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This week it was announced that we, EMC Conchango, are one of the first partners to be accredited by Google in their new Conversion Professionals program. Not only are we delighted to have been selected after a rigorous process of interviews, exams and more interviews but more importantly we’re delighted that Google has got behind the whole analytics and optimisation piece.


Analytics and MVT (multivariate testing testing) are things we have been talking to clients about a lot over the last few years. And while we already provide services in this area it still amazes me that so many organisations overlook these tools – particularly in light of the economic situation we are in.

After all, if it was my website and someone told me that I could increase conversion by 2% – 12% then I’d be very, very interested!  The way we talk about it is that not having analytics or MVT in place is akin to not having store managers, footfall counters or clear stock positions in your stores!

 

To see what Retail Week have to say about it then click here  or for the full NMA article here for the full Google Conversion Professional microsite click here or to talk about the services we offer in this area then email us on Experience.Planning@emc.com

 

Over the past few years there has been a lot of talk about the death of the high street as a result of the web. It's always been my view that the web will not gobble up the high street or retail park but that the two mediums provide an array of opportunities both for retailers and for us, the customer.

The great thing is that the rise of internet shopping and general advances in technology have shifted the power base and this creates an interesting challenge for retailers to present us with more interesting, exciting, engaging and rewarding environments in which to experience their brands. I have always been particularly interested with how retailers respond to this opportunity within their physical environments.

It's good to see that many retailers now see having a web presence as a hygiene factor, though I am still surprised as to how bland and un-engaging some of these sites are, at least they are aware that the internets not going away.  We have seen the more forward thinking brands turn their physical retail experiences into more than simply a shop and probably the best example of this is the Apple store. It's not a shop, it's a showroom, a destination, a place for engaging, playing, and experiencing what it means to be Apple. Apparently Microsoft are thinking of doing the same thing - I wait with baited breath to see how that turns out….

But what has peaked my interest is the news that The Hut - currently an internet only venture is in discussion with shopping centers about the possibility of going all bricks & mortar - but with no staff. The Chief Exec Mathew Moulding has said that shops "would be the size of a juice bar, no doors, and there would just be touch screens and a Chip and PIN reader". He added "It would help brand development. The high street brings a lot of traffic online instantly.”

Well Mr Moulding I salute you - it's great to see web natives looking to the physical as a means of engaging with their customers and I'm also excited to see how the shopping centres, developers and landlords will respond to these sort of discussions. Given all the work we have been doing with MS Surface and Windows 7 we have talked at length with retailers about how these technologies can be used in retail environments to facilitate collaboration and provide richer, more innovative ways of looking at product information, but very few have been thinking about taking a staff-less approach. That's not to say that a staff-less approach is the right thing for all - of course not but it will certainly be interesting to see how this pans out…

Yesterday’s London Paper, shortly followed by the Retail Week site, are reporting tabloid uproar at Comet’s decision to implementing a listing fee of up to £15,431 for manufacturers to be stocked across their 250 retail outlets. While retailers have been playing this game for many years, the current outrage highlights a deeper industry issue around the cost and value of channels. How can retailers like Comet – already very successful online – continue to justify the immense expense of operating physical outlets?

So, Comet, has decided that as a means of generating extra revenue at this particularly challenging time, it’s to charge manufacturers up to £15,431 if they want to put a new product on display in it's 250 stores. Yep, that's right, with all the wealth of distribution options that the internet presents to these manufacturers, Comet thinks it can charge £61.72 per store for carrying the new product.

Now, I may be wrong here but I can't imagine that the manufacturers are going to be delighted at this prospect, in fact if some of the comments on Retail Weeks’ site are to go by then it’s fair to say they are outraged.

It’ll be interesting if the manufacturers simply comply with this or if they start to leverage the wealth of distribution options available through the web and challenge the traditional models of Manufacturer & Retailer.

I can’t help but think that if this scenario plays out, and the manufacturers refuse to pay these new fees then surely Comet is accelerating it’s own downfall?
 
Think about it from a customer perspective, Jane has convinced the Bob that they just have to have the latest new shiny washing machine, so Bob has a look at Comet.co.uk  - no new shiny machine there, but a little click away is Tesco Direct / Argos / Kelkoo / etc etc and there it is in all it’s shiny glory ready to be bought from Comets' competitors!
 
