Taken from Retail Week - February 2009
Retailers’ websites are increasingly offering consumers advice before they buy. But how good are retailers at replicating in-store product advice online?
When you want to choose a product to buy on a website and the product description doesn’t answer all your questions, where do you turn? Retail Week tested the product information and customer service tools available on eight popular sites to see whether they could transform undecided shoppers into converted customers.
The results show that some retailers are putting a huge amount of time and effort into creating content to help customers make informed purchasing decisions. Others have implemented more interactive systems, with mixed results.
However, in the case of the highest scoring retailers we discovered that it’s now possible to get as good, if not better, product advice online than you would get in many stores.
Highlights from the research involved in this report include a sensible discussion via instant messaging with a customer services assistant at Comet and a much less sensible discussion – if you can call it that – with an automated agent on Ikea’s website.
Another interesting area was retailers’ responses to emails. Despite the industry’s reputation for not serving customers very well this way, retailers provided helpful and timely responses.
Click here to read the rest of the article, and see how Retail Week scored Boots, Comet, Figleaves, Net-A-Porter, Ikea, Mothercare, DIY.com and Tesco Direct for their customer service tools.
Posted February 25th, 2009 by acansick | In category Online | No Comments yet
I was interested to read the views of Frank Lord (VP EMEA at ATG) on the eCommerce landscape in 2009. Here are a few of our shared thoughts on the subject:
With retail having such a bad time at the moment, which direction should the industry be heading in? A great pricing policy is not enough to guarantee customers head towards your store. Service is important, but even this is not enough. In today’s environment, customers demand both price and service in the channel of their choice.
Multi Channel
Often used to summarise bricks and clicks, the multi channel reality is far deeper and more difficult to achieve. Retailers have been quick to adopt innovations like “click and collect” but this is only one small step of a long multi-channel journey. A consistent and continuous customer approach is the end game whether it be in-store, online, mobile, phone or chat. To be able to provide a personalised, one-to-one relationship with your customer is something many organisations will be striving for over the course of the year.
Social Networking
Last year we saw social networking have a real impact on the eCommerce world. The ability to tap in to like-minded customers who are all potential brand advocates is a compelling story. Whilst there are a wide range of tools and possibilities available, commercial and economic pressures will dictate that retailers will have to think long and hard as to where they will see the maximum return on their investment. However, those that do embrace a more likely to enhance their relationship with existing customers but equally importantly, also attract new ones.
The Future
While 2009 will continue to see retailers struggle, those that manage the customer lifecycle most effectively and embrace new technology such as social networking are most likely to stand out.
Posted February 24th, 2009 by acansick | In category Online | No Comments yet
I found an interesting service yesterday call Hab.la. It allows you to chat with visitors on your website.
Let’s say Dave is searching for a certain type of blue t-shirt on your website but he isn’t sure about the washing process. He can click on the chat window (and providing someone is available) ask his questions.
The clever bit is that the communication is done between Hab.la and your current instant messaging system. For me it’s Gtalk. The setup is really easy, just add a small piece of Javascript to your website template and then you can change the standard greetings and positioning.
Enough waffle, check out the live example on my personal website Totallyrich.To sign-up or find out more visit the Hab.la website.
Posted July 25th, 2008 by acansick | In category Online | No Comments yet
The Wordcamp UK weekend was a great success in Birmingham. I would like to thank everyone who attended, presented and organised the first ever Wordcamp UK.
A special mention for Tony Scott who was the main organiser of the event.
Here’s a photo of The Studio:
If you would like to see notes and find out more about the topics we discussed visit the Wordcamp wiki.
Posted July 21st, 2008 by acansick | In category Online | 2 Comments »
