Why guess when you can test…using MVT to increase online sales

If someone told you that you could increase online sales, always win the debate with designers about what creative works best and miss IT out of the process at the same time you’d think it was too good to be true. But we’re investing a lot of time, energy and budget into multi-variate testing simply because it really does to tick all those boxes, and I’m a huge fan.

I’m am easy convert to anything in the world of eCommerce that either improves the customer experience or makes more money. MVT was always going to be an easy sell to me because it does both! The great thing is that it takes away the debate on design and layout issues and the numbers don’t lie (although they should be challenged and verified where possible against your own internal stats) You’d think I’d be bored by now of hearing the words ‘let’s just MVT it’ but not only am I not, it’s starting to catch on within our marketing department.

Our usability testing earlier this year has predictably led to the biggest ‘to do’ list you’ve ever seen in terms of website changes. As with all website changes though testing the changes is just as important (if not more) as just making them. If we could MVT all the recommended changes from the usability testing I would-why? Because I can see a tangible revenue uplift as a result of every change/test that proves successful.

If usability testing offers the only true way of watching and understanding how customers shop your website, then MVT testing offers the best way to understand what changes actually work and the sales uplift seen as a result.

The one huge advantage is that it requires no IT involvement or development (once the initial code is on your site) meaning you’re free to tweak the site all you want. And small changes can literally demonstrates a tangible uplift of millions of pounds, depending on the scale of your online operations.

We’ve just signed up to multiple country licenses enabling us to test design, wording and layout across our international sites, which is incredibly useful if you’re looking to grow your business internationally as many UK retailers are. Want to know if German customers prefer a different checkout layout? Test it-wow 5% increase in conversions-let’s do it. Want to see if customers prefer to see products all on model shots or all colour options flat in Austria? Test it. Want to see if the translation you have for ‘add to bag’ in France are clear enough? Test it. You get the picture.

There are several companies out there providing MVT services but I have to say that I’ve been very impressed with Optimost/Autonomy in the last 10 months that I’ve worked with them. As with all suppliers good account management is essential to getting the best from the software and the account team at Optimost are excellent-great to work with, professional and flexible.

Cost-wise it’s a no brainer, especially for retailers turning over more than £5m online. Using insight from usability testing or your onside analytics should be able to highlight the tests you should target first and within a couple of tests you could well have paid for the MVT yearly license. If your struggling to get internal sign off, see if you can negotiate a trial MVT period with your supplier to prove the impact it could have.

As with usability testing my eyes have been opened to the world of MVT and my advice to any retailer looking for ways to optimise their site and grow their online business is to sign up to MVT and get testing.

Stop chasing traffic stupid and usability test your website, NOW!

For as long as I’ve worked in eCommerce usability testing is something I’ve always been interested in but, like most ecommerce marketing managers, I spent too much of my time chasing traffic and not nearly enough time worrying about converting it.

Now I’ve taken the plunge and done it I just can’t believe it took me so long! It’s opened my eyes in ways that focus groups, questionnaires and hours of analytics research never could. The results are simultaneously scary, insightful, alarming, heart-warming, frustrating and encouraging.

Of course I’m fortunate these days to be working at Boden who, thanks to our fantastic catalogue and online acquisition tactics, have huge traffic to our site, leaving my team to concentrate on improving the customer experience and ultimately converting them. Although your tendencies can often lean too far towards new & exciting functionality, running usability has highlighted how much you absolutely need to concentrate on the basics of your site before you even think about anything else-sounds simple right? Then why are so many websites still getting some of the most basic elements wrong, us included?

I believe the answer lies in the fact that until you actually put your website through usability testing, and sit through and watch every session, you wont ever really know how your customers shop your site. And if you run international sites my advice is to make sure you go to these countries and run the same testing on these site with local customers, in their language-its the only way you’ll see first hand what reactions, frustrations and sometimes delight that people get from shopping your site, and the differences between markets can be huge.

I’m just back from an international usability tour covering Oxford, New York and Munich and despite being thoroughly exhausted I’m energised by what I’ve seen and the opportunities that exist – if we can act on even 30% of the recommendations we’ll have improved the customer experience significantly. By MVTing the most important changes we’ll also be able to build a rock-solid case for running this usability testing (and follow up testing) by demonstrating a clear uplift on our kpi’s as a result of those changes.

