• Ocado to launch ‘virtual shop window’ for Apple iPhone users – Telegraph – Hot on the heels of Tesco's Korean subway proof-of-concept, this digital interactive display is a bit of a stunt for just a week, but a sign of something that we'll take for granted within two years.
• Fostex AR-4i turns iPhone 4 into handheld stereo HD video powerhouse –
• A Store With Only 3 Products And Other Cases For Simplicity | Fast Company – Taking 'selectivity' in merchandising to a new level. Interesting thought when compared with the "more is more – just filter and sort" approach.
• Apple’s Designers Work Towards Storefront Symmetry –
• Internet Retailing » Call for PubQuizzers – 23 November, 3rd InternetRetailingBeringerTameAnnualCharityeCommercePubQuiz… – Do not miss out on our third competitive extravaganza! An informal 'industry event'.

To recap for those who missed the IRII announcement, the InternetRetailing Inspiration Index focuses upon:

those moments of admiration, enjoyment and – frankly – envy: when we look at another retailer’s activities and wish we’d thought of that first, had implemented as well, or have an open regard for a difficult problem elegantly overcome

You can see the full article from InternetRetailing Magazine here:

IRII Article (pdf) – download

The next dimension – Customer Experience – is now available and awaiting your comments. Please follow this link to the eDigital Research survey page:

https://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=473664927

Results and the site review will be published in the May issue of InternetRetailing Magazine.

Other links

• You can subscribe to InternetRetailing magazine  and our email newsletter on our publisher’s subscriptions page.
• You can grab the RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

Vote now! Internet Retailing’s “Inspiration Index”

We’re pleased to launch today our “Inspiration Index“. Speaking with senior etailers we’re struck by the attention they pay to competitor and peer activity, continually seeking new ideas, better ways and cunning angles to improve their multichannel activity.

What do we mean by ‘inspiration’?

We’re focusing on those moments of admiration, enjoyment and – frankly – envy: when we look at another retailer’s activities and wish we’d thought of that first, had implemented as well, or have an open regard for a difficult problem elegantly overcome.

We decided not to go down a company or ‘awards’ approach since these tend to favour the established large players or the shiny new ones – in reality we’ve found that people covet the delivery capabilities of one, the design elements of another and the promotional campaigns of yet others.

There are six ‘dimensions’ to the Inspiration Index:

1. Moments of brilliance and delight
2. Customer experience
3. Operations and IT
4. Merchandising
5. Marketing
6. Strategy

How will it work?

Every other month we’ll ask our readers and members of the LinkedIn group to undertake a short survey on ONE of the dimensions. We’ll then cover the results in the coming edition of the magazine.

Over time we’ll build a picture of inspiration in internet retailing.

Best of all the winners will know that they’ve been nominated and rated by their professional peers — this is not a PR-led or sponsorship-driven activity: you can’t buy or promote prominence — it’s a question of whether you inspire others!

We’re really pleased to be partnering with eDigital Research on this. We’ve worked with them a great deal in the past and we welcome their support as a research partner on this project, helping shape the questionnaire and analysing the results.

I hope that you’ll make the time to take the survey and we’re really excited to see the results!

More in the March issue of Internet Retailing, and of course on the portal.

Here’s the link to the survey: https://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=986312169

Vote Now!

About eDigitalResearch

eDigitalResearch is a leading provider of digital market research, enabling customers’ to make critical business decisions with the benefit of comprehensive consumer insight and informed direction. eDigitalResearch possesses a unique combination of research expertise, marketing background, web technology and knowledge of the cross-channel consumer. As well as providing invaluable research data, the modules of its fully integrated research system — ratings, surveys, panels and forums — can combine to provide holistic analytics and essential market-leading insight. This gives our clients the power, confidence and backup to make crucial decisions on key aspects of their business including product range, marketing, customer service, supply chain, even basic positioning.

zapposinsights.com

Well well – this is a fun idea. Zappos, a US$ 1 billion etailer that’s done for shoes what Amazon did for books, has created a ‘club’ for the “Fortune One Million” group.

The club, c$40 a month membership, is a mix of video content, happy-clappy employee indoctrination videos and general bigging-up of the company culture. It’s all very ‘can do’ (and more importantly ‘have done’).

In addition there’re knowledge base articles, interviews with key staff and execs, and opportunities to post questions.

Although a little ‘American’ at times, it’s an interesting approach from a company that clearly believes in values of staff and customer engagement, delivering great service and in sharing insights. After all, it’s one thing to be given an insight, but an entirely more difficult thing to interpret and then implement the requirements of that insight.

