The Barsley Brief

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!