Latest E-commerce content from Econsultancy

Start Me Up! A profile of Shoply

2012-02-09T13:28:00+00:00

In one sentence, what is Shoply?

Shoply is a social shopping marketplace which brings together small brands and local business with customers looking to discover and support them.

What problems does Shoply solve?

Shoply makes it quick and easy for small retailers to open an online shop, generate traffic and make sales.

Shoply takes away the technical pain and expense of building an e-commerce site, removes marketing costs by providing free social marketing tools and helps grow retailers sales by giving them access to the Shoply Marketplace, a new sales channel.

When and why did you launch it?

Shoply launched in 2011 with the goal of democratising selling online and making buying online social and fun.

We had felt for a long time that opening a shop and selling online was far too expensive and complicated. We could see the pain small retailers were going through trying get a shop up and running and then market and drive traffic to them.

We felt their frustration in being unable to make full use of the increasing social media tools which are becoming available.

Shoply exists to provide retailers everything they need to sell online efficiently and profitably. Our service spans from software and marketing tools to an ongoing stream of customers.

Who is your target audience?

We are looking to be the online shopping marketplace of choice for small brands and local businesses and those looking to discover and buy from them.

What are your immediate goals?

For retailers our primary goal is to continue to simplify and improve their e-commerce experience. We're also concentrating on providing them new social media marketing tools so they can promote their shop and products more efficiently and to a wider audience.

In addition, we are focused on growing the buy-side of the marketplace so we can drive them more traffic and generate them ever increasing sales.

For buyers, we are working to ensure the marketplace offers a broad range of products from small brands and local businesses worldwide. We are also focused on making Shoply more socially engaging and curated.

Our recent launch of buyer profiles, wish lists and personalised marketplace recommendations based on taste and social signals have been strong steps in that direction.

What were the biggest challenges involved in building Shoply?

Supporting thousands of small retailers is technically complicated, as is overseeing payments on their behalf. We are lucky to have a team of strong engineers who have dealt with that magnificently.

How have you funded the project?

Shoply was boot-strapped for it's first year and recently raised funding from Venture Capital investors in the UK & US.

How will the company make money?

Shoply charges a 10% commission on sales made through the marketplace. Retailers also have the option to upgrade to a Premium Account for £14.99 a month.

The Premium Account offers various benefits such as featured marketplace status and advanced analytics.

Who is in the team and what does it look like?

We are a small team based in London. The majority of our time is spent on product development and retailer support. We are currently actively recruiting engineers, designers and marketers.

Where would you like to be in one, three and five year’s time?

Our goal is to provide small businesses worldwide a quick to setup and easy to manage online sales channel.

Looking out a few years we hope to be the dominant online social shopping marketplace bringing together hundreds of thousands of retailers and millions of customers each month to discover, transact and connect with each other.

Useful e-commerce trends: the promo strip

2012-02-09T12:01:00+00:00

The Promo Strip

Here's an example of the most basic version, from Play.com:

That's it. A simple strip of key information that appears under the top navigation of a site, performing a roughly similar function as a direct mail Johnson Box.

Sometimes these promote key selling points of the site or the brand itself, other times they highlight current promotions, though really they're a nice way to display info that you want *every* visitor to the site to see.

The benefits of placing these under the top navigation are:

They appear on every page, so no matter where someone lands on the site they see it.
Even if visitors are on a low screen resolution, they still see it immediately.
The top navigation is where visitors are looking, so - whether they register it consciously or not - almost everyone sees it.

11 More Examples

Below are 11 more examples of the trend. In each screengrab, the promo strip is highlighted in green.

John Lewis

There's a theme among the biggest retailers to use the strip for delivery messaging.

John Lewis promote their 'free delivery' threshold, their 'click to collect' & 'international delivery' info, along with their famous 'Never Knowingly Undersold'.

Evans

Evans follow the trend with Delivery & Returns information, but also include a call to action to sign up to their email list.

Topshop

Again, Topshop opt for the 'Free UK Delivery' & an 'international delivery' promo.

House of Fraser

House of Fraser copycat John Lewis (or maybe it was the other way round) with 'store collection', 'free delivery', and 'international delivery' all promoted prominently here.

Debenhams

And again, Debenhams follows along with Free Delivery, store collection, and international delivery.

