Tag: ecommerce

Buying jeans because your friends “like” them?

Levi’s partners with Facebook to bring you a unique social shopping experience. Now you can Like, Share, and Shop for Levi’s. Check it out and let us know what you think!

Well, I checked it out and I’m not convinced. Levi’s  just seems the wrong product for effective social shopping; even if my facebook friend or friends do like a certain pair of jeans, how does that help me to buy -online – jeans that are right for me?

Isn’t it just a basic form of product reviews, but without a scale of “liking” and without any useful and insightful comments?

For me, the value of “social shopping” is to a) recreate in the online world the event of going to the high street with friends or b) to spread the word about special and exclusive offers. Levi’s offering doesn’t do either of these. The recreation of real-world high street shopping is much more likely to work with products/ clothes which are more distinctive than mostly blue jeans. The social, viral spreading of special offers becomes effective once it’s beyond the control of the retailer, for example retweeting of offers, or on sites like hotukdeals (as I wrote about here).

I do however like how Levi’s integrate their facebook content into the right hand side of the page; much more engaging than the ubiquitous “Join us on facebook” link on most retailers’ sites. And a rather impressive 287,712 fans.

1 Comment by on April 22, 2010
filed in Social media
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Collect in store – an elegant example from The Futon Company

This is an elegant example of offering a “collect in store” option. I think all too often “reserve and collect” on an ecommerce site can be overly complex, with too many checkout stages, an unnecessary search to locate your nearest store, and restrictions on which products can be collected from which stores.

The Futon Company admittedly only has 20 or so stores, and probably most orders would be for a single item; the checkout process gets less elegant later on if you want to amend products and delivery options. But I do like the simplicity of presenting the store options on the product page, and how the the benefit (“Collect from Store save £45″) is communicated.

No Comments by on April 21, 2010
filed in Ecommerce strategy
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How much should an ecommerce site cost?

This is a question I’ve been asked recently, and the easy answer is anything from £200 up to £2,000,000, with most sites I imagine costing between £2,000 and £20,000.

A key factor is the scale of the site (do you have 10 products or 10,000 products) and obviously there is a wide spectrum of ecommerce solutions available, from an off-the-shelf standard template to bespoke solutions, through on-demand and open-source platforms. The total cost comprises upfront costs and monthly/ annual costs, and revenue-sharing can be an option.

This is an interesting estimation of the work (in person days) involved in developing an ecommerce site, as taught to ecommerce students at Kingston University, which amounts to 5 months work for one person full time, or more realistically a small agency working on a handful of projects.

Project planning including creative, technical, integration, budgeting, testing and promotion 9
Wireframing/diagramming of processes, logic and functionality 5
Agreement of functionality, specifications and plan within budget 2
Graphical design (within brand guidelines) 10
Conversion of design into templates and style sheets 5
Product modelling and database design 2
Design of decision support tools to help shoppers select, choose and experience 2
Design of customer service processes and systems 5
Implementation within shopping software, CMS or from scratch 15
Integration with stock and ordering systems 10
Integration with payment partner 2
Collection and manipulation of content 10
Testing for browsers, platforms and DDA compliance 10
Delivery and training (editorial and CMS) 2
TOTAL person days 92

I have been quoted £20,000 by agencies for a design and ecommerce solution, and then opted to do the design in-house and achieved the same result for £2,000 within 6 weeks with a hosted ecommerce solution. I also see plenty of projects posted on freelance websites like peopleperhour.com where ecommerce sites are built for less than £200.

There’s an interesting discussion here amongst ecommerce developers; Should an ecommerce site cost £1,000, £10,000 or £50,000?

Whether you’re spending £200 or £2 million the same considerations apply:

  • Be clear about what you want the site to achieve; think about what the customer wants and deliver a clear message
  • Scalability; plan for today and tomorrow
  • It’s easy to focus too much on the physical design at the expense of functionality; get the right ecommerce platform with the right functionality and you can make it look however you like
  • Think about issues like merchandising, promotions and stock availability sooner rather than later
  • Research thoroughly, and build usability into the design
No Comments by on March 31, 2010
filed in Ecommerce design, Ecommerce strategy
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Online logs

Hearing it might snow again, I thought I would try and buy some firewood online…

It’s interesting to compare the delivery strategies of these two sites, which both appear top of the organic listings; neither website gets it right in my opinion.

