The UK online spend over Christmas was unsurprisingly a record £15.2 billion. With more than 80% of adults shopping online in 2007 this trend is set to continue according to the IMRG (via Retail Bulletin). E commerce sales overall grew 50% last year with £46.6 billion being spent in 2007.
High street retailers have an obvious advantage with the ability to deliver and control stock and in theory (but not always in practice) an understanding and face to face experiene of how to treat their customers, however some of the major players are still missing out with a lack of ability to buy their products online (browse online, shop instore … how dull), George, Matalan, TK Maxx and Primark, to name but four in a sector that jumped 28% in December last year.
Gloomy recession aside it’s pretty easy to predict that 2008 will see these figures continue to rise and that’s with the same retailers selling to the same consumers. Imagine if some of the bigger high street names got their online act together and started some real online competition, how exciting and innovative their websites could be. So a prediciton for 2008, a fashion retailer wil launch a transactional website this year and it will do really, really well, simply because there isn’t a lot of choice on the online high street.
With the strapline of “from designer to downright comfy” Oxfam’s online shop sells a range of what we might call ‘vintage’ fashion including accessories and childrenswear. Here’s another business getting its act together online. This is a great way of using an existing offline social network to create a new online network. Sometime soon are we going to see something like this become a marketplace, (although maybe this exists already somewhere?) percentages of buying and selling going to the help fight poverty, far better than being chugged in the street. This surely is the tip of the iceberg for this kind of charity/business. At the moment clothes/fashion, as this grows toys, bikes, books, etc., perhaps buy online and pick up from your local store, this could be a quiet revolution in charity retail.
The Christmas website makeover constinues. ASOS launch their ‘new season’ look. Product images are bigger, search can be narrowed and there ’s plenty of readability with trends , daily news and a blog. Very fine. I like the idea of creating a design that can be updated seasonally, even weekly or daily I suppose, bringing a bit of visual merchandising to the web, seasonal shop windows even.
Today, John Lewis unveiled their new website. I’ve used their ‘old’ (yesterday’s) version a few times and always found it very good if a little light in the product area. Apparently this new version will have nearly double the product range, up from 22,000 products to 41,000 and will be edited frequently so that should take care of that. An excuse for some retail therapy anyway.
One thing that has always stood John Lewis apart is the quality of their photography, it actually looks like some effort has been made to specifically shoot and repro their images for the web, other (r)etailers should take note.
Here’s a comparison of their old and new landing pages, and just for the sake of completion an image of the launch email.
Meanwhile back on the other side of etail here’s Matalan’s version.
Latest Comments
RSS