The Snow Patrol

IMRG Hitwise Top 100 - surely it must be wrong ?

Working in e-commerce I'm interested in who's successful. Which companies are the biggest e-commerce retailers ? Where do I turn for this information ? Well historically I and many others have looked to the IMRG Hitwise Hot Shops List. I like the work the IMRG does, I think Hitwise are great, but can their list really be correct ? Looking at a few examples from the May 2009 release I really don't think it can be.

Position 4 -  Amazon.com. This is the US site, the UK site is listed at position 1. Amazon.com is listed above tesco.com. We know that Tesco.com is doing nearly £2 billion in sales. So this suggests that there is £2 billion or more coming from amazon.com. That's people going to the US site instead of the UK site, and ordering for dispatch from the US. £2 billion ?? Not a chance.

Position 6. Marks & Spencer. M&S announced £324 million online for the last year, while Next, at number 9, announced nearly £500 million. Must be wrong.

Position 7. Epson UK. Surely a mistake ? More people are buying printers online directly from the Epson site than are buying stuff from Next (position 9) ?? No way.

Position 10. ASOS. Now I love ASOS, and they recently announced a fantastic £165 million in sales for the last 12 months. But they're above Easyjet and Ryanair. Easyjet did £2,363 million in their last year. How can they be below ASOS ?

Position 15. Tesco Direct. why is this not added into tesco.com ? Retail rankings are normally done at a group level. So the same applies to 16-B&Q (need to add in 34-Screwfix), Arcadia (combine TopShop, Dorothy Perkins, etc), Argos (add in 37-Homebase) DSG (Currys plus Dixons and Pixmania) and others. More and more retailers are running multiple websites with different brands. It makes sense to show the numbers at group level.

Position 28. John Lewis. No way John Lewis are below Debenhams (26) and River Island (24). I don't need to give the numbers. You know it's wrong.

I could go on as there are plenty more in the list that don't feel right, but I think you'll get bored. The IMRG website tells me that their list identifies the "top 50 UK e-retailers", but the small print says "as indicated by visits", which is where Hitwise comes in I suppose. Maybe this is why their list appears strange - it's an interesting list of something, but I don't think it's a list of the top 50 UK e-retailers.

The school holidays are approaching and my wife and children will be off to Italy for the duration. I think I'm going to use some of the extra free time I get to see if I can generate my own rankings, and I'll report back here.

HMV web sales up 16%, Waterstones up 60%

HMV Group has just announced preliminary figures for the year. Online sales at HMV were up 16% year on year, and up 60% at Waterstones. Total sales for the group were up 4.4%.

The report attributes hmv.com's success to enhancements made to the site's search, navigation and categorisation, and to the launch of their music downloads service.

The group is clearly keen on multi-channel loyalty cards: HMV's regional pilot of purehmv was successful and is now being rolled out nationwide. "The scheme targets HMV’s most loyal customers and enables them to redeem points accumulated from purchases made in-store or online against 'money-can’t-buy' rewards." the report says.

Waterstone's multi-channel loyalty scheme now has 2.8m members according to the report, exceeding their 3-year target of 1.5m. They say that "a significant proportion of transactions in branches and online at waterstones.com are made through the card, enabling us to provide more targeted communication to our customers".

ASOS - future plans revealed in final results statement

I strongly recommend that you read the final results statement from ASOS in full. As we reported earlier this month, their yearly sales rose by 104% to £165m. But in the full statement they give a lot of insight into their future plans, and they provide an unusually detailed breakdown of income, expenditure, and their key performance indicators. The two major highlights for me:

International growth - 19% of ASOS sales come from abroad, up from 10% in 2007/08. Top five countries are Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, France and the US. An International Director was appointed in April 2009 to grow this further - they intend to introduce flat rate delivery charges and will eventually introduce country-specific ASOS sites.

More delivery options - they plan to introduce a super-saver option and a same-day London delivery service. Their next day delivery service will be improved so that customers can place orders up to 6pm. 

They also go into detail about their KPIs (see table below) - very useful to benchmark yourselves, especially if you're in fashion:

E-mail of the week - Comet

I've been looking for e-mail marketing inspiration and last week's winner was Comet. An e-mail newsletter should aim to do three things: educate, entertain, sell. Comet definitely educates and sells in this example.

What I like about it:

• It has a clear theme - summer
• It has a good range of products - iPods, speaker, sat nav, cameras and camcorders
• There aren't too many products - giving the customer too much choice can be a mistake
• Clear links to the category pages allow the customer to focus on items they're interested in
• User reviews are included - and where there aren't any Comet asks for some
• There are links to buyers guides and videos for education on products
  

E-mail marketing - are retailers getting the subject lines right?