The insight I saw across 30 testers and 3 countries was fascinating and most importantly real – theres nothing more humbling than seeing someone struggle to add something to their bag, work out what size they should buy or muddle through your checkout. These are areas that you perhaps felt were easy to use but the evidence from usability suggests many customers don’t, especially many of the potential customers who we tested who were using our site for the first time. Although your analytics may be telling you one thing in terms of checkout abandonment rate, testing non-customers might present you with more reason than you thought to investigate and improve their experience more thoroughly.

Whilst we saw some recurring themes of issues across the counties there we’re also some very noticeable differences and issues that we now need to tackle on a country by country basis, which was certainly expected. Using the impressive ‘Eye Tracking’ technology also gave another layer of insight to see what customers were actually looking at as well as clicking on. Consistency in testing is also crucial-having one English/German-speaker (the excellent Tobias) run all of our testing across Germany, the UK & US markets was key to ensuring that the same questions were asked, issues probed and opportunities identified, plus the overall analysis, insight and recommendations are delivered from one source.

This morning the Bunnyfoot team are coming in to present their findings to the wider Boden team and I can’t wait! It’s testament to the internal interest in the results and improving the customer experience that this is one of the hottest tickets in town-everyone wants to be invited!

The challenge that lies ahead in the coming weeks is agreeing priorities on what needs working on first, implementing and testing the changes, then repeating the process several times over – ultimately though the results should speak for themselves, which just leaves me to try and get budget signed off for the next wave of usability testing in 6 months time to find out what customers actually think of the changes. Definitely something to look forward to…

My advice to other eCommerce managers or site owners is if you haven’t thought about usability testing yet is: Do it and do it now!

One plug that I will make at this stage is for Bunnyfoot who have been quite simply outstanding at every step of the process in our international usability testing. From day one the project was moulded around our requirements and the professionalism with which they’ve approached this project has made them a pleasure to work with-thanks to Tobias, Jon and the rest of the team.

Finally, whilst we employed a specialist agency to run our usability testing you can set up your own usability testing relatively easily and it doesn’t have to cost the earth-the insight you’ll get will repay any outlay many times over. Just recruit 5 existing customers and 5 potential customers, pay them for their time, ask them to perform tasks on your website and observe. Simple really! Although you won’t get the fancy eye tracking you can use free software that allows you to record their online activity for that hour and set up a simple video camera in the corner to record their facial expressions and answers to any questions you have. Of course you won’t get the same level of consistency, insight and analysis than if you use a expert agency but it’s certainly a start and something I’d recommend for anyone serious about growing their online business.

Could Quidco have become the group buying leader before Groupon?

A friend of mine with no experience of eCommerce or online marketing told me a couple of years ago he wanted to start a group buying website-great idea I told him, but why not do it the easy way and just set up a cashback website like Quidco, so he did. Being in a European market at least a couple of years behind the UK in terms of eCommerce development it seemed a fair bet that he could, if he did it right, emulate some of the success that Quidco has had in becoming the top UK cashback website with close to a million members.

Roll on two years and whilst the country in mention has stood still and now lags at least 4 years behind the UK, a ‘new’ phenomenon has arrived in all markets to leapfrog cashback, group buying. Although Groupon and other such group buying sites have different commercial models and operate more on a local rather than national level, the basic principals are the same – mobilise a large group of consumers in order to secure a discount with a retailer or service provider.

Ok, so Groupon has to work much harder for it’s money in securing deals with local businesses but the rewards of 50/50 split of revenue are surely worth the extra effort, rather than the limited £5 per member per year that Quidco earns. Having been courted by Google, generated excellent publicity and having delivered outstanding results for many small business, companies are now falling over themselves to offer deals to Groupon users, with their challenge now to simply keep up with the demand and keep delivering high value deals to subscribers.

Quidco on the other hand seems to have spent recent years focussing on developing voucher code functionality and offline cashback, which both seemed smart extensions of their brand at the time but look like they have gained little traction in the market. The question I’d now be asking if I was in their shoes with close to a million members is:why didn’t we go after the group buying market earlier?

This scale means they are able to secure the best cashback rates for their members but it has baffled me for a while that they haven’t done more to leverage the power of the group buying opportunity. With an army of loyal, engaged & savvy shoppers on their database surely it’s not too late to hire a team of salesmen to secure the deals and mine their database to target the offers locally? Facebook have jumped on the group buying bandwagon recently with ‘Facebook deals’, Google are trying to muscle in as well as countless others, but it surprises me that Quidco who are better placed than most to compete just don’t have their heads in this space.

