Since my last Etailwatch post I’ve seen a lot of interesting web stories. Firstly though congratulations to all the companies who won an award or were nominated at the Drapers 2010 etail awards last night!
Laithwaites Wine
I must have read 3-4 reviews of the relaunched Laithwaites wine website so I thought I should check it out myself! Internet Retailing highlighted the benefits of the ATG platform which allows Laithwaites to centrally manage sales across all their retail channels.
eConsultancy also posted a very in-depth review where they highlight the ease of shopping with the narrow by options, however while these are very good offering a range of matching options I am surprised Laithwaites don’t also use a drop down menu for basic categorisation as some customers may be overwhelmed by the left hand navigation and look for a more traditional categorisation.
Once on a product page there is plenty of information about the wine and even winemaker to help you make your choice, Bazaarvoice are providing customer reviews. The reviews are helpful but as many are anonymous it is hard to trust them, once there are more reviews and you can see all the wines one reviewer has reviewed I’m sure this will be a much more powerful tool.
A / B Testing
So often changes are made to sites because it is thought to be the right thing to do, but I wonder how many etailers fairly A / B test these changes. Have a look at this interesting post from the Get Elastic eCommerce Blog where they look at an A / B test of the colour attribute on a product page of the Official Olympic store. Its easy to look at the results and think it is obvious why variant B is the most successful but it shows how important page design is, as all variants are commonly used on websites. Page design can be a battle between brand identity and usability, A / B testing can be a powerful tool to quantify the value of changes.
The iPad
I still haven’t decided my opinion on the iPad. I love the concept of having a Star Trek style pad, something roughly the size of an A4 notepad, but lighter. I could see how it would be something very easy to use throughout the house, much more naturally portable than a laptop. However it is limited by the Apple software and I just feel that personally I would probably spend the same or less on a laptop which would be more powerful.
However I think they will be highly successful as most users will already be familiar with the Iphone style interface, and if someone is thinking of buying a Netbook the iPad is a serious alternative.
What does the iPad mean for etailers? I think it means that suddenly Apple have a great device for “mobile commerce”. With a 10 inch screen rather than a 2 inch screen, unlike a iPhone, sites will naturally be very shoppable. I can foresee users watching TV while randomly browsing shopping sites on their iPad, it could bring your webstore into the customers living room, rather than just being part of their office!
Mercedes GP who bought last years Championship winning team Brawn GP have become the first team to launch their 2010 F1 racing car.
The above teaser was released early this morning prior to the car’s launch at Mercedes Benz museum in Stuttgart.
The new Mercedes car is named the Mercedes MGP W01 and the paint work brings together the heritage of the Mercedes Silver Arrows and the blue highlights of their title sponsor Petronas.
Michael Schumacher says his target is to win the championship, and I think he’s in with a very good chance.
Here’s the full press release from Mercedes.
Today, the new Silver Arrows Formula One works team MERCEDES GP PETRONAS was presented at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. Nico Rosberg and seven-time Formula One World Champion Michael Schumacher along with team management Ross Brawn, Nick Fry and Norbert Haug were introduced to guests with a presentation and press conference.
Over 600 guests, including 200 media representatives and 200 Mercedes-Benz employees, visited the Mercedes-Benz Museum, one of the biggest and most famous car museums in the world, to see the launch of the team and the unveiling of the new Silver Arrows livery. Mercedes-Benz employees from the company’s manufacturing plants in Untertürkheim and Sindelfingen, 100 of whom were invited for their outstanding performances and 100 selected through a popular internal draw, also had the opportunity to take their first look at the new MERCEDES GP PETRONAS team.
The event opened with a welcome speech by Dr. Dieter Zetsche, CEO of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars before Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg unveiled the new Silver Arrows livery for the 2010 season on last year’s car. The team’s 2010 car, the MGP W01, will make its track debut at the first Formula One test in Valencia on Monday 1 February, with the 2010 Formula One season starting in Bahrain on 14 March.
The new silver and green livery creates a true marriage between the heritage of the Silver Arrows and the team’s title partner PETRONAS. The legacy of the Silver Arrows goes back to the 1934 Eifel Race when, on the evening before the event, the white paint was sanded off the Mercedes W25 race car to fulfil weight regulations (750kg formula) and the silver colour of the aluminium surface of the car appeared. This season, with the return of the Silver Arrows, the MGP W01 will shine in silver combined with a flow of iridescent silver and green shading. On the nose and other parts of the car, traces of black carbon fibre visible are visible – a reminder of the first Silver Arrow of 1934.
MICHAEL SCHUMACHER:
“Finally the 2010 Formula One season is firing up! I have to say that I am totally committed to this new challenge. This season feels like a re-start for me and I am so motivated. We have a very exciting combination at MERCEDES GP PETRONAS. We have a World Champion team in every sense of the word and I cannot wait to get into the car for the first time in Valencia. I am convinced that MERCEDES GP PETRONAS will be in a very good position to fight for the championships this season and I will definitely give it a go. Driving for Mercedes-Benz again is like the closing of a circle for me as I started my racing driver career with the three-pointed star on my helmet. This is another reason why I cannot wait for the competition to get underway.”
