Going mobile. Mobile app, mobile site, or both?

Posted by Aislinn Mahon on 10 May, 2012 in Multichannel | Retail Technology - (Be the first to comment)

This is a guest post from Kate Enright of Von Bismark. As featured in Internet Retailing, Von Bismark  is the next generation of retail. Through interfaces that allow consumers to interact with their favourite items from a few feet away true Multi-Channel is created. You can see Von Bismark in action here.

There are now over 1.2 billion mobile Internet users worldwide. This exciting statistic means that business owners can no longer afford to ignore the rising tide of people accessing content via their phones and tablets. So where to from here? The next question many are asking is, mobile app, mobile site, or both?  Based on the content you need to display and the service you need to provide, this decision is an important one. One thing is for sure however, retailers can no longer afford to neglect their mobile presence.

With the mainstream and global explosion of the smartphone over the past 3 years organisations have begun formatting their existing sites for mobile viewers, but the idea of going fully mobile with an app is definitely one more businesses are beginning to consider in order to make sure their content is shown in the best possible way. There are pros and cons to developing apps, such as the costly undertaking of development for both IOS and Android systems, compared to the across-the-board nature of mobile compatible sites.

The massive boom in smartphone sales has drastically changed the situation for high street retailers in particular. It is their growing concern that the only thing mobile technology is doing for their industry is turning them into showroom floors for the likes of Amazon and eBay. Retailers are now preparing themselves for these changes and getting ready for mobile shoppers. In February 2012 Schuh released an astounding figure of 12% online sales through mobile devices for their store, stating that tablets drove 80% of mobile traffic to their site. This statistic indicates quite clearly a changing tide. With mobile commerce more than doubling since October 2009, over 38% of the smartphone population has now completed a purchase from their device. As more and more companies invest in mobile sites and develop technology to make shopping easier for consumers via sophisticated apps we will only see this figures spread out across the board. Schuh released a mobile app in March 2012 and with the proven overtaking of mobile sites for apps by consumers, this progressive thinking might just be what got them the impressive mobile sales figure we see above.

Von Bismark in Action

Designing a mobile-optimized website format works sufficiently to display content on a variety of different mobile devices, and in a number of mobile browsers. But there the functionality really ends. Mobile users have become accustomed to the accessibility, improved features and functionality that mobile apps have to offer, and judging by recent surveys, they are feeling that mobile websites simply no longer cut it. Nielsen Smartphone Analytics completed a test last year which tracked data from mobile devices, both on IOS and Android which were installed with meters. They found some quite interesting results. The average android user spends close to an hour a day online and using mobile apps a day, 67% of this time was spent using one app or another. Nielson also found that on all the smartphones analysed, in total, apps were used 85% of the time, with the web browser active just 15% of the time. On tablets, apps were 61% compared with 39% web browsing. These statistics should provide valuable insight for those considering app development for their business.

Last year Zokem released some more interesting stats which further back-up the results at Neilson. They found that apps, including maps, gaming, entertainment, productivity, and social networking, added up to an average of 667 total monthly usage minutes while web browsing was behind with 422 minutes in monthly activity. Yet further consolidating apps leadership in the app vs web debate.

These days, app developers seem to be coming out of the woodwork, backed it seems by the exciting startup culture now booming in Irelandand the UK. The likes of Tapadoo and Krunksoft to name a couple, have exciting future prospects and are eager to grow quickly and bring some much needed competition to the marketplace. Companies like this will ensure that the smaller businesses can work towards becoming fully mobile.

It is estimated that there will be 7.3 billion people on the planet in 2016 and that they will be using 10 billion mobile devices in all. In fact, the projected amount of additional Internet data movement for just 2015 will be three times the size of the entire current mobile Internet. So can anyone afford to ignore the facts? Businesses need to get mobile, they need to decide if an app could improve their offering, because if it could, it could mean the difference between falling behind or drastically improving customer interaction and sales.

Need more info? Email Eoghan O’Sullivan @ eoghan@vonbismark.com.