OK, so the momentum is with Groupon but surely a Quidco spin off site even just replicating the Groupon business model would stand a good chance of success? I’d maybe even look to focus on the national strength and relationships that Quidco has with major retailers to leverage group buying in a different way-either to secure the best price for a new product released by offering say 1,000 orders at that price or, more usefully for retailers, for clearing excess stock by offering the same one-off price for the first thousand orders of one of last seasons products. This was the original idea my friend had before setting up his cashback site and is still an interesting route for him to pursue as he builds his membership base, although clearly more legwork is required to broker the deals than is so with the cashback model. My advice is: be brave and go for it!

It’s a cliche but ecommerce moves so fast that you have to constantly evolve and adapt just to keep up – Quidco has had big success in recent years but I can’t help but feel if it doesn’t evolve and take note of what companies like Groupon are doing it could be left behind. On top of this we all know that the number of people shopping on the move through apps or mobile optimised sites is growing exponentially yet I don’t see any sign Quidco releasing an app or enabling their service to be mobile.

As the sector for group discounting and location based marketing/offers is only getting more popular and competitive and with Groupon firmly established, the big boys getting in on the act and the continued growth/power of voucher codes I can’t help but think that cashback sites like Quidco could be left out in the cold in 2011. Clearly this doesn’t bear well for my friend, but then again he didn’t take up my offer to become a partner in the first case so I guess he’s on his own. The most recent advice I gave him is: don’t miss the opportunity like Quidco have, move into group buying and do it now!

My top 5 money saving websites

Whilst the editors of the Sunday Times Money section clearly know their stuff when it comes to recommending and reporting on pensions, bonds and property investments their knowledge of the online retail environment appears to be somewhat lacking.

To really know the intricacies of the online space you either need to have worked in it or speak to an expert who has, which is why I’ve pulled together my alternative top 5 money saving websites – I think you’ll agree they beat the Sunday Times’ quite frankly dismal efforts hands down. If you really want to save time and money when doing your online shopping this Christmas or any other time of the year you can’t go too far wrong with these 5 sites:

1) www.Moneysavingexpert.co.uk
The one-man money saving brand that is Martin Lewis has brilliantly transferred his Tv celebrity into a very strong and commercially viable online proposition. Initially his team would just scour the Internet looking for deals, but now with a 3m plus database of money saving followers, Lewis has retailers falling over themselves to offer fantastic deals and hence be featured in his weekly email. His take up of the affiliate commission model has been extremely shrewd and in my opinion had been adopted to the same effect by other publishers could have saved them from pursuing a paid-for content model. Ok, so the site doesn’t look great, with the money saving tips and offers literally plastered all over the site, but it works-whether you’re looking to get cheaper train tickets, switch mortgages or save on your Christmas shopping this is a great site to regularly check for offers.

2) www.offeroftheday.co.uk
A fantastic website that beats price comparison websites hands down for two simple reasons: firstly it works with a huge number of Uk retailers because it operates on the affiliate model (again!) rather than the CPC model favoured by comparison sites, meaning it is not restricted by sales people selling in the site to retailers-this obviously means visitors are offered more choice but also credibility when comparing offers and prices, as the only sites not on there are ones without affiliate programmes. Secondly, the offers and prices are updated every hour compared to the usual once a day on other similar type sites! This is really powerful and bloody useful, especially when buying electronics and considering that the likes of Amazon may change their prices several times a day to react to and undercut their competitors.

To call this just a comparison site doesn’t really show the true picture, it’s more like a helping hand from another Martin Lewis, only using technology rather than people to source the deals. It’s also great for inspiration if you’re not quite sure what to get as a present or you’re undecided on which iron to choose-why not just choose the one with the biggest reduction?

3) www.Amazon.co.uk
Ok, so they annoyed me by ripping me off on my one click delivery charges and I’ve therefore boycotted them for this years Xmas shopping but there’s no denying it, if you want something you’ll probably be able to get it on Amazon. The unbeatable range and aggressive pricing strategy mean that even in the unlikely event you can find something cheaper than on Amazon then it probably wasn’t worth the time you spent finding the better deal because the saving is negligible-enough said!