NICO ROSBERG:
“You can really feel the successful motorsport history of Mercedes-Benz here at the Museum in Stuttgart and to be part of the new Silver Arrows team and that racing heritage makes me feel extremely proud and motivated. Since joining the team in November, I have spent a lot of time at the factory in Brackley, at Mercedes-Benz High Performance Engines in Brixworth and here in Stuttgart, which has given me the opportunity to settle in and get to know everyone. I have seen how hard the team is working on the new car and I really can’t wait for the opportunity to drive it for the first time in Valencia next week. I am looking forward to working with everyone at MERCEDES GP PETRONAS and will give it my all to reward their fantastic efforts with good on-track results this season.”
ROSS BRAWN, TEAM PRINCIPAL, MERCEDES GP PETRONAS:
“It is a privilege to be here at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart today for the official presentation of the MERCEDES GP PETRONAS Formula One Team. With your first look around the Museum, you realise the fantastic racing heritage of Mercedes-Benz and we hope to be able to contribute to those successes going forward. Our team have been working extremely hard throughout last year and over the winter on the development of the MGP W01 and everyone at the team is looking forward to the start of testing in Valencia next week. We have two excellent drivers in Nico and Michael, who will form one of the most exciting and one of the best partnerships on the grid, and with the support of Mercedes-Benz, Aabar, our new title partner PETRONAS and all of our team partners, everyone is looking forward to the 2010 Formula One season with anticipation.”
NORBERT HAUG, VICE PRESIDENT MERCEDES-BENZ MOTORSPORT:
“With today’s presentation of our new MERCEDES GP PETRONAS Formula One Team, a new and certainly the most important chapter of over 100 years of Mercedes-Benz motorsport history begins. The new Formula One season will offer challenges which will be bigger than ever before in over sixty years of the sport’s history. We look forward to the cooperation with our drivers Nico Rosberg who has enormous capabilities and perspectives, and with seven-time World Champion Michael Schumacher who is no less motivated than at the time when he began his professional motor racing career with Mercedes-Benz and then made his first step into such a successful Formula One career with our support. Today I also cordially welcome our new title partner PETRONAS as well as our co-investor Aabar/IPIC together with all of our team partners. I warmly welcome all our colleagues from last year’s World Championship team Brawn GP headed by Ross Brawn and Nick Fry to the Mercedes family. There are challenging tasks ahead of us and we will tackle them with power, consistency and full motivation.”
In this instalment of Etailwatch Christmas sales stats, Augmented reality comes to etail, hover effects and the best of 2009.
Christmas day sales up by 29%
Econsultancy has commentated on an eDigital research survey which shows that Christmas day sales are up on last year by 29%. Most interestingly over 75% of the people surveyed were online on Christmas day or Boxing day. Read the full report and download the survey from Econsultancy here
Internetretailing.net also reported that Boxing day saw the most ever visitors to John Lewis’ site
Augmented Reality in etail
The web moves so quickly etailers are always looking for ways to differentiate their sites from the competition. Ian Jindal’s blog In No Particular order featured Zugara.
Zugara have created software for a new type of fashion consumer. “The Webcam Social Shopper.
and here it is in action on a American etailer’s site
When I saw this I really liked how well thought out the software was. It makes a standard etail site a social shopping experience as the user is able to thumbs up or down a product, post pictures to their facebook, which will could have a viral effect on the site. I am sceptical whether it would increase conversion, or how the quality of the user experience over a wide varied fashion retailers catalogue but I think it could really drive traffic to a site.
Enhancing your page with hover effects
The Get Elastic eCommerce Blog have posted “12 ways to enhance your online store with Javascript Hover effects. I think this is an area which many sites are currently developing and can really improve a site’s usability. Personally I like the use of hover over on product listing pages on swatches to make the thumbnail change colour, out of stock / promotional messaging – as it is a clear call to action to a customer and also obviously drop down menus.
I am a bit wary of using it to provide cross sell information etc as I feel when you hover over something what pops up should be expected by the customer and you don’t want to bombard them with hover overs.
Best of 2009
With the end of the year, and the end of the noughties invariably there are many “Top lists” from etail blogs, some of the ones I picked up on were
Get Elastic – Wrapping up 2009 – By just giving one top post per month this focuses you on some key website topics
Econsultancy – 24 eCommerce sites reviewed – A selection of the Website reviews that Econsultancy have written this year.
