I’ve noticed that many UK online retailers are using free delivery to win sales as the 2009 festive season approaches.
The retailers in the table below were included in our delivery research back in September. All of them have either introduced free delivery on everything during the past few weeks, or they have added or adjusted a ‘free [...]
30 shopping days to go and we’re starting to see retailers really ramping up their online marketing activities.
My favourite so far is Amazon in the US. They’ve added a promotions carousel to their site ready for Black Friday. This offers huge discounts on various products, but for a limited time only or until stocks run [...]
With retail space in premium locations becoming increasingly affordable as rents and rates fall on the high street, does the concept of a pop-up store suddenly begin to look like an opportunity for pure-play e-commerce businesses?
A table in the Marmite Pop-up Shop. Photo: Guy West.
By removing much of the risk that a long-term commitment to bricks [...]
The new Whistles site has already sparked a thousand comments on blogs across the UK with its decision to break with e-commerce convention.
Without quantitive insight into users’ behaviour on the site, I can only add my own opinions to the mix, but let me say that at first the site felt to me like a [...]
On this blog, I have previously looked at how Waitrose and ASDA are using social media to engage with their customers. Today, I decided to take a look around Sainsbury’s online community:
With nearly 67,000 members, it is clearly popular with their customers. And the site itself looks nice – it’s clean and simple, being built around three or four core features:
Discussion – at [...]
Last week I wrote a post about product reviews. We looked at whether online retailers actively contact a customer post-purchase to ask them to submit feedback on the item that they had bought. This was based on the fact that only 15 retailers had e-mailed us to ask for comments on a product after we had placed 137 orders back in September [...]
This week’s Email of the Week comes from Debenhams. I think it’s a good example of a retailer walking the walk when it comes to multi-channel. The email contains a media code for online purchases and printable vouchers that can be redeemed in-store. These have got a barcode on them, making it very easy for in-store staff to [...]
I really enjoyed the Internet Retailing conference this year. The highlight for me was the keynote from Robin Terrell at John Lewis Direct.
He gave a very frank insight into the challenges that John Lewis is facing as they try to grow their online sales.
John Lewis did £327m online sales in 2008, up from £12m in their first year, 2001
89% of [...]
I really like what Debenhams has done with their Christmas TV ad campaign. Like many retailers, they’ve put the ad on their website along with a ‘behind-the-scenes’ clip and a competition.
However, they’ve also gone one better than most other retailers - little product shots appear throughout the ad as it plays online, allowing the customer to click and view that [...]