Having worked for years in best practice publishing, training and indeed the structured, state-supported business development sector (with Business Link for London, formerly Europe’s largest enterprise support agency) this initiative is to be welcomed.

That they’re clearly going to monetise the One Million is simply an elegant example of that commercial spirit

Please let me know your experiences if you join.

You can see the press release and e-consultancy’s version, but you should also mosey over to cScape’s Customer Engagement Unit to see Richard Sedley’s introduction and to request a ‘designed’ version of the report You can also flick through the report via the Issu embedded pdf.

My small contribution was piece on Sustaining Profitability in a Challenging Retail Climate, and it’s therefore a pity to see that only 51% of the sample are focusing more on customers as a result of the downturn/recession.

An interesting report and certainly food for thought as marketers in particular think through how they’ll make their targets next year – surely a ruthless focus on converting “purchasers” to “customers” and sustaining meaningful commercial relations will come to the top of the list?

Appearing on SkyNews at 7pm

I was called this afternoon to ask if I’d be willing to appear and comment and of course the answer was ‘yes’. Then I started to feel nervous!

I don’t recall much about the interview itself – I was in a dark room, staring at a focus point and desperately listening to the question so that I didn’t burble. Intentionally, anyway.

Up earlier had been David Walmsley, Head of Direct at John Lewis, and as I’d arrived in the studio I’d thought how composed and fluid he was on TV. I decided to become more nervous immediately

The studio was intriguing: not quite a ‘radio car’, but certainly a compact and lean operation, mainly focused on political happenings at nearby Parliament.

The Millbank studio for Sky News

I’ve not been able to track down a ‘recording’ of what I said, but my intention was to cover off how the predictions for Mega Monday were tending toward the blindingly obvious, and how even a scrooge-like consumer was now running out of shopping days to Christmas. Behind the headline figures of revenues (predicted, btw, by IMRG to be £320m today, with Retail Decisions predicting that Mega Minute will be 1.31pm today, with an expected near £1m in transactions that minute), the real issue is that revenues this year will have been bought by discounting. In order to have a higher cash value of transactions than last year, therefore, retailers will need to ship proportionally more boxes – creating an additional strain on their logistics operations as well as reducing their margins even further.

Pressed on the reason for the success of the web I recall mentioning that the web was now a mature component within multichannel retail. The web is used by some 90% of people questioned in an IMRG survey to help decide on purchases made in-store. Interestingly, only 68% of those questioned said the reverse – that they needed to see goods in-store to inform their internet purchasing.

I was asked whether there was anything fundamental to the web that would make it an inherently ‘cheap’ channel, but of course there’s a need to have a capable infrastructure as well, ideally, as a traditional retail channel in order to maximise sales. I challenged the draw of the web as being “cheapness” alone, noting that customers now required service as much as price. In the US on CyberMonday, for example, nearly 11% of all shopping traffic went to Amazon.com – a combination of breadth of product, excellent pricing and exemplary, proven service.

In what seemed like an age or a second it was over and, with a polite ‘thank you’ from the producer, I was back on the scooter heading home.

The kids were pleased to see me on telly (ahh) and I’ve already had abusive texts about being fat/nervous/bearded etc – to which I just say “thanks”

This is a picture of me on the telly taken by Vicky with her iPhone - I'm just blinking, not falling into a trance. Honest.

It was an interesting experience and something out of the comfort zone. It was also a chance to get some key messages to a new audience and finally whet my appetite to enliven our plans for InternetRetailing TV. We did some experiments at our conference – see the embed below -  but I think that it’s time to be a bit more active on this front.

With new events, supplements, v/pod-casts, goodness-knows-what-else, AND French and German editions of the newsletters and portals, it’s a manic and exciting time at IR Towers, and we now have three vacancies just waiting for the right people to join us.

We’re looking for:

• Sales Manager – based in London, excellent base, unlimited commission, at the heart of a fun and expert supplier community. We’re looking for someone used to B2B, reputation-based selling who’s great with clients and not a “sales tosser” (ie talks like an estate agent, always yakking on about “closing”, pretending to discount/’do a deal’, and generally leaving civilised people aghast at their poor manners, short-termism and ignorance).
• Country Editor, France and Country Editor, Germany – to launch the French/German-language portals and bi-weekly newsletters in, er, France and Germany respectively. You’ll be commercial, an analytical journalist, with sector experience (ie this isn’t just academic, you need to understand ecommerce and retailing) with a desire to make a name for yourself in the sector. You’ll be mother-tongue fluent, of course, and also speak excellent English so that we can chat. You’ll represent IR at the highest levels in-country, build on the basis of the European eCommerce Forum, and work as part of an unformal, slightly mad, collegiate team.