The first three are great if you need inspiration but if you pretty much know what you want and where you what to buy it these two sites will help you shave a ton of money off your purchases…

4) www.Vouchercodes.co.uk
There are other imitations out there but this is the only voucher code that you need to visit. The fantastic team behind the site ensure only the absolute best deals make it into their email to 2m plus customers a week – the uplift in sales this site proves for retailers when featured in their top 10 codea section means they flock to offer their best exclusive deals to vouchercodes.co.uk first to ensure the best spots in the newsletter and on their site. Their restaurant offers are just as strong as their online offers and although you can sometimes find better offers on other sites, the effort isn’t usually worth it. Importantly too, you know that the vast majority of codes are valid and correct, unlike other sites in this area! Just one request from me-guys, please launch your iPhone app asap!

5) www.Quidco.com
Still by far the biggest cashback site in the UK which means quite simply that they carry the most weight with retailers and therefore offer the best cashback levels to consumers. I flirted with topcashback for a while but if your going to use one site then Quidco is your best bet, especially since they integrated voucher codes into their site. In two purchases that I was going to make anyway last week I earned £50 cashback through Best Buy who are offering a whopping 15% cashback (not sure this will be sustainable past Xmas for them) and £60 cashback from the AA for breakdown cover-easy money!

There are plenty of other money saving sites out there of course with Groupon getting a lot of coverage recently – I’m not really interested in cheap teeth whitening or 85% off a pedicure but clearly lots of people are.

The fact is that if you’re short on time and looking for savings you can do far worse than visiting these 5 sites first.

How Ocado is winning my business and Sainsburys is lagging behind

In the last few weeks I’ve been spending an increasing amount of money with Ocado, which has led me to conclude that this spells bad news for Sainsburys and I wonder how often this is being repeated across the country. Most Sainsburys shoppers would shop at Waitrose if they could afford it and had a store in their area-which is where Ocado fill the gap very nicely. Tesco need not worry as the jump from them to Ocado is surely too far for their customers, but Sainsburys should start getting worried.

Ocado has had it’s fair share of detractors but in a very short period of time I’ve become a huge fan, mainly down to one simple fact: convenience. Ok so the service is excellent, food high quality and prices on branded items now competitive (thanks to the Tesco price match) but convenience is the driving force behind my repeat purchases with Ocado.

The three areas that Ocado is winning, in my opinion, are it’s short delivery lead times, 100% availability and it’s iPhone app.

Time poor customers like me don’t have time (or in fact the desire) to spend hours at my local store so that’s why I do my food shopping online in the first place. I also don’t plan my online shopping days in advance, like you have to if you shop online with sainsburys, due to their limitations of picking and packing from a local store, as opposed to a dedicated distribution centre, like Ocado have. With Ocado last week I placed my order and had it delivered within 24 hours-impressive.

One thing you do expect though is availability, and almost every time I’ve order groceries with Sainburys online the order has always had at least 3-4 replacement products-annoying! How many replacement products have I had over 6 Ocado orders? None. Sounds obvious, but this is an important point of difference, due to high expectations in the customer segment both retailers are targeting.

The 3rd area of difference is the Ocado iPhone app. I love the fact that I can start compiling my basket on the way home from work, based on previous orders, and then either checkout on the move or just double check if I missed anything at home and still place the order on my iPhone at home. The app is extremely well executed and user-friendly and I can’t help but think sainsburys could replicate this pretty easily, even if the 24 hour turnaround and 100% availability require a more fundamental shift in their online grocery operations, investment and strategy.

To me it looks like sainsburys are focusing on expanding their non-food offer online rather than offering an incredible service and gaining market share, like Ocado are, but ignore Ocado at your peril. I’ve often wondered how 3 investment bankers can out-retail the might of Sainsburys but certainly from a customer point of view they are doing exactly that.

Behind every great brand is a great marketing team and Ocado have obviously hired a very strong marketing team. Their customer acquisition and retention strategy is brilliantly executed from the first time customer offer to the second time shopper ‘incentive’ to ongoing but deceasing offers to get me to shop a 3rd, 4th and 5th time. Ok, so I needed an offer to get me shopping (who doesn’t these days?) but my last two orders have been at full price. Even the online merchandising is done intelligently and non-intrusively to ensure the maximum basket value is generated.