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Proximity Technology and Consumer Marketing

Posted by Retailer Solutions on 23 April, 2012 in E-Commerce | Retail Technology | Uncategorized - (Be the first to comment)

This is a guest post from Ritesh Gupta on behalf of TheWhereBusiness. TheWhereBusiness spoke to Sean Sullivan of LocalSocial about Near Field Communications (NFC). LocalSocial enables merchants to create mobile offers and loyalty points rewards that can only be unlocked on the premises.

NFC, which has been generating a lot of buzz and traction in different markets around payment, is finally also being recognised for its marketing potential as new approaches like in-store and near-store marketing come to the fore, says Sean Sullivan, CEO, LocalSocial.

Recently, ABI Research highlighted that MNOs are in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Since MNOs have not evolved their business models for NFC, they continue to focus on contactless payments as they struggle to identify the opportunities of NFC.

But Sean believes that things are changing.

“Finally, NFC, which has been generating a lot of buzz and traction in different markets around payment, is finally also being recognised for its marketing potential.  Once people start to see how easy it is to “tap to follow on twitter”, “tap to Like on Facebook”, “tap to unlock offers”, and so on, it really gets them excited about the potential for a suite of marketing interactions around tapping/tagging based on NFC, even aside from payment,” added Sullivan, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming LBS Summit Europe 2012 conference, to be held in Amsterdam (May 22-23) this year.

Overall, most of the concepts related to proximity technology have been around for a long time and are finally commercially viable to pursue, as the consumer is ready for this level of engagement. Especially, the combination NFC / WiFi is a promising one; trigger people at an indoor location to come to a store, navigate them to an item and enable the one-click purchase to drive the return-on-visitor (ROV) to increase your sales.

Sullivan spoke in detail about trends in consumer marketing based on proximity technology, targeting mobile users within any geo-location, campaigns around SoLoMo and lot more.

What do you make of the latest trends in consumer marketing based on proximity technology including WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC?

I think we have to take each of those technologies separately first.

WiFi: We’re seeing quite a lot of consumer marketing happening, at some scale now, around WiFi. See companies like JiWire for example, driving very successful metrics around their WiFi marketing platform, especially in theUS right now. Or we can look at how Starbucks has been using its in-store network to promote media and content across theirUS footprint of stores, with significant response and engagement in evidence with their customers.

Bluetooth: We haven’t seen a lot of innovation on the marketing side of using Bluetooth until we saw the recent arrival of Low Energy (or Smart) Bluetooth. That, I believe, will unleash a lot of very cool use cases in the latter half of this year, as merchants figure out how to use Bluetooth “buttons” as proximity beacons, either as point solutions or as more general solutions like LocalSocial. The iPhone 4S leads the way here in terms of having great Bluetooth Low Energy support, but we’ll see a lot of Android handsets roll out in the coming months as well.

NFC: This has been generating a lot of buzz and traction in different markets around payment, is finally also being recognised for its marketing potential. Once people start to see how easy it is to “tap to follow on twitter”, “tap to Like on Facebook”, “tap to unlock offers”, and so on, it really gets them excited about the potential for a suite of marketing interactions around tapping/tagging based on NFC, even aside from payment. Standing back for the 1000-foot view, I think that proximity based solutions for marketing have never been more prevalent as they are today. We’ll see a significant step-up in the second half of 2012 and beyond as device support starts to meet the potential of digital marketers and creatives to take advantage of the technology.

The ability to target a mobile audience based on social interests and demographics within any geo-location is becoming an important factor in the effectiveness of mobile campaigns. What do you make of the opportunity?

I think we’re only starting to effectively scratch the surface of this. See for example what companies like MomentFeed or LocalResponse are doing: aggregating social check-ins from Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare and other services, then geo-coding them against real businesses. This means they get a “feed” of the profiles of real people who visit (or have visited) a given shop in a given street. They can deduce things about that business that are potentially enormously powerful for helping enhance the businesses ability to meaningfully engage with existing and new customers.

