Category Archives: features

Karen Millen – ‘add to fitting room’ as important as ‘add to basket’

After commending www.karenmillen.com on their use of “view on a model” without the need to actually click anything, I was interested to see on visiting the website yesterday that they have taken a further step forward. Enter the Karen Millen online “Fitting Room”.
This feature has been available (but fairly hidden) on the site for some [...]

VIP customers book slots for Next online sale

The Next sale always causes a big stir on the high street, with people getting up ridiculously early to grab the bargains.
This year they’re doing something similar on the web. I received an e-mail this morning telling me that the online sale starts on 26 December, but as a valued customer I qualify for early access on 23 [...]

Nice conversion idea on Allposters.com

I noticed a nice idea on www.allposters.com today. I arrived on the site from a Google pay-per-click ad. Two seconds after I landed on the product page, a box slid slowly down from the top navigation bar offering me 20% off:

It hung there for a few seconds and then it decreased in size and slid horizontally across the page. [...]

Jeremy’s Christmas List & other ways of using personas to inspire customers

This is a very simple but quite effective idea that I have noticed on a handful of retail sites this festive season. Instead of just having ‘gifts for him’, one or two sites have used personas to create lists of Christmas ideas to help inspire customers.
So Urban Outfitters (see first image below) has created a list of Staff [...]

UK retailers & online advent calendars

I notice that advent calendars seem to be back in fashion with online retailers this year – I’ve given four examples below but I am sure there are others.
I can certainly see the appeal - as a concept, an advent calendar is perfect for getting customers to come back to your website regularly during December. However, I’m always a bit disappointed [...]

Amazon – promotions carousel for Black Friday

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 [...]

Debenhams clickable TV ad for Christmas

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 [...]

Product reviews – do retailers ask for them?

In September we placed orders on 137 UK retail websites as part of our Delivery & Returns Reports (due out soon). I was  encouraged to see that 39% of those sites now allow customers to submit product reviews.
But what surprised me was that only 15 retailers e-mailed us after our purchase to ask for a product review. [...]

Nice Hallowe’en idea on Iwantoneofthose.com

We all like this idea on Iwantoneofthose.com. Customers that type UNDEAD into the search box are presented with a very different look and feel (see below).
It’s a nice idea and it’s very well executed, even down to the ‘your coffin is disappointingly empty’. And if you leave the site and return to it later, the zombie [...]

Zappos Canada – why?

I know that many retailers have separate sites for different countries but if I was Canadian I’d be a bit offended by canada.zappos.com.
While drooling over a pair of Steve Madden black suede boots, I noticed a link to Zappos Canada. I clicked on it and what I saw shocked me to the core! It was like something [...]