The question everyone asks is ‘if they haven’t made any profit in 10 years can Ocado ever make money from online groceries?’ To me it appears their strategy to date revolves around building market share, with the plan/expectation that profits will follow once they reach a critical mass. Whilst I won’t be buying Ocado shares just yet I’m sure plenty of people will once the tipping point is reached and the first profit announced. How long we’ll have to wait for that is the key question-I would say at least another 18 months.

With clearly deep pockets, big plans and as the online grocery sector sees substantial growth in the coming years Ocado are extremely well positioned. Like John Lewis have shown, who some people thought would struggle through the recession, customers will pay more for service and quality and the ‘snob factor’ is not to be underestimated. People like other people to know they shop at John Lewis because they can afford to-the Ocado van pulling up at your front door has the same effect-look at me I can afford to shop at Ocado/Waitrose!

Sainsburys is a great brand with a great proposition but I do feel they are slipping behind in the race for online sales (although I think they have bet on the wrong horse by going after a chunk of the non-food market online). All is not lost though, with serious investment and a clear strategy they can use their brand, scale and reach to fight back and win market share back from Ocado, but from my observations I can’t see Sainsburys doing that any time soon.

As I write I just received an email from Ocado recommending I book my delivery slot for Christmas-I might just book that just to make sure…I wonder if they sell Christmas trees?

The one click checkout con: how Amazon’s raking in the cash but losing friends

Hidden delivery charges are the number one complaint from customers shopping online-knowing that would be even think about doing what Amazon are now doing – hiding delivery charges on their one-click checkout!

I’m a big fan of Amazon because it fulfils all of my criteria – incredible choice, competitive prices, excellent usability and a quick checkout.

The brilliant Amazon iPhone app just further cemented my love affair with them-buying and browsing on the go, with cool additional features like the product identification by photo…until I bought from their app recently and realised I’d been conned!

The infamous one-click checkout, the epitome of convenient online shopping, had pulled a fast one on me and charged me nearly as much for shipping as I paid for the book I ordered!

Further investigation did indeed reveal that although Amazon advertised the book as having ‘free delivery’ the default delivery on one-click checkout is set to the most expensive super premium delivery option, costing £3.50-for a book!

Now I’m sure that Amazon have buried this away somewhere in the one-click terms and conditions, but come on, defaulting to the most expensive delivery is a big no no for a retailer in my eyes.

What annoys me most is this is clearly a conscious decision they’ve made and although I don’t doubt this is generating significant additional revenues for them, I do wonder at what cost. Sure lots of customers won’t notice or perhaps even care, particularly on orders with a higher value but once customers start noticing this and stop using the one-click checkout, like I’ve done, Amazon loses one it’s key points of difference from competitors.

As far as I’m concerned they’ve betrayed my trust and rather than scrutinising the terms and conditions next time I think I’ll just shop somewhere else-Amazon are good but there are plenty of other retailers out there happy to take my money instead.

Marks & Spencers are now also offering one click checkout and whilst a brand like Marks clearly wouldn’t risk earning a quick buck at the expense of customer satisfaction, they seem to be having teething problems as ordering twice through one click checkout in a couple of days meant they delivered my first item twice!

As consumers increase their mobile internet usage, smart phone penetration becomes mainstream and retailers launch mobile optimised websites (and apps) the mobile-optimised checkout is set to be even more crucial in the battle to secure customers money on the go.

Improving the experience and converting more customers from mobile checkout will be the new challenge for retailers now they’ve optimised their website checkouts to the max.

Paypal’s popularity and awareness is going from strength to strength and surely a new mobile payment currency is only just around the corner- both, if successful, could ultimately lead to Amazon regretting the decision on their one-click checkout in the longer term, as more and more customers get turned off by one click and more au fait with new payments.

There is still a chance for Amazon to do the right thing, tell me they’re sorry and the didn’t mean to overcharge me but somehow I don’t think it’s going to happen-maybe they’ve just got too big and too arrogant to listen to their customers. Shame really…

How to get a meeting with a retailer-top tips for cold callers

Now I’m back on the retail side of the fence I’m suddenly feeling very popular again…because everyone wants to speak to me and wants my money!

Managing the website for a hugely successful retailer with big budgets means I get a lot of calls from sales guys that circle big retailers like flies around you know what. So I’m going to do the guys I love to hate a favour and give some tips that I hope will save them some time and hopefully improve their sales conversion, almost regardless of the product they’re selling.

