November 24, 2009 by billjames1
We can expect another record for online sales this christmas – with Monday 8th December tipped to be the biggest day – expected to be up 15% on last year.
On the biggest day of christmas shopping online £320m is expected to be spent. Peak shopping time will be between 1pm and 2pm when shoppers are expected to spend £28m. This is double the amount spent by shoppers at last year’s peak christmas shopping hour, at midday on Monday December 11.
Online spending for the final quarter is expected to hit £13.16 billion and this year the big trend is hard-up shoppers on the search for bargains on the web. Total average online spend per person will be £215 and although this is a growth of 15%, it is slower than the rate of growth in 2007 when final quarter online sales jumped 54% on 2006.
Figures will be avialable from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index
Tags: christmas shopping, e-commerce, online sales
Posted in multi-channel retail | Leave a Comment »
October 1, 2009 by billjames1
User recommendations and crowd buzz are redefining the way some online shoppers behave…
Examples like Crowdstorm are a new way for consumers to find what to buy based on the buzz around products. Users recommend products, and the crowd defines the best products by recommending what they know and like. Popular products go to the top of the list, weak products disappear. It works rather like the popular news website Digg.
What is buzz? Well for social shopping sites it is measured by the amount of activity surrounding a product: how many times a product has been viewed, how many bloggers have written about it, and how many users have commented about it.
Friends can be added which helps build the crowd effect, and these friends can be people they already know or those they’ve met on the site and whose product recommendations they trust.
Expect in the future; users posting their own product images and videos, and top-rated members being invited to beta-test new products from big brands.
UK-based Crowdstorm was founded by Phil Wilkinson, who also set up online price comparison sites ShopGenie and Kelkoo, and aims to be one of the internet’s best sources of impartial product information.
Another social shopping network to have launched recently – but in the US – is ThisNext. Featuring slick design and sending visitors down one of three paths: Discover, Recommend and Shopcast. The discover section lets users browse products recommended by others. Clicking on a item allows them to add it to their wishlist, recommend it, or find out where to buy the product. Users can recommend products by creating themed lists (from ‘Japanese Snacks’ to ‘Things I Cannot Do Without’), or simply by clicking on an easy to install ‘Add to ThisNext’ browser button.
Appealing to the blogging crowd, ThisNext’s standout feature is shopcasting: bloggers can create small banners for their website. These so-called shopcast badges either display their own recommendations or those of the ThisNext community, broadcasting the products they love or must have.
Tags: crowd buzz, social shopping, user reccomendations
Posted in digital strategy, future trends, social shopping | Leave a Comment »
July 28, 2009 by billjames1
We may be on the brink of ‘multi-channel banking’ – let’s see if the Banks can catch up with the Grocers…
A new research report says UK & US banks are in danger of losing online customers unless they improve the levels of personalisation and communication offered. The report from Gartner says people in both countries are heavy users of online banking and over 40% use at least two banking sites, meaning they are in a position to compare features.
The trends observed are interesting:
- Younger respondents value features that enable customisation of their online banking experience and are looking for additional financial planning tools to help them manage their money more effectively
- Older customers seek tools that let them use current services more effectively or communicate better and want features that make the online banking channel itself easier to use
Banks can learn from the Grocers:
Retailers have spent ten years working out how to build successful e-commerce businesses and in the last three years have been moving that to a multi-channel mix that involves services like ‘ring & reserve’, range extensions and of course online order tracking.
Banks seem to have been asleep at the wheel, it’s taken them an age to react to the fact that customers are demanding more self-service and looking to manage many of their regular transactions online. But at last the Banks seem to be reacting now that the pressure is on: There is much talk in the big banks of cost-cutting programmes – I’m told by those who should know that a key focus of this is about getting the optimum number and location of branches and getting those online services to deliver what customers want and need to take the pressure off branches and especially off call-centres.
So we may be on the brink of ‘multi-channel banking’ – let’s see if the Banks can catch up with the Grocers, especially now that one of the Grocers is a Bank!
Tags: multi-channel banking, multi-channel retail, online banking
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March 9, 2009 by billjames1
The latest news to feed into your digital strategy – Online video is poised for explosive expansion in viewing.
Recent figures on digital media consumption in the United States (from investment bank Bear Stearns) say over 70% of internet users now stream video, watching an average of 7 minutes a day.
Based on my own non-scientific research of talking to my 20 year old son, his peers at university and the friends I have still in their twenties and early thirties I can see a real shift in behaviour where the viewing of US TV programmes/movies is often on PC rather than TV.
For me and probably most of my generation the real shift is unlikely to take a grip until we have a simple solution for getting our content from the internet to our big screen TVs. See my recent blog about Placeshifting.
Meanwhile back to the Bear Stearns report, and while video advertising spend is projected to reach $4.3 billion by 2012, they say that nearly 90% of internet users in the United States will be watching video online by then (that’s just four years from now).
According to comScore, the number of online video viewers in the United States rose by 15% over the last year to over 140 million. YouTube was the top site, attracting over half of them.
The number of streams viewed has grown even faster, by 40% over the last year, to over ten billion streams. Nearly a third of them were from YouTube, way ahead of any other site, growing by over 200%.
Video advertising spend has been growing accordingly and is projected to reach $4.3 billion in the United States by the end of 2011.
The Bear Stearns analysts conclude that internet video already has vast reach and is growing. Video advertising is acceptable to the majority of viewers and provides engagement that offers compelling value to advertisers. The viewer base is maturing and there is still much room for growth in monetisation.
So, have you given enough thought to the question of if/how online video fits in your digital strategy?