For example, they may be able to tell that businesses that more women shop there than men, or that they skew towards certain times of the day or days of the week for check-ins, and even track the sentiments of those check-ins, so that the business can help respond on negatives, and re-post or send thanks for positives.

We’re really at the very early days of having effective toolkits for businesses of all sizes to make the most of the fire-hose of data that is already flowing through these services. LocalSocial is tackling one aspect of this area, focused on in-store engagement and rewards. Imaging being able to walk in to a record shop, even a small indie record shop, and have them become aware of your social music profile (say, your Spotify or Last.fm profile), and have them use that to create a super-targeted offer to you based on your actual music habits, while you’re in the store? I think we’ll see many innovations around this, and we’re only at the very early stages of what’s possible.

Can you elaborate on efficiency of campaigns worked by your entity featuring SoLoMo? How does it ended up setting a new benchmark in the industry?

With LocalSocial, we’re at the early days of launching our trial in Europe. We’ve started in Dublin,Ireland, and the initial feedback has been very strong. If we look at other services, like ShopKick or Tagtile (both US), they report very strong engagement numbers and rates among their live and trial user bases. So there’s clearly a demand there, and a willingness with the consumer to explore new ways to engage with a merchant or retailer before they get to the till.

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Tips For Establishing An eCommerce Presence

Posted by Angela Coyle on 19 April, 2012 in Pricing | Retail Technology - (Be the first to comment)

This is a guest post from Angela Coyle, Marketing Manager with Profitero. Profitero help online retailers maximise sales via actionable competitive data. This post originally featured on the company blog.

Having an online presence is now essential to growing sales in 2012. There are a number of things to consider before setting up an eCommerce site for your business.

Many traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers are realising that one key area for growth in this difficult trading climate is selling online. For the Internet novice, this is a very daunting prospect generating more questions than answers. With many decisions to be made before setting up an eCommerce site, here are some points to consider before setting up your online business.

1. Research the best products from your product lines to sell online
Carry out market research to find out which products generate the most demand in online shopping. Consumer electronics, fashion, accessories, groceries are all popular categories with online shoppers.

2. Decide on your eCommerce budget
You have the choice of selling your products on your own eCommerce site, an auction website e.g. eBay, or through Amazon.

3. Get the logistics right
You need to decide if you will run your business from your current location, a new premises, hire additional storage premises or arrange to have the products distributed from a third-party’s location.

4. Attend training course in eCommerce
Attending a course in online retailing will educate you on topics such as website design, driving customer traffic using SEO and email marketing etc, metrics and analytics, transactional marketing, online customer service, deliveries and deadlines, content and mobile commerce.

5. Carry Out Digital Marketing
Setting up Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts are important steps in developing your online presence. More and more retailers are choosing digital marketing over the traditional advertising methods of print, broadcast and sponsorship. Regularly posting messages about your business, your offers and retailing will build your online profile. You will be able to promote your business online for free!

5. Monitor your competitors’ online prices
With so many retailers now selling online, the Internet offers you access to your online competitors’ latest prices. However, manually monitoring your competitors is a time-consuming task so you might want to hire the services of an online competitor price monitoring firm.

6. Renegotiate better prices with your suppliers wherever possible
With access to the timely pricing data of your competitiors, you will be able to go back to your suppliers to negotiate better prices. If they offer you no leeway, you might consider using other suppliers for your lines.

Once your online business is launched, you will need to review your products against those of your competitors on a regular basis to ensure you are offering popular products at the most competitive price. 

Visit http://blog.profitero.com regularly for all the latest news on the eCommerce industry.