Interesting variations on the theme:

Other than the standard 'free delivery over £XX, pick up in store', here are a few variations from retailers who've gone a little further.

Marks & Spencer

M&S step things up nicely from their competitors, showing international and UK delivery info, but also highlighting current promotions in an area every site visitor will see.

M&S almost always has sales on some areas of the site, and this allows the retailer to flag these to everyone who lands on the site.

Boux Avenue:

Another retailer showing their delivery and returns info, but Boux Avenue is worth a mention as - whereas other retailers have lumped the promo strip on top of their existing design - Boux have folded it very neatly in with the overall look/theme of the site.

Naked Wines

Naked's version differs slightly from others. Firstly, it's above the navigation. Secondly, it introduces some urgency and a deadline with their 'Order in the next XX minutes for next day delivery' call to action.

Penhaligon's

Penhaligon's fill this area of dead space in its layout with 'free delivery' info, but also - very usefully for a heavily gifted brand - promotes its free gift wrapping service here.

Pen Heaven

As with Naked Wines, Pen Heaven again focuses on urgency, offering same day engraving for orders before a particular time. It also features customer reviews heavily here; great for a smaller brand that visitors may not have heard of.

Kiddicare

Kiddicare is probably the UK's leading baby product website. it also leads the way here with its promo strip.

First, it beats out all of the standard 'delivery' promos, with next day delivery in '1 hour slots'. Second, it shows off the 365 day return policy. Third, Kiddicare offers a price match promise:

Taking it far further, the retailer has added these strips down either side of the main content:

These strips are hidden if you're on a smaller resolution (eg 1024x768). For anyone on a larger monitor, they reinforce the price match & fast despatch, but also show off their many awards, and promote their 119,000 product reviews.

Summary

As you can see, these have popped up all over the place. They're a very simple addition to highlight features or info you want to show off to all of your visitors.

If you run an e-commerce site, and haven't already tried this, it's worth testing. If you're already running this with the bog standard 'free delivery over £xx', it's worth trialing some other ideas to see the impact they have. There are some nice extensions to this too: personalising them to include discount codes depending on traffic source, etc.

If you're willing to A/B test it, it's probably worth paying more attention to the impact it has on 'new visitors' or first time buyers, rather than your overall conversion rate.

Do leave a comment if you've seen any other interesting examples of this, or had any experience yourself around results.

Domino's UK says 13% of digital sales come from tablet or smartphone

2012-02-09T11:42:00+00:00

Mobile has proved to be a hugely successful avenue for Domino’s; the company’s iPhone app alone has generated over £10m in sales in the past year and now accounts for 4.1% of all online orders.

Domino's head of commercial systems Paul Francis, says that the brand lends itself brilliantly to mobile retail.

13% of all digital sales come though a tablet or smartphone so we know that for many customers, mobile is the preferred way of ordering. We have ambitious plans for 2012 and I am delighted that we can offer this new app for the Windows Phone 7 platform. We look forward to hearing what our customers think.”

Whereas Domino’s multimedia manager Nick Dutch highlighted that this new app release, built by Vexed Digital, is a response to developing consumer trends and staying "ahead of the game".

With WP7 we see a great opportunity to get into the hands of loyal Nokia fans, who will be upgrading as WP7 launches."

Back in September we reviewed Domino’s iPad app, which to this day provides a significant advantage for the company over its main rival, Pizza Hut - which has not done anything with mobile at all (in the UK at least).

Like the iPhone version, the iPad app (developed by Somo) is well designed and intuitive to use, and the larger screen allows it to use high resolution images of its pizzas.

The brand also released a second app in the app in the US in November. Named Pizza Hero, it’s a game format that times how long it takes for you to virtually top a pizza, with points awarded for performance.

Once you've passed levels one through five, affectionately nicknamed Pizza School, other players will get a chance to rate your performance. Players can then, of course, order a real delivery through the app.

Domino's also announced today that it was reviewing its digital and direct marketing account. A large proportion of Domino's marketing budget is spent on digital advertising, with nearly half of its pizza sales now made online.

The Four Seasons site is beautiful, but not for disabled users

2012-02-08T14:20:00+00:00

Presumably the target audience ('every user' according to Four Seasons) should include those with disabilities who may have to adjust the presentation (such as increasing the font size) or use assistive technology such as screen readers or switches.

