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Creating a single view of stock: five key considerations

Adopting a single view of your stock across retail channels is an essential precursor to a true multichannel strategy.

Alongside a single view of the customer, it is a fundamental foundation in integrating online and offline operations.

Even as a standalone project, a single view of stock can be highly beneficial. Understanding your stock in real-time across your retail channels can enable utilisation of innovative fulfilment models: click and collect, multichannel returns, as well as new and valuable customer service and merchandising solutions.

Whilst understanding your stock may sound simple, it can be quite the opposite.

This is particularly relevant in environments where offline and online retail functions have developed as essentially independent businesses, as is the case for many clicks-and-mortar retailers.

In these scenarios, store distribution warehouses might operate entirely separately from online fulfilment, with in-store stock tracked separately from its online equivalent and even online and offline returns accounted for differently.

Q&A: Will Critchlow on the future of search

Will Crtichlow founded Distilled with Duncan Morris in 2005. Since then, he has consulted with some of the world’s largest organisations and most famous websites, spoken at most major industry events and regularly appeared in local and national press. 

We enjoyed his presentation at last year’s Future of Digital Marketing conference so much that we invited him back to speak at tomorrow’s event. 

I’ve been asking Will for a quick preview of his presentation, and his views on the future of search, and more broadly, the direction that Google is taking as a company.

Why Norman Records is a masterclass of ecommerce design

Obviously I’m biased. I buy a lot of records. I write about music on a daily basis. I’m a sucker for online shopping. Therefore Norman Records hits my sweet spot.

There are plenty of other record stores out there that have a perfectly acceptable online presence, but most are in dire need of a responsive design, and none of them are as unique, personality-filled and containing quite as many brilliant idiosyncratic features as Norman Records. 

This isn’t intended as a niche post that’s only relevant to the vinyl obsessed out there, I’m covering this store because there’s so many features and lessons here that any ecommerce site can learn from.

The move from the old site to a newly responsive one was not without it challenges. I talked to Norman Records directors Phil Leigh and Nathon Raine yesterday and their opinions and access to stats are scattered throughout this review. 

tennis

How Wimbledon is using big data to engage millions

With the sporting focus of the summer firmly set on the football World Cup, some may have forgotten about the imminent sporting championships on our own doorstep.

In a few days’ time, Wimbledon will open its gates to the world’s best tennis stars, together with almost half a million tennis fans.

The number engaging with the two-week tournament digitally is set to be exponentially higher until the gates close on the 6th July. 

The rise of freemium apps

The freemium model is in the ascendancy when it comes to apps.

Paid apps peaked in 2013 according to Jon Reynolds, CEO of SwiftKey. SwiftKey provides an app bringing smart prediction technology to your mobile keyboard and, indeed, has itself gone down the freemium route.

The app used to cost $4 and was consistently in the paid charts, now it’s free to download, with in-app purchases available.

So, what are the reasons for and consequences of the rise of freemium apps?

The four Ps of mobile

How best to explain the power of mobile in 2014? What factors make for a successful mobile start-up?

Here are the four Ps of mobile.

How fashion ecommerce retailers can reduce online returns

How a company handles its online returns is one of the trickiest areas of ecommerce customer service. 

How helpful, flexible and clear you are about your returns process can mean the difference between encouraging repeat customers and sending them off to a competitor.

There’s an excellent article on the best practice of handling returns written by editor-in-chef Graham Charlton which highlights 14 ways that companies can avoid annoying their customers.

But what if you want to reduce the amount of returns your business deals with, particularly if you’re a fashion retailer that traditionally deals with a higher volume of returns than other businesses? 

Are there ways that you can help consumers find the right size product straight away, therefore saving you and the customer unnecessary trial and error?

Let’s take a look at some examples, including some from our own case study database, to see how companies are reducing the amount of returns they receive.

Death to content: long live the editor

If the saying goes that content is King, today’s warring agendas, varying competence and vulgar chaos would put Game of Thrones to shame.

In the effort to rule their industry, almost every player has ended up churning out the same old slurry by neglecting a key element of creating great stories.

It comes down to this: the world doesn’t need more content, it needs better editors.

A good editor establishes a fair, consistent point of view. They bring priorities, standards. They understand when to say no — and why.

It’s a concept that (forgive me) Steve Jobs brought to Apple, and rings through its most heartfelt advertising.

How the top brands use Twitter for social customer care

Although they may not have been originally set up as such, branded Twitter accounts will always attract customer service enquiries, comments and of course complaints. 

Imagine you’ve been stung by a sudden and unfair rise in your energy bill. You try emailing the energy provider to find out what’s going on. You receive no reply. You spend ages trying to find the relevant telephone number on its website.

You then make the call only to be handed off to multiple customer service agents after waiting in a queue for an enraging amount of time. That is if you’ve phoned within its operating hours.

It used to be that if you wanted to get yourself heard, you had to write a letter. There was an assumption that ‘the man’ considered someone who’d take time to sit down, draft a letter and walk down to the post box as a person who was really hacked off and therefore would end up being much more of a thorn in the company’s side.

Now there’s a new way. A much swifter, more immediate and best of all more public way.

The rise of social media and the need for every brand, ecommerce business and service provider to have a presence on the most popular channels has meant that consumers have a direct line to that business.

Five ingenious marketing rebrands that changed society

In 2007 researchers conducted an experiment where subjects sipped the same wine from two different bottles.

The only variable was the price tag, the wine’s market value. Not only did the subjects say they enjoyed the wine from the more expensive bottle, their neural activity showed heightened pleasure associated with better flavor and taste. 

As Rory Sutherland said: 

How do you get adults to enjoy wine? Why, it’s simple. Pour it from an expensive bottle.

This is essentially the power of brand. Perceived value can potentially affect experience more than the actual quality of the product.

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