Pricing intelligence company Profitero works with retailers and manufacturers to help them to grow sales and profit margins with the Profitero competitor price monitoring technology. We monitor competitor prices for 28 million products across more than 3,000 retail websites on your behalf. Click here to view a short video demo on Profitero’s competitor price comparison service. For more information on how we can help you to monitor competitors in order to increase your bottom line with our pricing intelligence system, visit our website www.profitero.com or email sales@profitero.com to request a free demo

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How advances in technology can meet the Retail Sector’s workforce challenges

Posted by Retailer Solutions on 11 April, 2012 in Workforce Management - (Be the first to comment)

This is a guest post from Mairead Walsh, Marketing and Communications Manager with Softworks.

Advances in technology are enabling the retail industry to more effectively forecast and schedule their workforce.  Effective workforce management has never been more critical to the retail sector due to the competitive nature of the industry and the necessity to control operating costs. As the workforce is the single largest controllable expense for retail, labour is often a key driver to financial success or otherwise.

Today’s Integrated Workforce Management (WFM) Solutions give retailers the tools and processes they need to balance the high cost of labour, tight budgets, variable staffing needs, complex labour laws and union agreements without putting customer loyalty, compliance, employee satisfaction, or profitability at risk.

 Workforce Challenges in Retail

Retailers face the following 5 challenges;

(1)     Forecasting customer demand

(2)     Determining employee supply based on this demand

(3)     Employee scheduling

(4)     Real-time adjustment of these schedules as required

(5)     Satisfying budget requirements and constraints

 Challenge 1 – Forecasting customer demand

Forecasting customer demand in retail has always been challenging due to the many external factors that affect footfall. Factors such as seasonal demand, promotional activity and competitor activity are just a few that springs to mind. However, in today’s economic environment it’s even more challenging – as customer spending continues to be restrained, retailers big and small are facing major challenges.

Challenge 2 – Determining employee supply based on this demand

The second challenge is calculating the number of employees that are required to meet the demand forecasted. Ensuring that you have the correct number of employees, with the right skills during a specific time period, is very challenging as both overstaffing and understaffing are costly mistakes.

Challenge 3 – Employee scheduling

The third challenge is to create the actual work schedule.  For this you are trying the balance the needs of the business with the desires of the employees. It’s not good enough anymore to just copy last month’s schedule – not if you want to develop, motivate and retain your best employees. A happy workforce creates a shopping experience that is profitable for retailers and satisfying for customers.

Challenge 4 – Real-time adjustment of these schedules as required

The fourth challenge involves changing the schedule as needed in real-time due to actual demand, to ensure you have optimum customer service. Today’s most successful retailers are reacting to changes with speed and precision. Responding to variable customer demand remains a fundamental mission in the retail sector.

Challenge 5 – Satisfying budget requirements and constraints

The final challenge is to ensure the business is profitable. Managers making daily call-in decisions need to appreciate the effect their immediate actions will have on the performance of the overall budget.

How Workforce Management Solutions can meet these challenges

Modern Integrated WFM Solutions manage the complex balance of workforce supply and customer demand. Sustaining this fine balance requires precise daily operations. Agile employee scheduling, time and attendance and analytical insight empower retailers to optimise their workforce and make changes in response to internal and external changes.

They empower retailers to understand and react to revenue patterns in their business by managing labour costs.  By automating workforce management processes you are eliminating error prone paper-based schedules and excel spread-sheets along with time consuming administrative tasks.  With a WFM solution allocating resources where and when they are needed is easily achieved via innovative automated scheduling tools. This allows managers to work within predefined budget allocations and optimise schedules accordingly. It also means they can keep a close eye on overtime, absenteeism and other unplanned costs.

If retailers are to meet all five challenges they must eliminate inefficiencies and more accurately schedule employees.  This transformation of workforce management will allow retailers to reduce unnecessary costs and payments, improve productivity and efficiency and ensure a consistent and superior customer experience.  Armed with the latest Workforce Management technology, meeting these challenges is 100% attainable.

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Bright Thinking

Posted by Aislinn Mahon on 5 April, 2012 in Environmental Management | Retail Technology - (Be the first to comment)

A few weeks ago we introduced you to Nualight; the only LED lighting company in the world that specialises exclusively in food retail displays. The following interview features Siobhan O’Dwyer, VP Marketing at Nualight. Siobhan discusses how Nualight is delivering real results using Internet marketing.