Alternatively, Bob goes in-store and the delightful, helpful customer assistant say's 'Oh I'm sorry Bob, but brand X didn't want to pay £15,400 for us to put their new washing machine in our 250 beautiful retail environments, so that you can buy it here, helped by me, your happy, friendly knowledgeable assistant."  Bob doesn’t think to himself  "Those pesky tight fisted manufactures', how dare they not pay for me to buy my washing machine in this wonderful shopping environment" he's more likely to be a bit perplexed and irritated that Comet don't have the product he wants at the price he wants to pay for it and trot off to the nearest store that does.  
 
I wish the very best of luck to both Comet and the Manufacturers. It is indeed a challenging time and I’ll watch with interest to see if the Manufacturers take the opportunity to reinvent themselves and challenge old models. And if retailers such as Comet will move away from draconian quick fixes that are so short term. What would be great is to see  them put the customer back in the heart of they are doing and enable them to buy the right product, at the right price, through the channel they would prefer – just a thought.

"Four of the past five months have now seen negative like-for-like annual sales growth and in July every sector except food recorded falls. Frivolous shopping is off the agenda as most customers concentrate on value and durability and there are few signs the slowdown has yet bottomed out." 1

- Stephen Robertson, Director General of the British Retail Consortium (August, 2008)

‘News’ of the retail gloom we’re facing is hardly news anymore. So what does this mean for social shopping – long predicted to be the next wave in retail?

Is social shopping ‘frivolous’? Or inevitable? Can retailers capitalise on its positives in a time of tightening budgets and cautious investment? If so, how? And how to navigate the field of aggregator sites like Kaboodle, ThisNext, and Osoyou?

First, let’s define the term, and take a quick look at where social shopping stands this minute. Has anyone got it right yet?

‘Social shopping’ isn’t a new idea.
To many, shopping has always been – and always will be – a highly social activity; social entertainment that’s fuelled by sharing, contemplating and debating with friends.

In the digital space, social shopping is where online shopping and social networking meet. To date, it’s been primarily targeted at women and the net-savvy ‘Digital Class’ (18-24 years old). But its applications are far wider ranging. When it comes down to it, people everywhere, regardless of age or gender, want – and seek – reassurance about their purchasing decisions.

Fine. So should every business with an interest in e-commerce have a social shopping strategy in place? Well, if they’re interested in building a stronger brand, acquiring new customers virally, improving conversion rates from web marketing and selling more – the answer is yes.
Most retailers today are recognising that shopping, online as well as offline, is a discerning process that requires connection; thus, they’re creating richer, more ‘social’ experiences.
But social shopping is an approach to e-commerce that’s yet to be done right. Most social shopping ventures have so far struggled to account for the overall experience. They’ve failed to move forward with a balanced appreciation of business requirements, brand management and user expectations and needs. The result: sites that offer one, two or even several ‘cool’, interesting or useful tools, but don’t create a unified brand experience that spans online and offline; that integrates the real-world and the virtual.  

First, let’s take a quick look at the lie of the land.

Who’s doing what? And is anyone even coming close?

Individual retailers

High street retailers are taking online shopping seriously. They’re starting to offer experiences that move beyond simply displaying products in a virtual shop window for customers to select, click and buy. But while various brands are offering interesting functionality, so far the UK high street has been fragmented in terms of delivering on an ‘overall experience’.

Just a few examples of the kinds of interactions and experiences standalone retailers are creating:

•    Oli’s ‘LookBook’. With it, users can discover, share and compare products, and put together collections which they can send to a friend or buy.

•    The Diesel website. It offers a wish list, send to a friend functionality and the ability to embed products in external blogs or websites. It also has a brand blog called ‘The cult’ which serves to strengthen and build cultural significance.

•    The Yoox Dreambox. It’s one of the more sophisticated brand ‘share and compare’ functionalities. It lets users collect, send to friends and compare and rate items. It also acts as a profile that allows users to make friends with similar interests.

•    Topshop’s Facebook application (called ‘Topshop fashion Fix’) It’s no surprise Topshop has a presence here. However, the company uploads only about three items a week for users to vote on (with a simple yay or nay). Interesting, yes, but what’s the real reward for the consumer?