I have job descriptions, further info, a keen-ness to chat – let me know if you’re interested or push good people in this direction. Don’t be shy Mail me for further info.

This is a quick, 3-question, interview with Mark, recorded on her mobile phone. Surprisingly engaging and useful, this is a near alternative to a standard press release.

I’ve long been a bit sceptical about ‘vcasts’ but I’m changing my mind as short, characterful and useful snippets like this become easier, quicker and better integrated.

We were so convinced that we asked NewsPepper to cover the Internet Retailing 2008 Conference. They’re currently editing the ‘tapes’ and I’ll post the show report as soon as their pixel-wizards have slimmed down my chubby cheeks…

“Retailgreen.eu – challenges and issues in green and sustainable ecommerce”

I’ve been interested for a while in the tension between “retail” (encouraging customers to buy more) and sustainability or ‘green’ sentiments (encouraging people to buy less – “reduce, reuse and recycle” being the operating mantra).

There are many benefits and challenges for retailers in considering sustainability as a part of their strategy and this group on LinkedIn is a first step to exploring this topic.

Mired in conflicting claims, in questions of how far to trace and cost impacts and benefits, and struggling to reconcile customer expressed claims with their measured behaviour, we expect some lively debates!

I invite you to join the group and help shape the debate.

Editorially, Retailgreen will look at the following areas:

1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – lessons for efficiency and saving in sustainable commerce

2. The sustainable customer – market pressures on retailers to ‘go green’. Following the ‘green dollar’

3. Profiles of companies and their green activities, tribulations or market positioning.

You can join the group directly from this link:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/150191/365DA86DD491

The inaugural meeting of the European eCommerce Forum (ECF) was held in Amsterdam in April – the culmination of four years of conversations with leading retailers. Ian Jindal and Joris Beckers, co-founders of the Forum, reflect upon the genesis of the ECF, the pressing issues in ecommerce and the next steps for the Forum as preparations start for the next meeting in London this October.

If the first wave of the commercial web was characterised by customer acquisition, then the second was the development of dimensional or faceted navigation (in which retailers attempt to increase online sales by helping customers find the most appropriate products more easily). The current drive is towards cross-channel integration, in which store, web, paper and phone all work seamlessly together from the customer’s perspective. This latest phase simply shows, however, that we haven’t really finished the work started in the ‘browse’ phase – the work of “merchandising” our product to customers.

Online merchandising is often misunderstood, or seen as simply the online correlative of traditional retail merchandising – the organisation, planning and ranging of products online. This is not to denigrate in any way the complex work of merchandisers, but rather to point out that on the web ‘merchandising’ is the very heart and soul of “selling”.

We know that on the web, despite our advances in technology and skills, the two invariable limitations are time and space: the amount of time a customer will dedicate to our site (given the increasing number of calls upon their online attention) and the maximum pixel area of their screen, which limits the number of items we can show at any one time.

We’ve mentioned elsewhere in this issue the notion of the web as a store with ‘elastic walls’. Retailers can now offer hundreds of thousands of SKUs via the web, yet the presentation of these products is akin to letting customers wander directly through an untidy warehouse rather than a flagship store! Online the concepts of ‘visual merchandising’, adjacencies, ranging and category management have some analogies (user experience, site journeys, elementary product grouping, web analytics) but the practices are fragmented.

Thinking of our offline colleagues we could see that the disciplines of category management – product ranging, selection and presentation taken to the level of strategic art-form – and visual merchandising had much to teach us online. We also saw that in some ways we have an embarrassment of riches online: deep and extensive analytics, including insights to behaviour, contexts and of course the in-depth information on products, baskets and profitability. Closing the loop, we could also see information on returns, contacts in call centres and other operational data (either via the web platform or enterprise CRM systems).

The challenge and opportunity therefore were to take the best of offline strategy, online analytics and tools, and to combine these to develop the art and craft of selling online – to present the best combination of products to the customer so as to maximise the retailer’s profits. As Joris pointed out, “online we have a lot more customer interaction data to make Category Management potentially work better than offline where there is less data”.

This was the conversation I had with Joris in 2004 and we enthused about the insights and demands of some of the leaders in etail. Both of us came into contact with other passionate, enthusiastic retailers and during each conversation there was a desire to meet and share ideas with other professionals.

The impetus for finally organising the Forum came as a result of a change in the questions we were hearing. No longer was it enough for retailers to install very capable merchandising systems, nor to learn how to use them well. Rather, retailers were beginning to look to a time when all of their competitors would have equally capable systems and the needs therefore was to develop the insights, approaches and intense customer focus that would distinguish the retailer, irrespective of system.