Indeed, as outlined recently in another area of the travel sector, sites that fail to do this can not only lose revenues and suffer PR damage but also be at the wrong end of a legal action.

Although not a comprehensive accessibility check alone, simple audit tools such as WAVE 3.0 and the Accessibility Toolbar can quickly reveal some of the main problems, and we have included some images to show this.

The main accessibility issues uncovered can be summarised as follows:-

Inaccessible functions for keyboard users.
Poor colour contrast.
New windows opening without warning.
Missing/inappropriate alt text.
Inaccessible forms/poor error reporting.

We take a look at a few of these below.

Alternative text on images

Assistive technologies such as screen readers are very clever, but they cannot interpret images on their own.

The most basic accessibility requirement is to provide alternative text (ALT text) on all images and similar content to allow them to be interpreted by the screen reader.

The site makes three main mistakes in this area:

1. Alt text is missing entirely on many images especially on pages describing the hotels.

Many images that should have descriptive alternative text have only a null Alt text which will not describe the image.

For instance, the screen reader user could benefit from knowing that this is a picture of two golfers walking (and there are many other similar examples).

For some images where they have provided a descriptive Alt text, it is inappropriate.

On a page about meetings, an image shows catering for a meeting and has the unhelpful Alt text of “Accommodation image”.

Furthermore this same Alt text was used repeatedly on pages within the site, potentially causing more confusion for screen reader users who may think they are seeing the same image in multiple locations across the site.

On a more serious note, this suggests that the underlying coding is being lazily copied and pasted without due care and attention.

Giving warning of opening new pages

As shown in the image below from an accessibility checking tool, many links opening new windows do not provide any indication of this.

It also shows another missing Alt text:

For visually disabled users with screen readers the unannounced opening up of new browsers or tabs can be very confusing.

They may be unable to see that a new browser has opened, and may wish to return to the previous page. However, the back button will not work since there is no browser history to return to.

Most accessible sites either avoid opening new browser windows unless absolutely necessary, or they indicate appropriately that a new window will open.

Inaccessible navigation from assumed use of mouse interaction

No doubt the designers of the site use a mouse but they should not assume that all users of the site can. Keyboard navigation is difficult or impossible in many places, blocking these users from the main site content.

Currently these issues make the site unusable by both keyboard and users of screen readers or other assistive technologies which mimic keyboards.

This begins on the homepage, where maps indicating world regions are not accessible by keyboard users, but are only if they are clicked on.

When using keyboard navigation many of the link destinations are unclear (for example - http://www.fourseasons.com/# ) making it hard for users to choose which links to follow.

When tabbing through a page, there is no visual change of style to indicate which link has keyboard focus. Therefore such users have poor indication of their location on the page, removing important feedback.

Also there is no “skip to content” link near the start of the page navigation which is very helpful to allow non-mouse users to move immediately to the page content. Instead they need to tab through (or listen to) the standard set of navigation at the top of each page.

Perhaps most importantly for the business and conversions, the booking engine is not accessible to keyboard users.

The booking engine often appears as a pop-up window, and the keyboard tab sequence takes the user back to the underlying page, or worse they trap the user within the booking engine, neither allowing them to complete a booking nor navigate back to the underlying page.

Screen reader users would have no awareness of this making this feature unusable to them.

There are several other accessibility barriers in the site including colour contrast issues and the presentation of error messages and mandatory fields on the booking forms.

Conclusion

Surprisingly for such a large brand aiming to serve the needs of every customer with their new site, Four Seasons does not seem to have considered web accessibility during the design.

The site has issues with all of the four POUR principles of the WCAG 2.0 guidelines (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust). Indeed, Four Seasons does not even include an accessibility statement on the site to describe measures they have taken to address web accessibility and how to use the relevant accessibility features.

Some of the issues such as missing Alt text are relatively easy to fix post-launch, but many others that are integrated with the navigation and interaction design will be more difficult.

Hopefully, Four Seasons will be prioritising these shortcomings for future revisions to the site and genuinely make its online services accessible to every user.

Special thanks to my colleague Jamie Sands who led the accessibility review of the site.

Users see 15% increase in revenue when using Ecwid Facebook app

2012-02-08T13:59:00+00:00

Ecwid’s widget, which is fully customisable and created entirely in Ajax, can be installed in minutes – and is the second biggest e-commerce platform on Facebook. It’s second only to Payvment, which is based in the US.