Nualight puts email marketing in the spotlight

LED retail lighting specialist Nualight is using email newsletters to build its brand and promote itself as a thought leader in the fast-growing LED lighting market.

Nualight is one of the original pioneers of LED food lighting and counts Tesco, Morrisons, and Sainsbury’s among its key customers. Co-located in Cork and Amsterdam, the rapidly growing company has been making a name for itself in the buoyant retail lighting market helped by its content-filled company newsletters.

Monthly newsletter keeps customers up to date

A monthly e-newsletter – called Bright Thinking – is used to keep Nualight’s 4,000-plus customers across Europe and the US updated on company news. “We launch products on such a regular basis that it would be impossible to keep our customers up to date without the newsletter; it really is the most effective way to tell them our news,” said Siobhan O’Dwyer, vice president of marketing with Nualight.

The monthly e-newsletter is teased via a HTML email sent to a subscriber list, with snippets of content that link back to the Nualight website. “We’re keen to direct people back to our website, where we have so much content and information we’d like them to see. Newsletters are a great way to do that.”

Brand building with quarterly e-zine

In what has become a highly competitive market, with some of the biggest companies in the world vying for market share, Nualight’s newsletters have become a vital marketing tool.

“One of our main goals is to position ourselves as experts in our area. With our newsletters we can reinforce that position regularly using content that is interesting to people and, of course, telling people about our ongoing product innovation,” explained Siobhan.

The company’s 32-page online magazine – Bright – is published each quarter. It delivers company news as well as industry-related features and expert interviews. “Our expert interviews in particular are very well received, and they’ve really helped us to align ourselves as thought leaders.”

Creating company spirit globally with staff newsletter

Having just completed the acquisition of a company in the Netherlands, as well as having a manufacturing site in Poland and a global sales team, Nualight was keen to knit its team of over 200 employees together. A monthly email newsletter is sent out to all staff to keep everyone updated on changes within the company, local news from each site, as well as product launches and industry trends.

“The staff newsletter helps us integrate our global team together, and makes sure everyone knows what’s going on in the company and in the industry,” said Siobhan.

Weighing up what’s working

On average, Nualight’s newsletter open rates are at an impressive 25 to 40 percent, with a 47 percent click-through rate. Constant testing and analytics help Siobhan identify which articles are proving most popular.

“We’re learning as we go along. We know that the HTML emails are crucial to pulling people through to our site so we make sure to create really good content hooks and put some real thought into our subject lines. We’ve identified that readers are interested in innovation, so we make sure to put our product news front and centre. Visual works for us too; our industry is all about atmosphere and ambience so we have upped the image content in the HTML mail.”

Divide and conquer

With customers all across Europe, Nualight decided to develop its newsletters in English, French and German, with the subscriber database split into the three languages. This strategy has had a positive impact on open rates, according to Siobhan.

Nualight is also planning further segmentation of its subscriber database. A recently introduced newsletter signup box on its website asks people to select their interest in one of the company’s two distinct product lines: “case lighting” or “accent lighting”. Nualight plans to develop a newsletter for each of these lines.

“I would say without hesitation that email marketing is one of the most effective things we do. Customers in our sector are information-hungry and our newsletters have really helped us to tap into that requirement,” concluded Siobhan.

 

If you would like to keep up to date with Nualight, you can sign up for the monthly ezine ‘Bright’ here.

This article was written by ENNclick for the Enterprise Ireland Internet Marketing Unit.

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From Customer Service to Customer Retention

Posted by Retailer Solutions on 2 April, 2012 in Retail Technology - (Be the first to comment)

This is a guest post from Eoghan O’Sullivan, Founder of Von Bismark. Drawing upon the Microsoft Kinect’s 3D and skeletal-tracking technology, Von Bismark has created a cloud-based virtual wardrobe and mirror technology. This post origianlly featured here.