Some retailers are, at least ostensibly, beginning to bring the in-store and online experiences closer together. Last year, Bloomingdale's in Manhattan tested a ’Magic Mirror’ concept for three days. When shoppers stood in front of the mirror wearing tagged clothing, the mirror displayed other sizes or colours in stock, or recommended suitable accessories. Notably, however, no attempt was made to link this experience to the Bloomingdale's online community.

Leading among fashion retail and social shopping are brands like Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie. The latter is currently conducting a pilot of an offline desktop boutique – a computer application that lets users browse the retailer’s catalogue and post orders through a desktop button.  It’s an attempt to enhance the brand and tailor offerings to individuals.

But cool tools and interesting applications alone won’t suffice. How does everything link up? Where’s the experiential synergy?

‘Aggregators’

Over the last few years, there’s been a proliferation of social shopping websites that aggregate information about products, prices and deals, and provide a platform where users can communicate about their favourite things. Sites like Kaboodle, ThisNext,, Wists, Osoyou, Shopstyle and StyleHive are spearheading this trend.
These sites don’t sell directly but rather serve as product sharing and recommendation engines. They allow users to create custom shopping lists and share them with friends, reflecting the general trend towards and proliferation of UGC (User Generated Content) online.

Aggregator websites can serve to bridge the gap between shops and their consumers, often providing (at least from the customer’s perspective) a more integrated experience than single-store transactional sites. They provide platforms for shoppers to congregate, communicate and validate each other’s decisions. So why are most products that are socially endorsed online still being purchased offline?

That question aside, there’s no denying the value of these sites, and large and influential ecommerce companies are realising it. Which explains why we’re seeing Microsoft acquiring Jellyfish and Hearst buying Kaboodle.

At the same time, more recently, larger social networks that attempt to cater for everyone are beginning to see a decline in popularity, with an emergence in the shopping realm of more niche networks such as Etsy and Fashionspace.

Capitalising on both worlds (the uber-popular and the ultra-specialised), interior design site MyDeco.com aggregates products from 500 partners, including massive players such as Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, and Argos – and niche retailers like ’Canvas R Us’. Users can create a furnished room, publish it for other customers, and buy the decorations and furnishings within a matter of clicks.

Where do we go from here?

For retailers right now, it’s time to do some serious soul searching. One of the first questions:  How much do you invest in building a community on your site versus creating a strategy around existing social networking sites and aggregators?

The answer: it depends, and it involves a lot more questions. Like:
•    How do your customers feel about your products? How good are you at finding out, and staying up on it?
•    How transparent are you as a company, and how transparent are you willing to be?
•    What kind of social shopping profiles do your customers (and your prospects) have? How deep can you dive to find out how they’re participating in social media?
•    How much do you know about what people are saying about your brand? Not as of last month or last week, but as of this morning? Whether or not you’re participating in the conversation, how and where is your offering (and your competition’s) showing up in conversational media?

In the next few months, we’ll see a proliferation of new developments based on the power of community, individualisation within these communities, and new technologies: new approaches to personalised recommendations, better interactive chat, higher quality editorial video and improved access to social shopping across multiple channels and technologies, to name but a few.

How do you know what’s right – for your brand, for your customers, in the current climate? 

The answer is in experience planning. Innovating smartly, in a way that balances business requirements, brand management and user expectations and needs.

 

Want to know how?  Zia.Zareem-Slade@conchango.com

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1 Hall James, “Worst spell in three years for high street sales,” The Telegraph, August 11, 2008,

 

Was I on the phone 13 minutes and 27 seconds to cancel a doctors appointment?  I would have cancelled online but it would appear I need to go to the surgery within my working hours to get given a piece of paper with a pin number on it before I can register online....I love these types of experiences!

Yesterday, as I wandered through WH Smiths I noticed this rather odd magazine called ‘Facebook Your Complete Guide to Social Networking’ I had to do a double take....I cautiously picked it up and made sure nobody could see me, £5.99 for 148 pages of 'Facebook Know How'.....bargain or b*****ks?

I was, and continue, to be slightly perturbed by this....I could not bring myself to part with any money for it, and I could not bear to stand in a queue and risk being seen buying it but here is the cover for your viewing pleasure.