Total orders made through Ecwid’s stores on Facebook increased by tenfold in 2011 and total revenue through Facebook increased by 40% year on year. Additionally, the number of fans that like Facebook pages which use Ecwid is now over 10.5m.

Overall revenue through Ecwid Stores across all channels (including blogs and websites) has grown 300% in the last 12 months, with users jumping to 140,000 – a figures that’s currently growing at over 10,000 a month.

Today the company also released an update that allows website owners to ask customers for additional information during checkout to be added to an order (such as a gift note, preferred delivery time or specific delivery instructions). Plus, they can select product options such as sizing or colour, and have greater visibility over pending PayPal orders.

The software is free to use with all of the features above for up to 100 products, and a paid version at $17 a month allows users to add affiliate tracking codes to the conversion page, view unfinished sales and show up to 20,000 products.

Ecwid founder and CEO Ruslan Fazlvev said that the tool makes it easy for people to start monetising their sites and pages with varying levels of technical expertise.

Traditionally, users would be required to build and maintain a separate e-commerce site; pay for a hosted e-commerce solution; or add additional code to add individual 'Buy Now' buttons to their site, all of which can be a time consuming and costly exercise.”

Ecwid recently upgraded its Facebook application, allowing users who manage multiple pages to view them from a single dashboard - and integrating 'Fan Gate' functionality that shows different content to users dependent on whether they 'like' a page or not.

Russian-based Ecwid received $1.5m of funding in December 2011, which it used to open a new office in the US that serves its largely American client base.

Now the company is entering the UK, with further developments on the horizon that take their lead from the Guardian’s Facebook app, meaning that Ecwid purchases will soon show up in a customer’s newsfeed.

Experience an augmented Valentine's Day with Starbucks

2012-02-07T17:29:00+00:00

While in the app, you can create a virtual AR valentine which can only be seen if the recipient scans the Valentine's Day Starbucks cup. On top of that you can send an Starbucks Card eGift through the app and schedule it to arrive on Valentine's.

This limited campaign goes beyond Starbuck's own app and integrates other social platforms including Twitter and Instagram. It all revolves around the cup itself so either way, Starbucks could see an increase in purchase during February 6 - 16 when the campaign is being run.

This is Starbucks latest offering as it further expands into mobile. Their first experiment with the Starbucks Cup Magic app came during the 2011 holiday season. In 2011, Starbucks expanded its mobile payment program to more than 9,000 US locations and rolled out the ability to send Starbucks Card eGifts.

It is a small wonder Starbucks are continuing to push into the mobile and interactive space. Last year, there were 26 million mobile transactions with $110.5 million reloaded onto Starbucks Cards directly through the mobile app. There has also been increased adoption in the mobile space by Starbuck’s customers. Mobile transactions have doubled when comparing the first 9 weeks of January when they launched and a 9 week period only 9 months later. The first quarter of 2012 also saw an increase of 11% in the US over Q1 in 2011. This is primarily due to a 9% increase in comparable store sales. Though Starbucks haven't detailed how much of that is due to mobile, it is easy to assume it is a contributing factor.

Of course, this type of campaign only works for those customers who notice they can interact with the cup itself. As this is still new territory for consumers in the US, it will take time for them to expect this interactivity with packaging. In any case, Starbucks is ahead of the game in the mobile retail space and will only gain to benefit when other retailers follow suit.

Amazon overtakes HMV as UK's top entertainment retailer

2012-02-07T16:30:21+00:00

For the same period in 2010 HMV took 19.6% of the market and Amazon 19.4%.

Judging by the amount of column inches waxing lyrical about HMV's financial woes of late, it may come as a surprise to some that it retains its place as the nation’s number two entertainment retailer.

It made losses of £36m last year and has had to close around 30 stores in recent months while trying to offload its live music venues.

Despite a reliance on its physical sales and a recent plan to increase the amount of vinyl records in-store, HMV has made a belated effort to embrace digital media.

In November it launched an on-demand video streaming service to complement its digital music store, but it faces stiff competition from established online brands like iTunes, Amazon and LoveFilm.

Amazon’s rise to the top spot is no surprise as it consistently ranks among the top brands for customer satisfaction and often undercuts offline retailers on price.

With rumours that the e-tailer plans to open a brick-and-mortar store in Seattle, it could at some point be taking on HMV in its natural habitat.