We now live in a world where every penny is appreciated and the throw-away attitude of the past is gone. Customer service expectations have been increasing consistently over the last four years, with 44% of consumers saying their expectations are higher than the previous year, compared to only 31%in 2008 [Forbes]. Retailers are, for the most part, stepping up and meeting the customer service challenge. Stories of follow up, hand-written notes from retailers and complimentary bottles of wine sent to rooms from hotel management are now commonplace. Service providers are realising that we are living in an extremely competitive world and it is truly dog-eat-dog when it comes to getting new business and retaining old. 

The last thing however, that retailers/service providers should believe is that only the cheapest offerings will survive. Although, as I said, consumers value every cent much more so than before, that does not necessarily mean that they will always opt for the cheapest. What they will opt for, more often than not, is the best quality, the best level of service or a provider they feel connected with, simply because they want to know that they are spending their money in the best possible way with the best people.

So how do we turn good customer service into customer loyalty? Firstly, you have to get to know your customer and secondly you have to take this knowledge and use to it understand what they really want and need. If you can market to that need directly and personally, tapping emotions and treating customers as individuals, you will reap the rewards. This goes beyond the generic “How was our service today?” form, email or text. After all, it has been proven that 85% of loyalty program members never hear from their loyalty programs after the day they sign up. So the generic loyalty programs in place from retailers clearly aren’t cutting it. Companies such as Swipely are thinking creatively by trimming back on loyalty cards and vouchers and using customers’ existing credit cards as vehicles to improving loyalty through clever marketing and deal offerings on behalf of merchants.

Retailers in this competitive marketplace need companies like these to retrieve hard-hitting metrics on customers so they can to market to them effectively. They need the right technology and creative ideas. In a recent interview with Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty 360, investigating top loyalty trends for 2011, he stated that, “Loyalty will focus more on emotions than on rational, incentive-based initiatives. Behavioural economists tell us that economic decision-making is 70% emotional and 30% rational, which is why incentive-based loyalty programs that tend to be rational do not work well. It’s the emotional side of the decision-making process that creates connected, passionate, engaged customers.”

To utilise this statistic you will need to know; who looked at what, who bought what, who didn’t buy what and why not? The answers to these questions illustrate the difference between a once-off browse or sale, and a life-long customer. For example, if you can Facebook a customer a month down the line asking them how their jeans are lasting and telling them that there’s a great top in stock that would complement them perfectly, then you will be doing something to intrigue them and put yourself back on their radar. How much more personal can you get after all? … Well without hitting invasive territory at least.

So start thinking outside the box. Get to know customers as individuals by using the right technology and gather the important metrics that will allow you to tap into those emotions and build personal connections with your customers.

Von Bismark was recently featured as ‘Tech start-up of the week’ by Silicon Republic. You can read more about Eoghan here.

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Engaging Customers with Retail Technology

Posted by Aislinn Mahon on 30 March, 2012 in Retail Technology - (Be the first to comment)

A few weeks ago we featured a guest post from Alan Kearney, CEO of Gesaky.

You can learn more about Alan and his exciting start-up company below.

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Why Integration Should Be Part of Every Retailer’s Multi-Channel Strategy

Posted by Retailer Solutions on in Content Management | E-Commerce | Multichannel - (Be the first to comment)

This is a guest post from Maria Keech, Account Manager for NitroSell Integrated Ecommerce.

 Multi-channel Integration has been a buzz word in the retail industry for many years now but it’s surprising how many SME’s still fall into the trap of managing their shop sales and web sales separately. Double administration and disparate inventory are a multi-channel retailer’s burden. Retailers may start with a small standalone presence and find that growth is unwieldy with increasing operational costs.

Headaches include:

  1. Maintaining two inventory systems instead of one and, on a related note, out of stocks
  2. Cost, time and accuracy of duplicate data entry and validation
  3. Clutter of products remaining on the website after the product has been discontinued
  4. Separate reporting – sales, inventory, customer, promotions

It’s imperative to consider how customers like to shop today and make sure their expectations are met regardless of whether you are a small or large business.

