blogs.conchango.com

It's heartening, in this day and age, to see numerous top-flight retailers making significant investment, both in terms of cash and resource, in their online business. Recalling conversations which took place in the early days of this century, when a website was often seen as little more than an indulgence on the part of the marketing department, we've come a long way. This is universally seen as a Good Thing, and last year's trading numbers showed the positive impact the online 'channel' is having on the high street's bottom line; without the continued explosive growth in online business, the overall picture today would be of utter disaster.

So today's high street is a distinctly 'multichannel' one, with room temperature operations comprising of what general parlance calls the key 'channels': instore, online, call centre and perhaps, in some cases, mail order and mobile. Each business treats these with varying degrees of integration and deftness, on which more at some other time. Something that's seeming increasingly odd, though, is the way the myriad ways of interacting with a brand online are lumped into one 'channel'. Instore is somewhat easier to encapsulate like this; the interaction is fairly simple and varies little from store to store, but the mercurial nature of the online consumer is somewhat harder to pin down in this way.

Let's take a sample sales cycle as a case in point, say for example I'm getting fed up with my crappy old fridge and need a nice shiny new one with all sorts of whistles and bells and so on. A lifestyle fridge, if you will.

1. I'll probably kick off by just typing in the brand I'm after into Google. A few retailers will pop up, along with some comparison sites and the brand's home site as well. I'm initially interested in the price range, so I'll go with the most familiar retailer to start with.
2. I'll browse the retailer's site, compare a few models and possibly email some of the URLs to my other half to get her opinion.
3. Crucially, I'm not going to make a purchase yet. It's a big ticket item and I'm not going to drop a grand or more just like that. In all probability I'm going to do some more research, on review sites and at other retailers.
4. Whilst on the way home from work, I'm going to pop into a store to have a look at the model I'm considering. I'll check out the door action and generally poke it about and fiddle with it. Again, I won't buy it here, as the store's about to close and I'm fairly sure it'll be cheaper online.
5. So we're on the home straight - a quick price and delivery service comparison and I'm ready to buy.

Now, typically this would be viewed as a cycle traversing two channels. I've used both the web and the store as a research tool, eventually purchasing online. So far, so pedestrian, but think about the complexity of the online activity:

1. Search: a vastly complex environment. My initial choice of website will be entirely informed by what comes back in the top three on the page. The page I land on once I click through will also affect my behaviour: is it just the homepage or am I presented with a Big Fridge landing page?
2. Onsite Browsing: a totally different and possibly even more complex deal. At this point, the business knows exactly what I'm looking for, derived from my upstream traffic. Does it adjust my experience to account for this?
3. 3rd Party Sites: Often working on the basis of an affiliate deal, these sites need careful management to ensure a mutually profitable relationship. A good 10% of a retailer's turnover can come through this channel, so it's worth paying some serious attention to.
4. Email: A continuing frustration of mine centres around people emailing me broken links, or links which Outlook has helpfully truncated, rendering them useless, or links to dynamically generated pages which only lead to the homepage. Is this common interaction properly supported and leveraged?

So, in this brief sales cycle, I've actually used four distinctly different channels to interact with a business. The fact that I've used one interface (my PC) to do this is irrelevant. Now, for financial reporting purposes, it's fair enough to see 'the website' as one line. But in terms of operations, the opportunity in really understanding the intricacies of the interactions your customers perform with your brand, and allocating enough skilled resource to genuinely work that interaction, really shouldn't be underestimated.

So try not to see it as one distinct 'channel' - there's a lot more to it than that. Over the coming months, I'll expand on the multiple opportunities current technologies have in the retail space, but in the meantime, if you're keen to find out more about how you can make the most from your online business, drop me an email at dan.wilkinson@conchango.com.

When a retailer's business hits the rocks, everyone and his dog has an opinion. It's a rare industry whose dirty laundry is so publicly aired as that of high street retail. The announcement earlier this month that Ethel Austin was to go into administration, with the attendant loss of 181 head office jobs and 33 store closures, provoked a fair bit of 'of course, I saw that coming', and it's fair to say that, for anyone who's ever been close to this sort of thing, the story's all too familiar.

So yes, you see a sorry-looking store on the high street (or in Ethel Austin's case, the street next to the High Street), and the writing would appear to be on the wall. But what you're seeing is a symptom, not a cause, so what's the disease? Retail Week journo Amy Shields gives an excellent overview of Ethel Austin's history in this article, which is well worth a read: a concise analysis of the events leading up to the collapse of a national retailer.

Now, I'm not going to expand on this much more, but what I will say is to point out one key element of the article, which reports that in 2002, the firm's new owners 'did not change the formula, but took out costs and pumped up the profits', which is a very strange oxymoron indeed. This sort of short-term strategy will bring a business to its knees, whipping away much-needed development funding and (crucially) morale like a rug from under its feet.

Recklessly applied cost-cutting, whilst promising a result of sorts in the coming quarter, is ultimately not only unsustainable, it injects rot deep into the business. Staff morale hits zero at head office, and this soon filters out into stores. As both the fabric of the estate and the attitude of store staff slip into disrepair, customers quickly find newer, shinier, more helpful stores to shop in.