What should retailers put in the subject lines of their e-mail newsletters? This was one of the discussion points at our e-mail marketing masterclass the other day.

Dave Chaffey strongly advised everyone to test all elements of an e-mail, but especially the subject line. He told us that the first two words of the subject field are the most important - if the recipient isn't engaged by them, your mail could be deleted without being opened.

I decided to have a look at what came into our inbox from UK online retailers last week. It's obviously sale time and so most retailers will be pushing bargains. But were they getting the message across in the crucial first two words?

The short answer is no. Of the e-mails we received, only about 10 had compelling subject lines. My favourite four:

JJB 50% Sale. New products added today plus new Man United home shirt
They get the 50% discount up front, but also mention the new Manchester United kit launch.

Free Bosch Li-Ion Screwdriver
I don't know what this is but if they're free then even I might be tempted to open Screwfix's mail

Up to 50% off selected summer handbags
Jane Shilton also puts the very attractive discount upfront

Get a £25 Ocado voucher when you buy The Times & Sunday Times
Again, Ocado gets the carrot into the first few words.

And the worst one? Maybe true fashionistas are already buying their duffel coats, but Yoox's 'Autumn-Winter SECOND PREVIEW' did nothing for me on a hot June evening.

New Amazon shoe site - free next-day delivery?

Amazon's new shoe store will offer free next-day delivery when it launches in the UK this autumn, according to Retail Week.

I wonder if this will put pressure on other online retailers in the clothing sector, as nobody else is currently providing such a service. Snow Valley's most recent online retail delivery research showed that only 2 out of 33 UK online clothing retailers offered free delivery on everything as standard.

This graph gives you some idea of what online clothing retailers here in the UK are charging for delivery, against the promised delivery times.

• The most attractive standard delivery offer was free delivery within 2 working days
• Delivery within 5 working days as standard was most popular among clothing retailers
• Most were charging £3.75-£4.00 for delivery

Amazon's new shoe venture will enter the market right down in the bottom corner, with £0 for next-day service.

The next edition of our report will be out this autumn - register for our newsletter and you'll receive notification.

White Stuff home shopping sales up 70%

White Stuff's direct sales grew by 70% in the year to April 29. They don't reveal their online or home shopping revenues, but total sales reached £58.4m, up 34% on the previous year.

Online retail: supported by carriers & mail service providers

Today I was at the Mail & Express Delivery conference in London. I was there to do a presentation on the findings of our Online Retail Delivery Report - the audience being a mix of online retailers, carriers like Parcelforce, mail service providers like the Royal Mail, and other industry representatives.

I really enjoyed it. The carriers and the mail service providers are genuinely committed to helping online retailers to offer more delivery flexibility.

The most insightful presentation for me was Derek Weaver from Metapack who gave us a summary of what each carrier has got planned for the short term. This list isn't complete but it gives you an idea of what Royal Mail, Home Delivery Network, DHL et al are working towards:

• More drivers are being given handheld devices to allow tracking
• Evening delivery services being tested by Royal Mail
• New services such as 'avoid the school run 9.30-2.30'
• SMS messaging services
• E-mail messaging services
• Better website interface branding, allowing seamless tracking between courier and retailer
• New carding processes allowing the customer to reschedule their delivery online, by phone, or by SMS
• Convenient returns scheduling

My three key 'learnings' of the day:

• It's not about free delivery - the challenge for carriers and retailers is to bring down the cost of standard delivery
• Evening delivery services may never catch on - the volumes aren't there to make it worth the carriers' while
• Returns is still very much a weak point in the carriers' service offerings

A great event, run by great people.

Majestic Wine - 16% growth in web; now 9.1% of total sales

Majestic Wine's online sales grew by 16% year-on-year according to today's report. The web now accounts for 9.1% of their sales, up from 7.9% last year.

The report says; "We continue to invest in improving the functionality of the website and have introduced 'favourites' and user reviews as well as improved merchandising display. Increasingly we are offering parcels of wine, which would be too small to be distributed to all stores, as exclusives to our web customers. We now have 210,000 email addresses of Majestic customers allowing us to communicate about such parcels quickly and cost effectively."

Overall, total sales grew by 2.4% to £201.8m.

Net-a-porter - sales up 48% to £81.5m

Net-a-Porter's sales grew by 48% in the year to 31 January. Total revenues reached £81.5m, according to results filed at Companies House (as reported by the FT). They also had their first '£1m day' during the year.

As we reported on the Snow Patrol, Net-a-Porter is continuing to innovate: they launched their outlet site in April and they still have their same-day delivery service.