Posts tagged with 'Online shopping'

Online shopping with a twist: Virtual Oxford Street

By Mru Kodali on 13 January 2010

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nearlondon-screenshotLove shopping but hate the crowds? The answer may be Near’s virtual Oxford Street. They’re taking the world’s largest and best loved shopping areas and recreating them in the virtual world, Second Life-style with a focus on shopping. Reports are that big names including M&S and Liberty have signed up to display their shop windows in NearLondon, as they do in their bricks and mortar stores. Users can then go directly through to the product or shop online from this virtual Oxford Street, to view more details and buy.

I found that only some stores, e.g. Accessorize, had their various branches identified through NearLondon’s location search. This is a little disappointing given that lots of chains have more than one shop in the Oxford Street area and you may prefer one over another. I looked up M&S (reportedly part of NearLondon) and the search came up with just one result. This didn’t give me specific address details (other than Oxford St.), so at first glance it was unclear whether I was going to the M&S flagship store near Marble Arch or their other branch, the Pantheon, also on Oxford Street. Additionally, many shop windows appear blacked out with just the Near logo displayed. Presumably these shops haven’t signed up with Nearworld yet; but as a user, my experience is somewhat diminished by this.

Once more shops take part, this could be useful for inspiration, when you have an occasion to buy for but need a bit of help getting started, or when you’re simply checking out which look’s in this season. I haven’t tried it myself but NearLondon also lets you go shopping with your friends virtually, which could work if you’re all in different places.

Personally, I’d miss the delights of walking down Oxford Street in person such as unexpectedly bumping into an old friend or the delectable smell of Belgian waffles by Bond Street tube. But should I ever leave London (and perhaps this is their target audience, tourists who love London shopping), I’d more likely go for a nostalgic trip down Oxford Street virtually.

Are you a NearLondon user? Are you tempted to give up the stress of London shopping? Let us know your thoughts.

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Royal Mail will suffer from lack of innovation, not strikes

By Alexander Baxevanis on 29 October 2009

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Demo of DPD Interactive SMS delivery confirmationThe message in the recent weeks is clear: after repeated strikes more and more businesses, especially online retailers, are prepared to desert Royal Mail for alternative suppliers. However, I think it’s not just the strikes that will drive businesses away from Royal Mail. It’s also that Royal Mail has failed to come up with innovative services that match the needs of ecommerce businesses and their customers.

At Ecommerce Expo last week, I saw a number of delivery companies trying to attract retailers. But what they were advertising wasn’t their lack of strikes - it was services that make life a bit easier for both retailers and customers.

DPD, a parcel delivery company, was advertising their “Interactive SMS delivery notification” system. When a retailer provides them with the parcel recipient’s mobile phone number, they send a text message to the recipient to confirm the delivery day. If recipients aren’t available to sign for the package on that day, they can reply by text message to arrange an alternative date. For customers, this means greater transparency and less of the disappointment of receiving the usual Royal Mail “Sorry, you were out” card.

Home Delivery Network, another parcel courier, have partnered with PayPoint to create Collect+, a network of neighbourhood convenience stores that can accept parcel deliveries. As many of these shops are open until late in the evening, customers can collect their parcels when they come home after work, and avoid a trip to the local Royal Mail delivery office. Some major online retailers, such as Littlewoods and Woolworths have already signed up to offer this delivery method to their customers. Royal Mail could have found a way to use their Post Office network in a similar way, instead of closing down Post Office branches.

With delivery often being one of the biggest customer concerns in an ecommerce transaction, retailers are likely to be looking for advanced delivery services that will differentiate them from their competition. If Royal Mail can’t keep up, retailers may not return to use its services even after the strikes are over.

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Do you need high-street advice to buy online?

By Alexander Baxevanis on 14 October 2009

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Step into middle England’s best loved department store, stroll through haberdashery to the audio visual department where an awfully well brought-up young man will bend over backwards to find the right TV for you - then go to dixons.co.uk and buy it.

1926310454_e19d38395aThe text above, one of a recent series of advertising messages by Dixons won’t come as a surprise to those of us at Webcredible who’ve been through countless usability testing sessions with ecommerce websites. Especially when purchasing large, high-value goods or goods where design is an important factor, customers are right to want to “try before they buy”. And this often means browsing the high street, coming up with a shortlist of products and then looking for the cheapest price online.

Dixons’ campaign hasn’t gone without a reply from some of their high street competitors, who rightly point out that Dixons doesn’t even sell many of the upmarket products found in high street stores. And does Dixons really want to highlight that their competitors can provide better advice than they do?

So, apart from creative advertising, what can online retailers do to make consumers more confident to buy online without browsing through the high street? Here’s some tips:

  • Showcase the product online from as many angles as possible. ‘Catwalk’ videos for clothes and demo videos or 360° views for gadgets can replicate (to some extent) the experience of seeing a product up close.
  • Add product reviews and, even better, Q&As with your expert staff. If customers can ask you a question and get a satifactory reply (or even find that their question has been already answered) then they’re more likely to buy without seeking advice from your competitors.
  • Put a generous returns policy in place, and let your customers know. If customers know they can easily return a product they don’t like, they’ll be happier to checkout even when they’re not 100% sure about their purchase. On the other hand, if they get stuck with a product they don’t like they’re less likely to come back.

In our e-commerce usability report, due out next week, we’ve seen that some sites do better than others in helping consumers pick a product. How well does your site perform in this area?

P.S. Come meet us in Ecommerce Expo at Earls Court, 20-21 October.

Photo credit:  Indiana Stan via Flickr / Creative commons

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Every little helps, except when it comes to online user experience

By Jon White on 3 September 2009

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Everybody keeps telling us that online shopping is constantly growing, and I’ve bought many things online (books, CDs, DVDs), but I had never attempted a food shop online until recently and to be honest, the experience has sent me straight back to the checkouts.

Using the website of a certain major UK supermarket, I spent a good hour and a half loading up my online basket, selecting a delivery time and heading to the checkout.  This was no problem, and I’m reliably informed that when you’ve bought once, the system remembers the items you buy to make it easier (although I’ll now never be a repeat customer), so I was perfectly happy.

It was at the checkout that it all went wrong though. Firstly, I needed to amend my address details (as I had previously registered at my old address, although I had never used it), but the automatic address finder was giving me incorrect address details and wouldn’t let me input the full correct details – Somehow I wasn’t confident that the delivery driver would find Flat 11, London (my postcode was there as well, but it’s still pretty vague).

But, the worst was yet to come.  I returned to my basket frustrated, only to find that all the items I had spent a lot of time selecting had been removed as a result of me attempting to change my address during an order, without even so much as an error message! The lack of continuity in this user journey suggests that it needs much better planning.

The result is a customer who will probably never do food shopping online again because of this poor user experience, and because my nearest supermarket is a store of a different company, the brand in question has lost a lot of repeat business from me.

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11 comments on Every little helps, except when it comes to online user experience

 

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