And there's the root of the problem. Retail at this scale (300 stores) is a model which is both extremely delicate and highly change-resistant. A long-term view must be sought, and far-reaching strategies implemented and bravely adhered to. Debt, however, does not work like this, and in the end was more of a factor in Ethel's decline than anything else. The moment this business started to falter was the same moment the focus on the balance sheet moved from annual to quarterly returns. In other words, once the purpose of the business, its reason for existing, was to rapidly return on an investment rather than to ensure its continued existence long into the future.

So what's the future for Ethel? Well, the position it's in now is a tricky one to say the least. The estate is... challenged, the margins are terrifying and the overall proposition was leapfrogged by Primark, Peacocks et al some years ago, so I won't be holding my breath. Still, where there's a will there's a way... isn't there?

EDIT: The story develops - Elaine McPherson (of MKOne fame) has bought Ethel Austin from administrators MCR for a rumoured £10m. Whilst the closures and layoffs performed by MCR will remain in effect, McPherson has pledged to return the business to its former glory. Arguably, at such a (relatively) low price, one is able to embark on such a mission; would be great to see it make a comeback, but if not, the assets remaining within the business should return on that investment if cleverly stripped. Not that this author is suggesting for a minute that that could possibly be on the cards.

What could play a key part in making that mission a successful one would be a top-notch, cutting edge multi-channel retail strategy. Elaine, we're only a phone call away...

A relatively new website, KnickerPicker has been making a fair few headlines of late, appearing not only in the likes of Marie Claire and Metro, but also in numerous email threads and blog posts (some right here at Conchango). Noticeably, those who've reported it through the latter channels have all been in possession of a Y chromosome.

Now, I'm as happy as the next chap to be presented with mostly-naked ladies strutting across my screen, but once we've scratched the admittedly shiny surface, is there actually any value to be found here? Does the addition of a headline-worthy tool actually contribute to the site's commercial success?

First things first. At heart, KnickerPicker is an affiliate-style site. Once you find an item you like, it'll point you at a third party retailer (in this case, mostly Be Cheeky, a fairly innovative retailer who thoroughly embrace concepts such as affiliate sales*) to complete the transaction. KnickerPicker was built by SceneStealer, a video production company who also run eSummit, a search marketing agency.

On to the site itself. Its beta status is clearly advertised, so my criticism, whilst hopefully seen as constructive, could be a little previous. From the homepage, curiously understated navigation leads you to the 'Dressing Room', which is where the bulk of the action takes place. Note that at no point on this page are you actually pointed towards any product. All communication focuses on the dressing room functionality, not the product.

The Dressing Room is where you can select your model, who you can dress up from the selection of underwear available. This is where you browse the catalogue, which somehow doesn't seem quite right. The access you have to the product range is to search by keyword or filter by category (including 'Bra'), brand and price. Not by colour, or by sub-types of bra, of which I'm told there are many.

Once you've found your item, you can have your chosen model wear it. She can turn around or approach the camera. This is the crux of the matter, and to an extent really does work. To an extent. A typical shopper will browse like this up to a point, and then will want to quickly flick between a handful of products to compare them before making a decision. This is practically impossible here, so in this case, perhaps offering the option to show the clothes on a model might be a more user-friendly idea.

Anyway, I suspect this is pretty much a proof of concept, so I'm perhaps being too harsh. I can see how, in a market filled with lookalike sites, this feature helps lift KnickerPicker above the crowd. However, the site raises, amongst others, the following basic issues in my mind:

- Operational management. How long does it take, and how much budget needs to be allocated to shooting video footage of each item on three models every time a new collection arrives? And how do you ensure you have the same models throughout the lifespan of the site? Will there eventually be some models for certain collections and some for others?

- Usability. Frankly this gets in the way of a decent shopping experience. Without the option to not use the video tool, navigation becomes cumbersome and, once the novelty wears off, boring.

- Target audience. One of my girlfriend's first comments was 'This is clearly designed by men. The range of body types isn't realistic enough'. It's a fair point, and add to that the rather, er, dominant-sounding controls on the models and it starts to look pretty clear. However, from a male point of view the look and feel is still quite girly, so I'm not sure where they're going here. Neither gender is quite catered for.

So, to sum up, it's a nice tool and technically well executed, but a well executed nice tool does not a decent retail website make. In focusing too tightly on how groovy the video tool is, basic design rules have been ignored, and the overall customer experience suffers as a result. All credit to SceneStealer though, for a flawlessly put together bit of interactive video.

I'm increasingly finding myself taking this stance with sites like this. In the pursuit of 'innovation' and brownie points from the tech community, basic principles (user-centred design, operational considerations, sound business model etc) are being overlooked. Without first learning to walk, attempting to sprint isn't a great idea and users are notoriously unforgiving of things like this.

My hope is that, as I mentioned above, this is a proof of concept; functionality to be licensed to existing retail websites as an enhancement to an existing model. This is where I think these guys can make this a success and I would encourage them towards this option. Standing on its own, though, it's all fur coat and, ironically, no knickers.

*An affiliate sales relationship is one in which a retailer pays a publisher a commission on all the sales which come via the publisher's site. For example, when you buy from Be Cheeky via KnickerPicker, KnickerPicker will receive a percentage of the sale in return.