Personally I couldn’t be a salesguy-I couldn’t take the rejection waiting at the end of every phone line, but then again they do get well paid if they’re any good so I don’t feel that sorry for them.

So here goes:

1) Be original – sounds obvious but you’d be surprised how many salesman expect to get past first base with a pitch that sounds exactly the same as thousands of others. Pitch something that challenges the norms, makes me smile or is so much of a no-brainer that I’d be silly not to speak to you.

2) Do your research – this is the cardinal sin-don’t bother pitching an iPhone app when we’ve just launched one or web analytics if we’ve just signed a 3 year deal with someone else. Also it’s not hard to find out a bit about me personally and if you appeal to the ego of people like me with something relevant you might just get your foot in the door where you might otherwise have failed.

3) Offer me something I need – again sounds obvious and follows on from point 2. Why would I want to speak to you if I don’t need what you’re selling?

4) Know your stuff – it’s not good enough to say I don’t know or I can’t say at the moment or ‘the costs depend on lots of factors’ – give me straight answers.

5) Call me yourself -someone called me the other day saying his sales director would like to meet with me! If you can’t be bothered to call yourself then don’t expect to get a meeting-how lazy can you be?

6) Hit me with an offer I can’t refuse. Provided you’ve got me interested the worst thing you can do is deliver a line about ‘our standard rates are…’ Make me feel special-offer me a free trial, a free year, a money back guarantee whatever you have to do to get me intersted-bigger retailers are always going to expect to get a good deal.

7) Don’t just use phone/email – get out there! Emails and calls to the office are easy to avoid and no, don’t leave a message because I’m unlikely to call you back. Get out there and network at industry events and you’re much more likely to meet the right people and get a response.

8) Leverage your contacts- I’ve ended up in countless meetings with potential new suppliers who I would never have agreed to meet unless they weren’t old school friends, colleagues, best mates with my managing/marketing director. I’ve got got contacts like this, use them, if you haven’t, get networking!

9) Get back to me quickly and for gods sake-Get my name right!

10) If all else fails try Bribery-a Fortnum & Mason hamper was a very generous ‘gift’ I was once sent in the post-the least I could do was agree to give up an hour of my time to meet with the sales guy who sent it!

I doubt my ‘how to guide’ will ever be read by a single salesman who might find it useful, they’re too busy running around like headless chickens, but you never know and at least I feel better for getting it off my chest.

I look forward to your call….

Agency or in house…how best to manage your online marketing and eCommerce operations

One of the most common question facing retailers trading online, particularly those just starting out online, about managing and marketing their online business is: in-house or agency?

I’ve worked agency-side, client-side working mainly with agencies and client-side running most of the marketing in-house, so have had a good 360 view of the benefits and challenges on all sides. Based on my experience I would always lean towards running the marketing in-house, but having said that, what is right for your business will very much depend on your business objectives and where you are in your online journey.

If you’re just starting an online business then using an agency can offer a relatively low risk solution, in that they have ‘ready to go’ industry experience and can get you up and running with PPC and affiliate campaigns relatively quickly – they’re also pretty easy to ditch once you’ve established that there is a market for your business online and you decide to recruit and bring things in-house.

The good thing about agencies is that they’re as loyal as dogs, unlike ambitious eCommerce execs who will usually happily jump ship for an extra £2k a year. So whilst a strong agency relationship can be built up and developed over many years it’s likely that your internal experts will be looking to move on pastures new after a couple of years, especially if they’re not managed well. You’ll need to consider the pros and cons for both options, depending on your situation and the availability of decent candidates.

However, if I had a straight choice between hiring a bright business graduate and then training them up to run the day-to-day elements of my PPC or affiliate channels and a digital agency I wound take the bright grad any day. Why? because firstly it will cost you a lot less, secondly, you have complete control and thirdly you would probably only have a young grad running things at the agency anyway. Provided you can recruit direct and avoid paying any recruitment fee this really is a no brainer.

One of my gripes is that a lot of digital agencies working in the retail sector just don’t get retail. They’ll recommend strategies that either make things easy for them or make them more money and are so used to pitching to marketing directors who aren’t up to speed on online marketing that they think they can get away with it! Of course not all agencies are like that but many will impress in the first couple of meetings when they roll out the big guns, only for you to find it’s a grad with 6 months PPC experience running your £1m campaign.

