Technically it is becoming much easier and more cost effective to talk to the online customer in real-time or offer an instant phone or email back response system. The trend is growing and will rightly become a key point of difference for successful retailers in the future.Retailers must beware however, that the technology doesn’t make the customer feel uneasy and isn’t perceived as being too intrusive rather than helping to engage them.

Smart technology can allow online retailers to sense when a frustrated customer is about to prematurely abandon a transaction by monitoring as they click-through pages and giving them a pop-up ‘Click to Call’ option when their movement stops.Some websites even go one step further – providing a message at the optimum moment from a real-life customer service operator, poised and ready to interact with the customer, guiding them towards a purchase.

However, many online customers are technology novices and you can almost picture them looking around the room, startled, wondering who is watching them. They feel unnerved – and that Big Brother moment could be enough to make them leave the site.The other major challenge with personalisation is when it goes wrong. Amazon, for example, suggests options to buy based on previous purchases – but imagine how disconcerting that could be if you keep being advised to buy kitchen equipment simply because you’ve bought a new coffee grinder for your mother-in-law’s birthday?

Golf is my passion – not cooking – but Amazon doesn’t know it – and that is the kind of thing that can put off potential purchasers. I believe the most customer-friendly use of personalised interaction comes at the most important part of the online purchasing experience – the check-out, when customers are most likely to have a genuine need for help.Just as a customer in a traditional store looks for an assistant when they have a problem, they also welcome real-time help when they are having trouble using their credit card whilst trying to buy online.

A real-time pop-up option offering to guide them towards a solution is a genuine customer service and helps convert some of online retail’s 65 per cent of abandoned baskets into sales.For those customers who do want to maximise interaction with a product or brand, the new twist in e-commerce is using open Id’s, such as Facebook Connect. Using one simple log-in for a wide variety of sites is very consumer friendly and allows e-tailers to benefit from the pool of information gathered as the customer travels around the web.

They can direct purchases back to their Facebook mini-feed where they can share experiences, comments and reviews with others if they want to. The key, just as in traditional stores, is to give the customer what they want – and don’t fuss over them like an over-enthusiastic sales assistant.

Steve Goodheart, partner at Transaction Partnership

e-pay news

Steve Goodheart of Liverpool-based online analysts, Transaction Partnership, said many retailers risk missing out on the internet sales boom through the over use of tools such as real-time interaction which allows them to talk directly to shoppers while they are online.

The Business desk.com

13th July 2009

http://www.thebusinessdesk.com/northwest/

http://www.thebusinessdesk.com/northwest/news/14128-online-retailers-urged-to-keep-it-simple.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NorthWest_13th_Jul_2009_-_Daily_E-mail

These consumers are from all age ranges and backgrounds and their thirst for value means they are shopping in a fickle manner, using the power of web search to constantly track value from retailers.

But the great danger for the High Street is that, once this wider set of consumers sees the web as the best source of a bargain they will continue to shop this way, even when the downturn ends.

And that is before the lower carbon footprint of home shopping is taken into account.

Dramatic signs of this consumer shift include:

• Up to 90 per cent of the growth in fashion retail-related traffic on internet search engines has been driven by value searches, whether that be discount codes, vouchers or just plain bargain-hunting.

• 89 per cent of grocery shoppers now expect offers as a standard part of their shopping experience

• Debenhams has just launched Outlet, an all-year round clearance store on their site as a result of this change in consumer behaviour.

The fact that many of these customers are now choosing to close the deal online for their clothing items, both branded and unbranded, after finding what they want at the right price, is great news for both discount retailers and those retailers providing great value.

But once online shopping has made it easier for customers to become even more price sensitive, it is highly unlikely that they will go back to their previous shopping habits when they have more money in their pockets again.

The stark conclusion of a KPMG/Retail Think Tank debate last year was “that the current retail culture of constant discounting, sales and promotions is unsustainable and likely to lead to increasing numbers of insolvencies. Retail in the UK is at a turning point and requires a new set of strategies to survive.

UK retail sales fell in March compared with a year earlier, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) has said.

Like-for-like sales, which do not include sales from new shops, fell 1.2% – the ninth fall in sales in the past 10 months.

The BRC said continued economic uncertainty was leading consumers to tighten their belts.

I can foresee a time when fashion shoppers will rely on price comparison websites to drive them to the best price, putting those retailers not featured on these sites at a serious disadvantage

So how on earth can the High Street compete? The answer is in continuing to improve value and the consumer shopping experience.

The provision of high quality in-store restaurants, adjoining leisure facilities, such as cinemas and bowling alleys, street entertainment and in-store experience creates a feeling of theatre around the whole shopping experience.

However, online, there are similar opportunities to keep stepping forward, utilizing the interactivity of web 2.0 and on to the rich personalisation features anticipated in web 3.0.

There are still many multi-channel store and online retail experiences that are very different (or even non-existent) and not in any way seamless for the customer. The rise of the bargain hunter may be the catalyst to some retailers taking online and multi-channel much more seriously.

Steve Goodheart is a partner with online retail analysts Transaction Partnership www.transactionpartnership.com .He helped Littlewoods go online in 1999 and has been involved in the launch of 15 retail websites, which now deliver annual net sales exceeding £1 billion. Their clients include O’Neill Europe, Matalan, Pets at Home and TJ Hughes.

Thursday 25th December 2008

The Queen’s Speech will signal the biggest ever rush to the sales on Christmas Day as customers take advantage of the lull in festivities to shop online, analysts have predicted.

Online expert Transaction Partnership, which advises retailers like Matalan and O’Neill, has pinpointed 3pm on December 25 as the key time when most cost-conscious consumers begin searching for bargains.

This is yet another piece of evidence in the armoury of multi-channel retailers, but will be unwelcome news for two big UK companies.  Asda has had to delay publishing its new Asda Direct catalogue back from October to the end of the year. “The 644-page debut catalogue is now expected to be available in time for the Christmas peak.”  Woolworths has had to stop distribution of its Big Red Book catalogue due to cost cutting measures. 

Recent research shows “consumers are spending more and more time online, seeking out experiences that are relevant, engaging, and personal. However, many Web sites make users struggle to complete simple goals, have little to no emotional punch, and fail to embrace the diversity of consumers’ wants and needs”.

To make matters worse, today’s Web organizations must often backburner projects that would improve their sites’ desirability factor in order to fix more pressing problems. As a result, the topic of desirability largely remains a mystery in the user experience community.

August 8, 2007
Desirable Online Experiences: Taking Web Sites Beyond Useful And Usable

The UK was the largest online retail market in Europe in 2007, with 27 million online shoppers spending more than €700 each online during the Christmas shopping season.  Source: Forrester