We’ve just started working with technology business AIMES Grid Services to advise bu

We have conducted research into North West retail businesses with turnovers of between £1million and £5million and how they are competing online.  These are the companies that should see maybe local store offerings transformed by national reach online. In the North West alone, we estimate there are circa 400 of these mid-range retailers who are missing out on the increased sales which transacting online could bring.

Importantly what is the potential lost revenue from this?  As a starting point, most of these retailers should be capable of generating an extra 10 per cent of sales by moving into transacting online. Again we conservatively estimate that collectively they are missing out on £40million a year in lost revenue.

You can safely add a nought onto that figure to give you the national picture – and all because retailers have been unable to justify the cost or do not have the in-house expertise to set up an e-tail platform.

But innovation and technological advances mean that businesses who couldn’t afford to start selling online just a year or so ago can find a solution which will help them compete.  Cloud computing and next generation, energy efficient digital architecture means that there are new cost-effective ways to replicate and even improve on the services offered by traditional software providers.  Set up and running costs can now be up to 50 per cent lower than traditional solutions – and some proactive universities now offer two-year subsidised secondments, providing you with the manpower to roll out your e-tail site.

Now that buying online has become second nature to a growing percentage of UK shoppers, the inevitable question is just how far internet shopping will permeate into the retail landscape.  Many of the High Street’s major players are already using the web as an additional sales platform – not only as an extra customer service but also giving them a significant advantage over smaller competitors.  The retail climate is tough enough for many small to mid-range businesses as it is, without having to compete on an uneven playing field.

We’ve just started working with technology business AIMES Grid Services to advise businesses with turnovers of between £1million and £5million how they can compete – and the research we’ve completed shows the startling extent of the picture.  In the North West alone, there are 400 mid-range retailers who are missing out on the increased sales which transacting online can bring – and collectively they are missing out on £40million a year in lost revenue.  You can safely add a nought onto that figure to give you the national picture – and all because retailers have been unable to justify the cost or do not have the in-house expertise to set up an e-tail platform.  As a starting point, most of these retailers should be capable of generating an extra 10 per cent of sales by moving into transacting online.

But innovation and technological advances mean that businesses who couldn’t afford to start selling online just a year or so ago can find a solution which will help them compete.  Cloud computing and next generation, energy efficient digital architecture means that there are new cost-effective ways to replicate and even improve on the services offered by traditional software providers.  Set up and running costs can now be up to 50 per cent lower than traditional solutions – and some proactive universities now offer two-year subsidised secondments, providing you with the manpower to roll out your e-tail site.

Increasingly retailers need an on-line platform built around their specific needs, both current and future, but at an affordable cost.  Across the country there are retailers, ranging from the very small upwards, who perceive the need for their business to be selling online but have not be able to resource this vital platform, particularly in the current economic climate.  But this is just the time that such a move is vital to protect the future of many of these businesses by serving their customers better and defending themselves competitively.

In previous years it has been predicted to be the Monday of the first full week in December, but although the 8th was big last year the 15th surpassed it.  This phenomena is caused by

• Monday is always peak trading day of the week for remote retailing
• Gradually increasing confidence in delivery close to the date.
• Improved delivery speed and reliability for major
• With Xmas on a Friday, most people will look to clear their major online purchase decisions the week before, with last minute store shopping still an option for four days prior to the big day.

The ongoing postal strike disputes may be the only thing to bring this forward this year.

IT director Steve Goodheart said: “All across the country IT bosses are sitting there knowing that they are falling behind their competitors because they need to go online but not doing anything about it because they believe they do not have the time, money or resources to cope and will never catch up.”

The research concluded that the “myths” surrounding going online could leave many companies too far behind to catch up when the current economic downturn ends.

MYTH 1: IT directors fear the battle to convince colleagues that going online won’t cannibalise sales at existing stores.

MYTH 2: They have convinced themselves that they don’t have the knowledge within the company or the manpower to devote staff to the project and create a champion who will galvanise the organisation and make things happen.

MYTH 3: They can see the extra cost of going online but can’t see where the extra revenue will come from.

MYTH 4: They fear having to throw all their IT resources at a long-term project which will have an unknown benefit – and they won’t be able to cope.

MYTH 5: They don’t want to get their hands dirty and have an online relationship with customers, and the extra work involved in dealing with their emails and drawing up customer databases.

MYTH 6: The lack of a product delivery service/infrastructure and the logictics of setting one up will unravel all their good work.

Transaction was formed a year ago by two former Littlewoods executives, who helped the retail giant pioneer internet retailing in 1999 and who each have more than 20 years’ experience in remote home retailing.

They have been involved in the launch of 15 retail websites which now deliver annual net sales exceeding £1 billion.

Transaction Partnership has published a report dispelling the myths, which is available here

Richard Blanchard, marketing director of Transaction, said: “The list we have produced will help clear the fog in their mind and reassure them that the process isn’t overbearing.”

IT-Director.com

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.