Kantar’s data also shows that supermarkets are gaining a strong foothold in the entertainment market.

Following HMV, the next four retailers were Tesco (11.4%), Asda (8.1%), Game (7.7%) and Sainsbury’s (5.2%).

Play.com now has 4.9% of the sector, iTunes has just 3% and Morrisons has 2.7%.

Overall the home entertainment market declined by just under 4% year-on-year in December, but this was less than the 8% fall witnessed 12 months previously according to the figures.

JUMP 2012 London

2012-02-07T15:59:14+00:00

JUMP, now in its third year, is a one-day conference for senior marketers looking to join up on and offline data, technologies, campaigns, agencies and creative. If the last decade was all about figuring out digital, the next is about integrating it, dissolving it into the mix and finding new hybrid strategies that combine on and offline.

JUMP brings together over 1500 digital and offline and marketers who are not just learning to speak the same language, they are their sharing data, insight, strategies and successes.

JUMP is a fast-moving, content-rich symposium packed with exciting new insight from top marketers across every industry wanting to learn about how to join up online and offline.

Photos from JUMP

JUMP is all about more effective marketing across channels...

Using search marketing to improve TV campaign effectiveness
Doubling catalogue sales using insights from web analytics
Driving call centre improvements with web metrics
Generating media coverage via online buzz (and vice versa)
Optimising marketing budgets with the right mix
Leveraging customer insight from all channels
Driving up ROI

See what happened at JUMP

Groupon bolsters personalised shopping with Adku acquisition

2012-02-07T12:33:04+00:00

In a blog post announcing the move, Adku CEO Ajit Varma said the company had initially been in talks to bring Groupon its technology before realising the team “wanted to be a deeper part of a company that people love.”

We’re looking forward to joining forces with Groupon to have an impact on millions of users and to share in Groupon’s vision of reshaping local commerce.”

The focus on local and social commerce has been at the forefront of Groupon’s recent activities which has seen the voucher site snap up a number of companies and begin to roll out kiosks in tourist hot spots.

Last month we reported on the acquisition of Mertado, a social shopping company that helps customers discover new products.

This followed the purchase of Campfire Labs, another social commerce startup that was in the process of “building technologies towards this goal of having shared experiences with friends.”

The combination of social and location-based technologies should allow Groupon to offer users a personalised e-commerce experience, but it still doesn’t overcome inherent suspicions around the long term viability of voucher sites.

Everyone's read the horror stories of vendors overwhelmed by the sudden demand created by Groupon and the like, while their ability to create repeat business comes under constant criticism.

In relation to its outdoor kiosks at least, there's no suggestion of building customer loyalty, since these target tourists that want to grab a one-time deal while on holiday.

And while retailers who rely on tourists may be pleased with the boost in passing trade, it begs the question- again - is it wise to carry on rolling out new commercial avenues instead of streamline a more valuable longer term strategy?

To further muddy the waters, Groupon is on the receiving end of a Office of Fair Trading investigation after the company was found to have breached UK ad regulations 48 times in less than a year.

Among the most unsavoury accusations included in the investigation is the fact the ASA banned a promotion for cosmetic surgery, stating that it "pressured" consumers into making potentially life-changing decisions in just a few hours.

This flurry of acquisitions may be an attempt by Groupon to reinvent its user experience and offer a more satisfactory service for customer and retailer alike, providing more relevant deals that could encourage repeat business.

Or, it could be a way to simply sell more vouchers regardless of customer loyalty.

Either way, it’s going to be make or break for Groupon this year as its new investors push for the company to keep growing its profit margins.

The publication of its Q4 profits tomorrow will certainly make for interesting reading.

First look at eBay's use of Hunch data: infographic

2012-02-07T11:30:00+00:00

This will in time enable the company to move beyond standard item-to-item recommendations and use a broader variety of members’ online tastes to suggest interesting items to purchase.

It's the first we’ve seen on the integration of eBay and Hunch data, which this time looks at the differences between people who have bought or sold on eBay, and those who haven’t yet. It’s probably heartening to eBay that 66% of Hunch users already have.

For now, this is just a fun teaser to show what can be done with the 85m responses to Hunch’s ‘Teach Hunch About You’ questions, but before long we should see some really interesting targeting and personalisation integrated into eBay. We can’t wait.