Tag: Retailing

Royal Mail encourages e-retail best practice with delivery promise tool

Posted by | May 7, 2008 | |

Royal Mail has launched a new consultancy tool to help online retailers make sure they offer consumers the best possible experience and reduce shopping basket abandonment.

The internet based ‘Delivery Promise Tool’ can analyse any e-retail website, monitoring the quality and availability of delivery information such as cost, time, tracking, delivery options and contact details. It produces a detailed report which includes recommendations on how each website can improve its service.

Royal Mail created the tool after its Delivery Experience research revealed the importance that consumers place on having access to clear delivery information before placing an order online.

The research revealed that 19 in 20 online shoppers have abandoned a shopping basket, 37 per cent regularly, and that four in ten (42 per cent) did so because of the delivery charge.

The creation of the Delivery Promise Tool follows Royal Mail’s launch of two new services to improve the delivery experience for shoppers. Royal Mail Tracked enables retailers to provide their customers with a tracking number when the goods ordered are dispatched so that the shopper can track the progress of the delivery themselves. And the Safeplace service also gives shoppers the opportunity to specify a safe, alternative delivery point, such as a shed, porch or neighbour, should they not be at home to receive the item.

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Jupiter Research Study Finds Multi-Channel E-Commerce Expansion Vital To Online Retail Success

Posted by | May 7, 2008 | |

ChannelAdvisor, the leading provider of e-commerce channel management solutions, today announced the results of a JupiterResearch study on marketing and sales strategies for online retailers. Sponsored by ChannelAdvisor and conducted by independent research firm JupiterResearch and Internet Retailer, the study provides in-depth insights into the fundamental issues driving multi-channel online retailing.

Seventy-five percent of online retailers surveyed cited multi-channel expansion as a key component in their marketing strategies. Ninety-eight percent report they market on at least two online channels.

“The results provide actionable information for retailers who are evaluating online programs including paid and organic search, and comparison shopping engines,” said Brad Wolansky, Vice President Global E-Commerce of The Orvis Company. “We partnered with ChannelAdvisor for solutions to help us manage our paid search and comparison shopping engine initiatives and they have provided good value including higher ROI and predictable rates of success.”

The recent findings deliver a unique perspective on how online retailers are capitalizing on the full spectrum of e-commerce channels and explore the benefits and the challenges of expanding their reach. It also focused on the area of third-party outsourcing and how to measure its success. Those retailers who choose to outsource should look to their e-commerce partners to develop performance metrics that demonstrate their long-term worth including lifetime customer value, product margins and customer retention.

“This survey suggests that ChannelAdvisor has a unique opportunity to help retailers assess where they in the multi-channel life cycle and the implications for moving forward,” said Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor. “Clearly, going multi-channel is the first step. To be truly successful, they need to define what they expect from their e-commerce solution providers in terms of marketing spend and efficiencies to judge the overall profitability of the relationship.”

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What's not in store: Merchants hold back imports

Posted by | May 7, 2008 | |

Latest industry report shows sharp drop in volume of shipments of retail goods, with weakness expected to flow through summer.

A significant drop in volume of imported retail goods into the United States is providing fresh evidence that a slowing economy has pinched American consumers’ ability to shop freely, according to an industry report Wednesday.

In-bound container traffic to the U.S. was down 4.8% in March from February, which traditionally is the slowest month of the year for retail-related imports, according to the latest joint monthly Port Tracker report from the National Retail Federation (NRF) and forecasting firm Global Insight.

That figure represented the lowest monthly volume since February 2006.

What’s more, the NRF forecasts that growth in-bound container traffic will remain at or below last year’s levels through the summer months “due to the underlying weakness in consumer demand in the U.S. economy,” said Jonathan Gold, vice president for supply chain and customs policy with the NRF.

Looking forward at year-over-year figures, Port Tracker estimates a 3.2% dip in April, a 4.8% fall in May, a 7% drop in June, and a 2% decline in July. In September, in-bound container traffic is finally seen rising by 3%.

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Canada E-Commerce Growing Quickly

Posted by | Apr 30, 2008 | |

Online sales increased at a double-digit pace for the sixth consecutive year in 2007, according to Statistics Canada. Total private and public sector Internet sales hit an estimated C$62.7 billion ($58.6 billion), up 26% from 2006.

Despite the continued strong growth, e-commerce still represents a relatively small fraction of total economic activity, at about 2% of total operating revenue.

Statistics Canada said that only about 8% of Canadian private sector companies sell goods and services online.

In the private sector, business-to-business sales accounted for 62% of online sales in 2007, down from 68% in 2006. The proportion of online business-to-consumer sales climbed from 32% to 38%.

B2C e-commerce sales therefore reached C$23.8 billion ($22.2 billion), or 38% of C$62.7 billion. That is almost 50% higher than eMarketer’s November 2007 estimate. eMarketer counts online travel, tickets and digital downloads as services, not products, and thus excludes them from its estimate.

It is estimated that customers outside Canada generated almost one out of every five dollars (19%) in online sales in the private sector, similar to the last two years.

While Canadian consumers are comfortable purchasing travel, media products, and computer hardware and software online, they tend to shy away from high-touch categories such as apparel and home furnishings. Instead, they head to one of their excellent shopping malls. A common explanation for this tendency is that, unlike Americans, Canadians lack a catalog tradition and have not been conditioned to shop remotely.

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DHL and Borderlinx partner to simplify international e-commerce

Posted by | Apr 29, 2008 | |

Delivery and logistics company DHL International GmbH and U.K.-based Borderlinx, a company that helps businesses ship goods from a number of suppliers, have partnered to assist U.S. e-retailers selling internationally. The deal aims to make it easy for U.S. e-retailers to ship abroad, and for foreign consumers to know how much they will pay for shipping.

Under the agreement, U.S. online retailers can integrate directly with Borderlinx to make their products available to the international marketplace. The integration provides web merchants with such services as order fulfillment and warehousing and shipping and delivery services out of DHL’s primary ground hub in Wilmington, OH, to any of the 225 countries and territories to which DHL ships. The hub location allows easy access to international flights, as well as late cut-off times for orders, according to DHL.

The five-year deal is aimed squarely at what Borderlinx founder Neill O’Sullivan says is huge demand among international consumers to shop U.S. e-commerce sites. Only a small percentage of the top 500 U.S. Internet retailers ship internationally, and O’Sullivan says the deal removes two key barriers preventing U.S. e-retailers from doing so—the inability of U.S. online retailers to easily sell and ship to foreign consumers, and the reluctance of an international shopper to complete a purchase without knowing the shipping fee.

When a U.S. merchant ties into the U.S. DHL/Borderlinx platform, consumers from abroad will see an international shipping button during the checkout process. A click of that button passes the transaction to Borderlinx, which calculates the total cost of getting the order from the merchant to the international customer, including the product price, the shipping costs and a Borderlinx service charge of about 10% of the product price.

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