Tags: advertising shift, online video, placeshift TV, streaming video, timeshift TV
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January 30, 2009 by billjames1
From a series of interviews by CVL – with senior execs from Allianz to News International and from Barclays to O2 – the summary is that ‘agile service development’ is all about getting the right product to market faster.
The aim of the survey was to find out how UK business is adopting and implementing smarter ways of getting new services to market. the conclusion was that ‘agility creates both immediate and lasting benefits to business bringing new products to market’.
- agile approaches are difficult to implement but worth the effort as they improve success rates, reduce risk & lead to better quality in a shorter time
- overall efficiency has been improved by those who have made the change, with quality assurance being introduced earlier in the process
Download the report here
Tags: agility, e-commerce, innovation
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January 17, 2009 by billjames1
I said back in December we were staying home to do our Christmas shopping, but even so, the biggest e-commerce surprise of the year was Christmas Day and Boxing Day; 4.4 million people actually bought things online on Christmas Day, spending £84million, this on a day when the shops are supposed to be closed!!!!
Generally UK retailers have seen their online sales grow about 30% Year on Year (YoY)
- Argos MCR revenues up 33% YoY
- M&S web sales up 78%, even though overall down 2.2%
- Sainsbury’s 40% growth in last quarter, up 50% to 100,000 orders in run up to Christmas
- Amazon UK peaked on 10th December, selling 1 million products in a day, that’s 11 orders per second
-Tesco Direct (non-food) did £190m in the last quarter of 2008. Food did 2m orders in the last 12 weeks of the year.
- Interestingly, Domino’s are now doing >£1m a week online
USA reported similar performance, a Chase Group report says the online retail channel saw 29% growth in the last 10 weeks of the year.
Tags: christmas shopping, e-commerce, multi-channel retail, online sales
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January 8, 2009 by billjames1
We will mark 2008 as the year when global revenues from digital media exceeded revenue generated by cinema and homevideo combined. Online (& mobile) accounted for $90 billion in worldwide revenues whilst the global filmed entertainment market generated $83.1 billion.
This analysis comes from Strategy Analytics: “We’re starting to see now that digital media is becoming a significant part of revenue for a lot of companies,” says director of digital media research Martin Olausson. “A few years back, everyone was still discussing whether movies would be distributed online. That’s not a discussion anymore.”
>> Based on my own experience of working in/advising on the evolution of online retailing and the eventual (& still incomplete) development of multi-channel retailing, I’d say there are several years to go before this tipping point converts into a mature market.
Broadband downloading and streaming, terrestrial and video-on-demand (VOD), and mobile platforms are now all ways to watch entertainment content, from feature films and TV shows to made-for-Internet/mobile programming.
Read more here
Tags: digital media, downloading, online video, streaming video, VOD
Posted in future of TV, online video | Leave a Comment »
November 21, 2008 by billjames1
The advertising market has really been feeling the squeeze lately and in this credit crisis there is some evidence of cut backs already. The interesting contradiction is that people seem to be watching as much TV as ever – despite the amount of time being spent online.
The new Ofcom report on the International Communications Market is very revealing on the multi-tasking habits of TV viewers who are also Internet surfers – some 74% of UK Internet Users surf whilst they watch TV – and 28% do it most times.
Tags: online adverting
Posted in digital strategy, future of TV | Leave a Comment »
October 24, 2008 by billjames1
As we react to the recession and tighten our belts it seems secondhand is one of the big keywords in web searches nowadays. Hitwise says “UK consumers are increasingly turning to the Internet to help them deal with the financial pressures and insecurities brought on by the global credit crunch”
Hitwise reports that UK Internet searches for second hand goods have increased by 22% over the last 12 months, while Classifieds websites have experienced a 47% increase in traffic over the same period.
The number of UK Internet searches containing the word ’second hand’ increased by 22% between the weeks ending 13 October 2007 and 11 October 2008. During the 12 weeks ending 11 October 2008, UK Internet users searched for over 22,000 distinct terms containing the phrase ’second hand’ with searches for ’second hand cars’ proving to be the most popular.
Top five UK Internet searches containing ’second hand’, 12 weeks ending 11 October 2008
1. second hand cars
2. second hand books
3. second hand car prices
4. second hand furniture
5. second hand bikes
UK Internet visits to Freecycle the website that enables people to recycle their unwanted goods by passing them on to others, increased by 35% between September 2007 and September 2008.
“The community aspect has played an important role in the success of Freecycle and lots of people are searching the web for lists in their neighbourhood,” commented Robin Goad, Director of Research for Hitwise. “The site is currently most popular in Wales and the West Midlands and is used most by people with families”.
In one quote from the Hitwise press release they say “Property searches have fallen, but traffic to House and Garden retailers has reached a new high as people look to cocoon themselves in their existing homes”
Well that’s interesting but I don’t think the DIY Retailers are feeling the benefit just yet!
Tags: internet searches
Posted in digital strategy, e-commerce | Leave a Comment »
October 20, 2008 by billjames1
So Paypal has acquired BillMeLater, an interesting move and although it may not seem groundbreaking it does seem to chip away at the banks standard business model. Look at it like this; if Paypal is online payment made easy and BillMeLater is buy online now and pay later then the growth of the combined business must further encourage online sales and take more transactions away from traditional banks.
Another case of putting two things together and getting more than the sum of the parts?
It reminds me of another Paypal related blog – I posted back in April ‘08, Paypal + iPhone = m-commerce
In that instance, two capabilities coming together to drive the use of mobiles in the purchase process.
Here is the announcement.
Tags: iPhone, m-commerce, Paypal
Posted in m-commerce | Leave a Comment »