The Forum

The inaugural meeting was held in Amsterdam. We decided at an early stage that the Forum would be a private exchange for the most senior subject matter experts across Europe. Invites would be personal (and not just “someone from Big Company X or Y”) and we would focus upon companies with complex operations, operating at scale (€70million or more online) and focused upon innovation and excellence. Joris noted how pleased he was that “Over 50 senior online business leaders from across Europe responded to the invitation to work together for a day and attempt to advance the art of online selling in meaningful and practical way”. The Forum is a strictly no-sales, confidential space for peers and this spirit of joint endeavour characterised the day (so much so that Joris didn’t even mention his company when introducing himself!).

The day

We had invited expert speakers from disparate, non-ecommerce disciplines to give us insight into approaches that might inform our work. We took as a theme how research could help us mitigate the challenge of limited ‘space’ online.

The first presentation was from Martin Heinsbroek of McKinsey, taking as his theme “From Granular Insights to Targeted Actions”. Martin took as his case study the transformation of Signet Bank into Capital One, and the lessons to be drawn about data-driven insights and the benefits of experimentation (as part of a rigorous and consistent test-analyse-implement business-wide culture). The lessons for retailers were clear, especially given our enviable access to web analytics, trading metrics and the ability to A:B test online.

We then stood back from the data and were treated to an inspiring presentation from Ian Worley, Director at Flow Interactive, on “The power of cross-channel research to uncover granular merchandising insights”. Ian took as a starting point the ethnographic research approach – observing customer behaviour while shopping (covered in Internet Retailing earlier this year). Taking case studies like the Early Learning Centre (and others that we’re unable to quote) Ian showed how significant insights from offline research may have very subtle impacts on the website, yet still be remarkably and demonstrably effective. The learning here was that profit uplift comes from a combination of an holistic view of the customer’s needs, behaviours and preferences; putting the web as part of a cross-channel engagement strategy; robust research and analytics and finally a ruthless focus on delivering the customer’s expectations and needs rather than web design and features in isolation.

In the afternoon we were treated to a tour de force from Ed van de Weerd, VP Merchandising at Albert Heijn Supermartkets. It’s difficult to convey in print the combination of popping eyes, dropping jaws and mental lightbulbs illuminating as Ed took us on an insider’s tour of Category Management within supermarkets. Feedback afterwards was unanimous that the strategic approach to range, stock, pricing and brand positioning was a revelation, and that as a group there was a real enthusiasm to adapt this discipline to etail.

All of the presentations elicited detailed questioning and in between each session we allowed plenty of time for discussion – or so we thought! At each break no-one would leave their tables since they were deep in conversation – in October we’ve taken note and will allow even more time for idea and issue sharing…

Next steps

Feedback from delegates was very positive and the agreement is to come together twice a year with members conducting joint experiments throughout the year and feeding back to the group.

We’ve also been working on the next agenda which – although not yet finalised – will continue our quest to learn everything we can from our offline colleagues. We are looking at present at the area of Visual Merchandising. Joris has been considering the ‘convergence of product merchandising and advertising’ and, via the Forum, his hope is to “achieve a point someday where we know as much about selling online as we know today about selling in the real world”.

At Internet Retailing we’ll be bringing the learning from these sessions, along with the debates and issues, to the pages of the magazine and features on our portal. We’re also interested to hear your thoughts on the key issues, challenges and opportunities in online merchandising – do let us know, and help set the agenda for progress in online selling.

——————————————————-

Fact box.

The ECF was jointly founded by Ian Jindal and Joris Beckers, and is supported by Internet Retailing and made possible by the generosity of Fredhopper.com. Invitation of the Forum is strictly by invite only to senior retailers with experience of complex businesses with over €70million in online sales, but we are always keen to find ways to engage peers and disseminate learning. Please address thoughts, along with suggestions for members that we may have missed in error, to forum@fredhopper.com.

Companies

Some of the companies represented in the Forum are:

Otto, Vergelijk, Telegraaf Media Group, GAME Stores Group, Figleaves.com, Thomas Cook, Conrad, Neckermann, Interflora, E-consultancy.com, V&D, Maxeda, Nedis Group, Marks & Spencer, Clarks, Adidas, Ferio, Bijenkorf, KPN, Waitrose, Quelle, arvato systems GmbH, Mexx, Albert Heijn, Woolworths,  Bol.com, Samsonite, Procter & Gamble, Toys R Us, Acuista, Manutan International, Lovefilm.com, Manutan International, House of Fraser, B&Q, Apple, Amazon, Staples, La Redoute, HMV, Sainsburys, Next, Redcats, H&M.