“I’ve bought an item on line but now I’m told it’s out of stock. Why did it show as available in the first place? ”  “You have new lines available in store but not online … Why?” “Can I use my smart phone to check you have my size in stock before making the trip to town?”

All of these scenarios are much easier to manage with an integrated EPOS/Web system. To provide a streamlined service you have to be able to rely on the accuracy of your data so that when a change is made in one place it should automatically follow through in other areas. Integration is more than just uploading product data to the web.

  1. Each product attribute entered only one time with single database for inventory levels
  2. Web sales update same inventory database from which merchandisers purchase product
  3.  Product sold from the web, but not yet fulfilled, will decrement from the available inventory
  4.  Definable availability rules to remove product “ out of stocks” or to give notice when back in stock
  5.  Supplier history reflects multi-channel sales
  6. Customer price levels or discounts can be set together with specific tax and shipping rules
  7.  Simple fulfillment process that updates POS at the same time

Let’s look at some retailer perspectives.

“Double work often gets half done…” Chris Odea – OD’s Designer Clothing

Chris Odea now runs a very successful integrated solution but he admits being daunted at the start of the process. “Watching other retailers wrestle with their web stores scared me off. They took forever to set up right. Then they entered everything twice: once in the physical store’s system, and a second time for the webstore. I dodged the Internet as long as I dared”. Chris reviewed many point-of-sale and webstore possibilities. “The first ones I saw didn’t cure the universal problem: Two sales outlets mean you run two stores. Yet every retailer knows that double work often gets half done. So the Web’s promised benefits don’t come true for many retailers. “When first seeing the automatic, real-time integration between a webstore and bricks and mortar shop it was my eureka moment. It hit me how I could have two stores, but just manage one. The integration could do that double-work I’d been dreading.”

“We credit our system integration for something you can’t often do in retail,” says Simpkins. “We experimentally and successfully opened up a new marketplace without adding staff.” Andy Simpkins – Whitehall Garden Centre

“We needed a no-risk way to sell online. We’d heard the theoretical benefits of doing it—but also the costs and other stores’ false starts and disasters. We credit our integrated system for something you can’t often do in retail,” says Simpkins. “We successfully opened up a new marketplace without adding staff. “In 18 months, we boosted inventory turnover 15 percent. As our Web business has grown, it has more than paid for itself several times over. Our webstore is now an efficient profit centre. “An integrated webstore also nurtures in-store sales,” says Simpkins. “Click and Collect‟ lets customers pay online, then come to the store’s Customer Collection point to pick up their set-aside items.

Retailers are wise to check their systems measure up to the demands of online retail for today’s market and even more so for the future as online sales continue to increase. Investing in an integrated multi-channel approach is vital to driving profitable growth.

Nitrosell make it easy for retailers to increase profits by serving new and existing customers online. The company’s innovative software web-enables ‘bricks-and-mortar’ retailers by providing a solution that integrates tightly into their existing in-store point-of-sale system.

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For the Love of Contemporary Irish Design

Posted by Retailer Solutions on 27 March, 2012 in Consumer Products | E-Commerce - (1 Comments)

Sarah Jane Lynch is a retailer with a difference. In this guest post, she explains how she began TheDesignBasket.com with a vision of offering the modern consumer high quality home-grown products with a contemporary twist.

As I sit in front of my laptop, I type ‘Irish Gifts’ into Google.  As a nation of artists, I’m flooded with results…….Shamrocks, Shillelaghs, Aran Jumpers and Celtic Crosses.  No doubt there is a huge market out there for these traditional Irish crafted products but with the success of contemporary Irish design at an international level, why aren’t these contemporary designers shining online?