Finally
I hope you have found this issue of etail watch interesting, if you have thoughts on any of the above please leave a comment below. Alternatively if there’s something you have read which I haven’t covered or a blog / news source you think I might enjoy please let me know (leave a comment or use the contact page)
After stumbling upon David Baldacci’s latest novel in Sainsburys I have become hooked and am quickly working my way through his back catalogue.
Split second is the first book in the Sean King and Michelle Maxwell series. In a split second everything can change, and the King and Maxwell it did in the worst possible way, both secret service agents lost their principles. King’s was assassinated, Maxwell’s was kidnapped several years later, but is there a connection between the two?
Here’s the blurb from the back of the book
‘He was the only one in the room who could see it. His attention stayed there for one beat, two beats, three beats, far too long. Yet who could blame him for not being able to pull his gaze away from that?’
When something distracts Secret Agent Sean King for a split second, it costs him his career and presidential candidate Clyde Ritter, his life. But what stole his attention? And why was Ritter shot? Eight years later Michelle Maxwell is on the fast track through the ranks of the Secret Service when her career is stopped short: Presidential candidate John Bruno is abducted from a funeral home while under her protection.
The similarity between the two cases drives Michelle to re-open investigations into the Ritter fiasco and join forces with attractive ex-agent King. The pair are determined to get to the bottom of what happened in those critical moments. Meanwhile, high-ranking members of the legal system and key witnesses from both cases are going missing. King is losing friends, colleagues and clients fast and his ex-lover, Joan Dillinger, is playing curious games – she wants Sean back, but she also owes him for something . . .
As with the other Baldacci books I have read I was hooked from the first page, I like the fast paced style of the book. However while there was an exciting conclusion to the story I felt it was slightly over complicated and implausible, but it was a great read!
I’ve struggled to know what to do with the Barsley Brief, originally started to chronicle my charity cycle to Paris, since then I have lacked direction for the site and “blogged” about a range of different interests and thoughts. A friend suggested I could use the blog to commentate on my interest of eCommerce / etailing. I have decided to start ( who knows this could be the end too!) by looking at the etail news stories of the week.
Last Delivery Dates
One of the big stories that most sites have picked up on this week is last order dates. Last year Christmas Day was on a Thursday, this year a Friday. Therefore this year the majority of etailers had a “free shipping” closing date of Friday 18th December. Internet Retailing highlighted several retailers are offering a Christmas eve order and delivery within the M25. This includes Amazon and Net a Porter who allows orders up to 10am Christmas Eve. While I am sure these sites have received a fair amount of press for this, how many orders are they actually going to make with delivery charges of up to £19.50. Neither site is advertising their delivery proposition strongly. Infact on Net a Porter I struggled to find any mention of their Christmas delivery dates
eBuyer last delivery dates
IMRG was the first I saw mention eBuyer who are offering customers the opportunity to order up until 11pm 23rd December and have the item delivered anywhere in mainland UK next day (Christmas eve). They are “so” confident that they can fufil this delivery promise that if they don’t they will get your shipping refunded and get shipping free on your next order. They advertise this message prominently on their homepage, but I can’t help feel that if they did fail to meet this delivery customers would not be placated by free delivery!
The Snow Valley “The Snow Patrol blog” have put together a pie chart of delivery dates, from 155 retailers over half have a Christmas delivery deadline of 21st or 22nd December (Monday / Tuesday). One interesting fact they note is that a lot of retailers are not putting delivery dates on their homepage or clearly through the site. The delivery message can be used as a strong call to action and help conversion.
Personalised Greeting Cards
We all know the annoying Moonpig advert on the TV inviting you to log on and send a friend a personalised greetings card. Moonpig have been very successful taking a turnover of £20.9 million in the year ending 30th April 2009 and profits of 6.7m (source Printweek). IMRG reported this week that ASDA has taken personalised cards to the logical next step. ASDA have partnered with Hallmark to offer personalised cards direct on the Asda website - I think a great idea, buy your greeting card while you do your weekly shop, why go else where? Currently the personalised cards area has a separate shopping basket to the rest of ASDA, if however in the future they are able to allow greetings cards to work in a common shopping basket this could be a really successful feature, as many customers will be happy to make a impulse purchase.
Top Lists
Coming up to the end of the year we’ll see many top lists on a range of subjects, as my last feature this week I have picked Econsultancy’s top 25 blog posts of 2009. Econsultancy have given details of their top 25 posts of 2009, many are social media related which I thinks reflects the way that they have taken to social media as one of the first (that I saw) to have a twitterfall on their homepage, and now on each post. Some articles I found interesting are -
12 brilliant 404 pages – This made me chuckle, good to see helpful and informative 404 pages, but perhaps worrying that they could be found!
Until next week
Have a Merry Christmas! In the next week there are sure to be stories around when etailers Christmas sales start, the sales potential of the web on Christmas day (post turkey of course!). If you have enjoyed reading this, please leave a comment with your views or feel free to suggest a story I’ve missed that you felt I should have included.