The first site, Onlinelogs.co.uk has good call to action (big buttons to “buy logs” and “buy kindling”). You are then given a quite sophisticated-looking pop up map of the UK which 5 or 6 coloured zones, although we’re not told the key to the zones. You then select your postcode area either by clicking on the map or from a drop-down menu. Only then can you see the products available, except that there are no prices – to see the price you need to enter a quantity of bags and click to get the quote, which includes delivery. Which is just as well as the header of the site promises Free Delivery in big red letters. It all seems needlessly complex, and not very customer friendly.

The second site shows prices and does actually offer free delivery (on orders over £50 which is most products). Although – ironically – it doesn’t inform the customer that delivery is free; not on the product pages, not in the shopping cart and not even on the delivery tab on the top menu.

Stating clear delivery costs throughout the site is one of the most effective ways to improve conversion rate on an ecommerce site; offering free delivery is even better. This is true of any ecommerce site, even more so when your product is bulky and heavy like firewood.

With a small amount of consumer testing and/or using Google analytics both of the these websites could improve conversion considerably.

1 Comment by on March 30, 2010
filed in Ecommerce design, Ecommerce strategy
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Add to bread basket…

My local bakery in Stepney looks as if it hasn’t changed for decades, so it’s pleasantly surprising to see them embracing the online world with a modern-looking website, in fact two websites for trade and retail customers, and a Facebook page updated several times a week.

When I first discovered the site they were actually selling bread online, with a “add to bread basket” feature a nice touch… Although they don’t seem to be selling online currently, it’s a lovely example of a local business using a website and facebook to win new customers and build loyalty with existing customers.

Facebook has just updated me about the “Almond macs coming out of the oven…” – I might wander over and try some…

No Comments by on March 23, 2010
filed in Ecommerce design, Ecommerce strategy, Social media
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Incremental sales, or cannibalising from other channels?

Reading about the imminent launch of a Gap ecommerce site in the UK got me thinking about to what extent online sales are incremental, or merely cannibalised from existing channels.
Gap in the UK has been a notable latecomer to online retailing (along with Primark, H&M, Zara, Claire’s Accessories, Morrisons…). In the US it has been trading online since 1997; in the UK it been testing the water with an online offering through asos.com.

It’s interesting reading discussions about why brands aren’t trading online. This one assumes that online sales have the potential to bring in 10% of total offline sales. Whilst this seems a reasonable ballpark for any retailer, it can’t be assumed that the 10% will be incremental and not simply customers who would have bought in store switching to buying online instead. It’s difficult for most brands to assess whether or not online sales are incremental, because there are so many competing factors determining retail sales and customer behaviour. Perhaps in Gap’s case the uplift would not be significant – as Gap’s stores are fairly widespread and I suspect the customer base is fairly loyal. Perhaps this has been their experience in the US, hence the slowness to launch online?

In some cases there’s a more compelling case for incremental sales – for a retailer with stores only in one part of the country, online opens up a much wider market. In my own experience working for a retailer with 15 or so stores located in factory outlet centres I don’t believe there was much cannibalisation from the stores, however there was almost certainly cannibalisation from other consumer and trade channels.

Of course there are many more benefits to trading online; lower cost of sale, brand building, more marketing channels, more flexible pricing & merchandising and the multichannel benefits (customers researching online, purchasing in store and vice versa). It is always better to be selling online yourself rather than through a third party, to be able to control pricing and how the brand is portrayed (on other sites and in their online advertising).

I did find a survey from 1999 predicting only 6% of online sales would be incremental. I would guess the experience of most brands is even lower than this. My conclusion? Not selling online is a missed opportunity, but the opportunity is complex and about much more than just sales.

No Comments by on March 1, 2010
filed in Ecommerce strategy
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What is the secret to a successful website?