So you might have worked with an agency to get things off the ground but are now facing the decision on whether to bring their marketing in-house. Disappointingly, many retailers are put off too easily by the perceived lack of candidates with the right experience and skills, so take the easy option of continuing to pay an agency to do it. Please take my advice – don’t be lazy – work as hard as you can to recruit the best young and eager people to run your online business – when executed correctly the in-house strategy should pay off both financially and in terms of online success.

When developing your business further the key is to building up a strong multiple-disciplined team without too much over reliance on one person. Whilst your web designer is never likely to be great affiliate marketer and vice versa, your PPC expert should have a strong knowledge of SEO and ideally some basic awareness of affiliates, display, email marketing etc. To a certain extent you can minimise your risk by encouraging your team to take an active interest in all channels in this way but if you struggle to motivate them or reward their efforts you’ll be left looking to replace someone with an excellent knowledge base.

Your business will also get to the stage one day when you’ll be looking to take your business to the next level again, through the most common methods of implementing a CRM programme, extensive new customer acquisition, website optimisation, MVT testing, international delivery etc. In these instances you may well then have to go full circle and bring in agencies specialised in these areas to ensure you can test the water, leverage their expertise and have a quick-turnaround time. Again if these channels become big and important enough for your online business you can look to recruit a full-time eCRM manager or an international online marketing manager etc.

The discussion and issues highlighted here indicated to no definitive answer on the agency vs in-house debate but one thing does remain consistent throughout, make the decision based on what is right for your business at that time and make sure you recruit the very brightest and best you can afford, be that agency or own-staff, because these are the people who will drive your business forward, and you can’t afford to settle for second best.

Why can’t NMA be more like eConsultancy?

For years now I’ve been receiving NMA and hoping that they’ll catch on, that things will improve and that they’ll show us all that they really understand online, but sadly things are only getting worse.

NMA in my view is like so many of the flashy digital agencies that have sprung up in the last 10 years-full of confidence but with very little substance behind them. After 10 minutes of reading through the latest NMA I invariably lose the will to live, the website is awful and the iPhone app truly terrible. Why can’t they just be more like eConsultancy I ask myself?

The eConsultancy blog is my daily bible to get the latest opinion on emerging trends, new products and key issues that relate to me as an eCommerce professional-the articles are bang on trend, insightful and superbly written by industry experts who clearly know what they’re taking about. In contrast all I get from NMA is a load of regurgitated press releases from agencies, brands and individuals who clearly need to promote themselves and a few articles about social media (because NMA presumably think it’s such an important channel that I can rely on it to deliver at least 30% of my online sales?)

Econsultancy’s blog strategy of inviting ‘guest’ bloggers to write the series of daily blog posts is a brilliant move and offers a chance for industry experts to demonstrate their expertise and for econsultancy to be the destination for online content for a very low-cost base-it further serves to emphasise the outdated publishing model that companies like NMA still work to-they could do far worse than trying to cut back on permanent journalists and adopt the ‘guest’ content used so effectively by eConsultancy. By using professionals who are actually walking the walk and immersed in all things ecommerce these articles tend to have more resonance and credibility than most of what I read in NMA.

If eConsultancy represents the experienced eCommerce professional with a strong retail background, NMA is the new media/digital agency with flashy offices on Charlotte street who is happy to propose you commit
£50k to social media strategy before they’ve given you any idea how they will seriously grow your online sales and impact on your bottom line.

A quick look at the jobs posted on the two sites further serves to back up this huge split-on NMA you’ll see roles for heads of social media paying baffling salaries over £70k and more positions at Top 10 agencies than you could imagine, on eConsultancy you’ll see high quality client side roles at Tesco, Carphone Warehouse and other big high street brands.

Maybe I’m missing the point, maybe NMA and eConsultancy are intrinsically different, appealing deliberately to very different audiences and if so then great, but I know come lunchtime today and I want to get the latest opinion or to research new hot topics like re-targeting, mobile payments or international expansion online, there’s only one place I’ll be checking, and it won’t be NMA.

Top 10 tips to improve your website and increase sales

Most people can tell you websites they don’t like, have had a bad experience with or will never use again, but ask them to give suggestions as to how to improve the site most will struggle to pinpoint their frustrations. This also applies to more website owners than you would think, who know their website should be delivering more sales than it is but doesn’t know where to start improving the site and what small changes will have the biggest impact.