Irish contemporary designers have been participating in prestigious international shows such as the biennial LOOT, held at the Museum of Art and Design in New York, SOFA (Sculpture Objects & Functional Art) in Chicago and more recently Collect in London, putting contemporary Irish design on the international stage.  Yet if someone from Boston, Toronto, Sydney or Kuala Lumpur searches for an Irish gift online, they are transported back 20 years to a time when we didn’t have product designers like Klickity or Jenny Walsh.  They wouldn’t stumble across the electric jewellery designs of Melissa Curry and Filip Vanas.  GaGa Baby and Grand Grand might be Irish terms heard in passing but they wouldn’t uncover the fun side of Irish design that such brands have to offer.

Here in Ireland, there are lots of opportunities to discover these talented contemporary designers.  The annual Showcase event in the RDS for international buyers is a wonderful experience and a great opportunity to meet our home-grown talent.  Numerous boutiques throughout the country are flying the flag for contemporary Irish design and with a jam packed calendar of craft fairs nationwide, there are plenty of opportunities to tap into this contemporary design pool.  DesignerDublin.ie is a great website promoting Dublin based designers and art/craft events in and around Dublin.  However, to the online customer looking for an Irish gift, Google portrays a very different image – one of thatched cottages, fairies and shamrocks (seriously, look up Irish gifts in Google Images!).

And so, I am on a mission to find the most contemporary, stylish and uniquely Irish gifts that have been designed here in Ireland, and to house them all in a single online store-so that the worldwide Irish and fans of Ireland have a range of options. My adventure has started and TheDesignBasket.com is alive and kicking. With a designer base of 70 (and growing!), we’re starting a contemporary Irish design revolution. Participating designers are carefully selected to ensure quality and style. To find out more, please visit us and see for yourself!

We love to get feedback about our project and our product range, so please email your comments to info@thedesignbasket.com.

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More consumers than ever are logging in to Facebook, but are retailers clued up?

Posted by Aislinn Mahon on 23 March, 2012 in E-Commerce | Multichannel | Retail Technology | Social Media - (1 Comments)

This is a guest post from Jessica Mabe, the lead consultant at elearning company MindLeaders for Facebook Trainer for Business, a new training app developed in cooperation with Facebook that teaches small to medium sized businesses how to get started with Facebook marketing.

Retailers could be missing a huge opportunity to increase sales and find new customers if they aren’t using Facebook properly. In Ireland there are currently over 2,116,000 active users, which means that whatever line of business, the majority of existing customers and a vast potential audience are logging in regularly. 

Facebook changes the game when it comes to advertising works in a way that no other form of online marketing has done so far. Highly targeted Facebook Ads can produce a huge return from a small investment, Sponsored Stories exploit the power of word-of-mouth marketing, and Check-In deals offer a variety of ways to get customers into your stores.  In lean times, Facebook can be the most effective way to find and reach bargain-hunting customers.

However, a firm understanding of the ins and outs of Facebook advertising is critical to success – and it’s this understanding which is sometimes lacking. A recent survey found that whilst 68% of sellers found Facebook campaigns to highly effective for customer acquisition, 25% of potential sellers still don’t understand how to use them properly.

For retailers who have recently started with Facebook marketing, the revamped timeline pages may also seem to represent a challenge. But they actually offer companies an easier way than before to create splashy, media-rich pages that show off brand personality. A chronological timeline on the right side of the page lets businesses create customized pages to showcase past milestones, and a new “offers” capability lets companies place coupons and promotions directly on their page.

In the long run, creating a sustainable Facebook presence also means selling in a different way. Retailers need to be able to create and manage a community of Facebook fans that is entertaining at the same time as being focussed, more or less, on their products. That means knowing what kind of content to post, when to post it and how to create a user experience that stands out without wasting too much time.  

And when it comes to community management, a lack of understanding is also holding small businesses back. New research released this week by Recommend.ly found that 82% of Facebook brand pages issue less than five updates a month, and local businesses were found to be the least active.  So whilst we might all be logging on to Facebook, but not all of us are thinking about its full retail potential.

 Check out Mindleaders on Facebook here!

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