This is a fantastic article – So true, I could have written it myself…

I particularly like the closing paragraph:

Management must realise just how complex a job it is [managing a website] and ensure you have time dedicated to its execution. Perhaps you should print off this article and give it to them.

What is the secret to a successful website?

No Comments by on February 25, 2010
filed in Ecommerce design, Ecommerce strategy
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Building usability into ecommerce design

With a specialist website, selling one product or category of products, thinking early on about the best way to present products can be beneficial. Not only will you improve usability and conversion rate from the start but it’s an opportunity to make the site stand out from competitors, both the not-as-well-designed specialist shops and the more general retailers using the same layouts to sell a huge variety of different products.

Two contrasting examples I’ve worked on are cutlery and umbrellas.

In the first example, Viners cutlery, I was responsible for the design. Through looking at other websites selling cutlery (good and bad), and understanding patterns of sales through the company’s other sales channels, I made sure each cutlery range was presented with a means of ordering cutlery sets and loose pieces all on the same page (without having to go back and forward to the shopping basket).

Hence this page…

product layouts - Viners

… is the same in terms the product hierarchy as this page…

product layouts - Viners 2

The difference being, a customer is much more likely to purchase more than one product from a range of cutlery (e.g. some knives and some forks, or a cutlery set and some extra teaspoons). With cookware, it’s less likely a customer would want to purchase more than one saucepan. And there’s more detailed information on a saucepan on the product detail page a customer would want to see before making the purchasing decision.

In my second example, Fulton Umbrellas, my involvement was much further down the line, when the design was almost complete. The first design I saw showed around 10 umbrellas on the womens page, mostly black and with technical descriptions like Superslim-1 and Open and Close – 3. This was the way the company presented the range to trade customers, but obviously not the optimal way on B2C online shop; because consumers don’t know the difference between a Superslim and an Open and Close, and because a consumer looking at that page wouldn’t know unless they clicked on it that the black umbrella pictured came in 10 different designs.

Unfortunately the ecommerce platform chosen was limited in the filter and sort views available; the ideal solution would have been to allow the customer to view by type, by colour, by pattern, by price etc. however, the least-bad option for launch was to show all the products.

product layouts - Fulton

No Comments by on February 22, 2010
filed in Ecommerce design
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What to believe?

“Whizzy imagery out-performs ratings and reviews in Adobe survey”

A survey by Adobe concluded the following are effective in increasing conversion rate.

  • Product tours or multi-media viewing which combines guided spin, zoom imagery, videos or animations with copy (36%
  • Visual filtering and advanced search on product features including size, color, and price (33%)
  • User comments and reviews (32%)
  • Search landing pages (32%)
  • Product comparisons (28%)
  • Zoom (28%)

Well, looking at the numbers not significantly, and it does seem like a convenient conclusion for Adobe, who sell “whizzy imagery”…

Also today I was interested to read this discussion questioning the value of “trustmarks” such as McAfee, with plenty of examples where adding such logos actually decreased conversion rate.

The key lesson from these two examples is to take claims to improve conversion rate with a pinch of salt. Work out what’s most appropriate to your business. Tackle the low-hanging fruit first. And test everything.

No Comments by on February 18, 2010
filed in Ecommerce design, Social media
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WordPress as a quick and free Ecommerce platform

I’ve been discovering how fantastic WordPress is – not just for blogging but as a CMS and also as an ecommerce solution.

exclusivef1experiences.co.uk

www.exclusivef1experiences.co.uk is a little site I’ve designed from scratch, offering around 20 products (tickets to the Monaco 2010 Grand Prix) for sale using PayPal payments.

This uses a free plugin (WP Shopping cart) which is so easy you can literally set up a new website with a product for sale in 5 minutes as the video below demonstrates. Once I’d mastered the basics of WordPress, ExclusiveF1Experiences took me about a day to set up.

The basic WP Shopping cart plugin only allows you to list products, not as a grid, and I think would really only work for up to 20 or so products. However, the there are inexpensive upgrades to allow more flexibility, and with or without programming skills there’s a huge amount of scope, and sites listing 100s and 1000s of products using it – as this showcase demonstrates.

No Comments by on February 3, 2010
filed in Ecommerce design
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