rock, Thomas Pink, TJ Hughes and Warehouse.
This was a record breaking Christmas period with the highest ever weekly, daily and hourly traffic volumes and transactions, as shoppers took full advantage of promotional activity. The two week period at the end of November and the beginning of December was considerably busier than the pronounced spike experienced in 2010. This Christmas also saw a growing trend for ‘early week’ shopping with Sunday evenings and Mondays being particularly busy. Another trend is the increasing use of ‘flash sales’ to drive traffic.
2011 showed a differing trend to previous years with a number of peaks in orders volumes as opposed to just one. It’s also interesting that the week leading up to Christmas, historically a ‘no-go’ for online retailers, is now coming into its own. Even at 20 December, there were still high order volumes, at least as high as the beginning of November, in part due to sharpened delivery strategies, giving customers confidence their orders will arrive before the big day.
While total order numbers have grown in 2011, average values of orders have dipped for many retailers, reflecting the high levels of promotional activity and re-enforcing the trend that more and more value retailers are moving online and promoting this channel to their customers.
Whether or not people were striking or working from home or simply unable to get to work because of the industrial action it seems many decided November 30 was a good time to do their Christmas shopping online.
Compared to Christmas 2010, Christmas 2011 represented Year on Year (YoY) changes in:
• Order Volume of +46%
• Order Value of +20%
• Average Order Value of -18%
Compared with last year, 2011 represented Year on Year (YoY) changes in:
• Order Volume of +58%
• Order Value of +32%
• Average Order Value of -17%
Written by Richard Vining, Head of FCP Performance
16 Nov
OK, that’s not strictly true. But when retailers got together at BT Tower recently to discuss the e-commerce journey, they were all in agreement about two things: the term e-commerce just doesn’t do justice to everything that it now incorporates and, although it’s a journey, there’s no final destination to aim for.
1. E-commerce doesn’t cover the half of it
It’s not just e-commerce anymore. In a really short space of time, we’ve gone from e-commerce to multichannel to cross-channel to merged channels to… what? Forrester suggests “agile commerce” as a catch-all for the rest of the alphabet (including, e- m- and F- commerce).
In joining up the channels, it seems e-commerce will exist as a separate discipline in a few years. But what does that actually mean for retailers?
Phil Heaton from relative newcomers Getthelabel.com, talked about creating an online business and building it up to a market leader in just three years.
Phillip Heaton, Getthelabel.com, presenting at the Next Generation Event, BT Tower
In that short space of time, he’s been astounded by the changes: “Customer expectations around delivery, for example, have changed dramatically since we began. We had what could be considered an appropriate delivery model for our business at the time, but with 90-minute fulfilment and tailored timeslots around now, we know we have to change to meet current expectations.”
2. We will never get “there”
The two most-used words at the event were e-commerce and journey. But a journey suggests a destination, unless you’re in e-commerce. Sarah Hughes joint MD at BT Fresca set the scene for the day: “We’re on a journey,” she said, “and we’ll never be nearly there.”
Sarah Hughes, BT Fresca, speaking at the Next Generation ecommerce event, BT Tower
Sound a bit daunting? Not according to Nadine Sharara, e-commerce director at Thomas Pink. Echoing the views of many in the audience, Nadine spoke enthusiastically and energetically about the never ending e-commerce journey. “I think about it, not so much as a journey,” she explained, “than as a travel experience.”
Nadine introduced the latest Thomas Pink on-site product videos and explained how these were now driving the in-store experience. And the products featured on the videos are flying off the shelves, both real and virtual, proving that a more engaging e-commerce experience is more than just cool eye candy.
Nadine Sharara, Thomas Pink, presenting at the Next Generation ecommerce event, BT Tower
The stats show that retailers who grasp this idea of an ongoing journey do better than those who get everything in place and sit back. “Your e-commerce investment needs tending,” says BT Fresca’s multichannel specialist Jason Shorrock, “you have to feed and water it.”
What else did we learn?
Most innovation in e-commerce is focused on channel integration and fulfilment. So ensuring that web orders can be picked up in store (offering an opportunity to up-sell) and integration with social channels, like Facebook, are essential.
Click and collect has been the kiss of life for the High Street. Almost all retailers have a transactional website. But retailers without a store footprint (even just a couple of flagships) look a little old fashioned. And multichannel retailers are faring better than pureplays in general.
This is a huge opportunity for multichannel retailers to fight back against pure e-commerce providers as they can provide better service, instant gratification and increasingly flexible delivery options. One of the best examples of this is Oasis, which offers a 90-minute delivery from store.
So e-commerce is just the beginning. Mix in a little multimedia, in-store wi-fi and social networking, sprinkle in some smart handheld devices and you’re there. Well, nearly there. For the moment…
Find out more about ecommerce & online marketing solutions from BT Expedite
18 Oct
The run up to the busiest time of the retail calendar officially started this weekend with the ten week countdown to Christmas! And here at BT Fresca the manic and mayhem has already started, we’ve been going off piste with Snow + Rock and going global with Aurora Fashions.
We constantly strive to help our customers, help their customers, but this week we’ve been especially hard at work playing Santa’s little helper to make the Christmas rush easier for everyone. The new mobile optimised Snow+Rock website has just gone live, making it easier for shoppers to place orders and browse on the go – fantastic if your planning to hit the slopes, or for last minute gift shopping and catching those bargains as soon as they hit the sales.
Around the globe, the Fresca fairies are busy sprinkling their e-commerce magic, already providing websites for Karen Millen, Oasis, Warehouse and Coast for the last five years in the UK and more recently going web optimised. We’ve now pushed them global launching the Karen Millen website in Germany as well as a joint website for Oasis, Warehouse and Coast where customers can shop across the brands all in one site!
