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!

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 -

How Amazon made $2.7bn with one small tweak - This post looks at the subject of product reviews and how to use them to increase sales.

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.