Which is why I’ve detailed my top 10 most tips, born from many years of experience of analysing the site stats, countless site surveys, focus groups and many hours of browsing and shopping online myself. Some may sound obvious and many are, but these are 10 tips you can easily check and improve and will almost certainly improve sales on your site if you address as many of them as possible – good luck!

1) Make sure your on-site search works well
No matter how well laid out you think your site is or how intuitive the navigation is, anywhere between 20% and 40% of your site visitors will want to search directly for the products they want. So whether
you go for an advanced search solution or a free option like Google onsite search you need to bring back good, relevant search results that enable the customer to find and buy what they are looking for.
Sounds simple, but check the search results yourself to see if the products you expect to appear do and check your site stats to see how well you convert customers from search-more on that later.

2) Install Site analytics!
Free website analytics such as Google Analytics are absolutely essential tools to understand how your website is performing on a daily basis, where your visitors are coming from, what they are buying
and where they are leaving the site. Without this info you are flying blind and will never get your online sales off the ground. Get it installed-NOW! Oh, and then make sure you understand and regularly check the stats to inform your decisions on merchandising and marketing your site.

3) Make sure your product descriptions are Compelling & informative
A powerful, compelling description of each and every product (plus a good photo of course) is your best opportunity to sell that product-and don’t just write bland copy, enthuse your customers with great
copy and your more than half way there to selling them that product. All the fancier elements like ‘customers who bought also bought’ and customer reviews can come later-first of all inspire and inform with
great product descriptions

4) Make sure your navigation is consistent
One simple tip here: keep a simple top navigation bar visible on every page on your site so that visitors can always navigate back to the homepage or your key categories

5) Don’t make your customer services phone number too visible
Although some companies deem it necessary to have their customer service number highly visible on their sites, my advice would generally be: don’t do it. Every order you take by phone instead of by web costs you more money and the more visible your phone number is the more orders you’ll take by phone than you should do, plus your visitors will get into bad habits. Best to include the number under a customer services tab so people who are really stuck and need to speak to someone can do and the rest won’t be tempted to call when they really don’t need to.

6) Be up front and transparent about your delivery charges
Talk to anyone who has ever shopped online and this is probably their number one gripe-so why do it? Hiding delivery charges to the very last-minute not only increases the number of abandoned baskets it
risks you losing the trust of that customer of shopping with you again. Be as up front as you can with delivery charges and if charges cannot be worked out until later in the process then at least make it
clear on the product pages for what the delivery charges will be for shipping to Europe for example.

7) Don’t force customers to create and remember a username to sign in
An absolute no no! Fact: customers know their email address and most of their online passwords;asking them to remember their username is totally unnecessary and likely to cause frustrations and drop off at the key moment when they are ready to order. Stick to email address and password, and make sure the ‘password reminder’ service sends the email out in seconds, not hours later!

8) Don’t Take orders for something you don’t have in stock
Pixmania did this to me and is the cardinal sin in online retailing. I placed the order for and was charged for an Lcd tv that they didn’t have in stock. That’s a lot of money out of my account and no promise
of when the product might arrive, plus several calls and emails to try and get my money back. This is almost forgivable for a small retailer with systems not updating stock in real-time but not for a retail giant like DSG. As a result I have boycotted ever ordering again with the whole DSG group.

9) Make sure you get permission to email someone when they order
Customer acquisition is expensive-don’t waste the chance to lock new customers into your database once you’ve converted them to a customer for the first time. Just provide a simple ‘opt out’ radio button on
the details/registration page and you’ll be able to send them details of all your latest offers and promotions-existing customers convert at twice the rate of new customers! Oh, and make sure all visitors to your site are encouraged to sign up for your newsletter.

10) Check your prices regularly
Benchmarking against your competitors (or re-sellers of your product) is something you should do before your set up your website and then on a daily basis, because your customers will almost certainly be doing this, particularly in highly competitive markets such as consumer electronics. Amazon change their prices several times a day and whilst it’s unlikely you’ll have to do that, particularly as an independent retailer, knowing what is happening in the market and taking measures to react to things quickly will increase your chance of converting customers and to keeping them coming back to your site.

Don’t delay – get working on these on your site today and I guarantee you’ll see an uplift in sales!