Both sites are in local language that support local fulfilment, promotions, payment and customer service tailored for each specific country, and Aurora plan to roll out our platform across even more countries. The web sites will support local payment types such as direct bank transfer and invoice on delivery, and the capacity to manage fulfilment from a local distribution centre.
The Frescacommerce Platform is behind many of the world’s fastest growing and most successful e-commerce web sites. It aims to blend creativity with e-commerce best practice and to integrate back office functions like customer ordering, call centre and fulfilment, to maximise sales while giving customers an engaging online experience.
Hash Ladha, Aurora’s group multichannel director, said: “We are very impressed by the current FrescaCommerce Platform and BT’s development plans for the future. These will help underpin our own plans for growth in Europe, Asia-Pacific and beyond.”
We are very excited about these new sites going live and wish our customers all the best for the Christmas trading period.
06 Oct
The Internet Retailing conference (October 4th, Novotel, Hammersmith) always focusses on the latest on-line developments and this year revealed a growing chasm between the old and the new. What is different this time is that the new “old” is about old-fashioned, nothing to do with number of years trading.
Resting on the old-fashioned cliff-side are some relatively recent retailers, ASOS (founded in 2000), eBay (1995) together with an analog and digital media pioneer, HMV (1899). Staking claim to the new ground are traditional high street names such as Burberry (1856), Thomas Pink (1984), Aurora Fashions (Coast, 1996; Oasis, 1991 & Warehouse, 1976) mixed in with the cream of social networking Facebook (2004) and a revolutionary delivery company, Shutl (2008).
What sets them apart? A true appreciation of their customers’ multichannel lives.
For example, yesterday ex-ASOS visionary Hash Ladha, now 18 months in as multichannel director at Aurora Fashions announced the latest tranche of UK cities to be covered by his fashion industry leading 90 minute delivery service. By February 2012, 90% of the UK can order a dress late afternoon and be wearing it the same evening. Why does this make pure-play retailers like ASOS look old? Because ASOS do not have the nationwide store coverage to support this type of ship from store to home service. Nick Robertson, ASOS CEO, has long muted the possibility of a single ASOS store on Oxford Street, but even that’s a long way from the 50 or so stores required for pan-UK coverage.
The retail equivalent of Apple, Burberry’s recent tie-up with Salesforce.com underlines the absolute need to focus on your customer wherever she happens to be. In the same vein, presenting creative innovation yesterday, Nadine Sharara, e-commerce director at Thomas Pink, underscored the need for absolute quality and consistency of brand regardless of channel. The beautifully British Brideshead revisited theme of this years A/W campaign oozes the kind of high end luxury that thrives in the harshest recession. And the execution from store through to on-line is truly multichannel.
Of the keynotes that kicked off the conference yesterday, eBay sounded tired as it talked up its outlet channels and social media heritage. Conversely, head of Facebook commerce partnerships, Gavin Sathianathan, is effortlessly cool and unceasingly innovative as he describes the stories of the 800 million people that make up the Facebook world and the opportunities for retailers to join them.
So if e-commerce sounded old yesterday, true multichannel retailers are fresher than ever, buoyed by their years of trading and customer focus.
Gerald Maidment, Account Director
21 Apr
Everyone’s saying it: 2011 is the year that mobile web use will really hit the mainstream . Already there are 7.1 million1 people in the UK using the internet whilst on the go and more than 20%2 of time spent online is on mobile devices.
More than 4 million consumers3 are visiting ecommerce sites in the UK every month using mobile internet. What kind of experience are they all having?
Incredible figures when you consider that very few businesses have an online presence optimised to work well on a mobile device. The mobile revolution is moving fast and businesses need to catch up.
iPhone 5 is due in the Summer and the sales for other smartphones (many running Google’s Android OS) are already outstripping the current iPhone. Mobile is The Future and we, as designers, need to understand the new challenges that it brings.
There are some pretty obvious differences when comparing internet use on a mobile device and a regular laptop or desktop computer.
Let’s take a look at just a few of them.
The ‘fat finger’ effect – as there’s no traditional keyboard or accurate pointer, users have to hit everything with their fingers. Great, we’ve removed a barrier between us and the technology, but other than ATMs and train ticket dispensers, there is limited experience in how to do this right. Buttons needs to be big enough (have ‘affordance’) and clearly show that you’ve hit one with your finger. Sounds obvious, but if you’ve tried using a regular website on your phone, you’ll know that they can be very frustrating to use with just your fingers as implements (none of the specialised cutlery you get with your keyboard and mouse!).
Some mobile devices have really quite large screens, but they are still titchy compared to your computer. Also, the screen is portrait in format (or landscape too on an iPhone) so we’re dealing with a different format at a smaller size – this is not just a tiny monitor. The first rule is to Keep It Simple, don’t clutter the screen and allow customers to scroll to see more products or content leaving lots of room for those big buttons.
Then there’s download time. Your device might be drifting in and out of signal and there’s little more frustrating than waiting for content to download especially when you’re on the train and can’t go and make a cup of tea. Stick to the Keep It Simple rule and optimise everything, it’s simply good practise and will improve the experience for everyone.
All the while ensuring the brand experience is reflective of the main website and store experience, of course.
The internet is constantly reinventing itself and this might prove to be the most exciting change yet.
Mobile is already everywhere: I’m typing this on my iPhone from Mount Everest* (link 3). This year, mobile web is becoming THE web*.
*Not really. There is mobile coverage on Mount Everest, but I’m sat at my desk with a cup of coffee.
1 Internet Monitor Survey, Kantar Media, September 2010
2 KPMG as cited by eMarketer , December 2010
3 GSMA & ComScore, August 2010
Stats found at http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/internetstats/
