Poor online/offline integration costs fashion retailers millions of pounds
According to research by Head London, poor digital/offline integration has cost fashion retailers a combined total of over £31m over the past 3 years.
Head started by rating fashion retailers on the Integrated Customer Experience Scale (ICES), taking into account in-store, website, mobile, catalogue, telephone, iTV, and social media experiences during all stages of the shopping process. It then combined this score with the retailers’ financial performance. The result is a clear correlation between a strong integrated customer experience and sales growth.
In particular, fashion retailers are missing out on simple merchandising opportunities (showing clothes as outfits on online channels), and are perceived to be less focused on their integrated customer experience (compared to many other sectors, such as grocery retailers). They also face the threat of department stores who are more likely to deliver better integrated experiences.
Download the full white paper (PDF, headlondon.com)
Ecommerce Expo 2011
Two busy days at Olympia, lots of buzz around the Magento ecosystem, and many interesting discussions - Ecommerce Expo 2011 once again proved to be the event of the year in any ecommerce professional’s calendar.
A lot of you came to see our seminar presentation on Enterprise Ecommerce and Magento:
If you missed the seminar, check out this presentation that we recently gave at a Figaro Digital seminar on the same topic.
Kristel Verhasselt has recently joined Magento’s European team as Sales Manager North Europe, and will be working closely with Magento partners and merchants alike on this side of the pond (pictured here with Dominic & Richard from Session).
Sneak peek of our new London office
We are finally installed in our brand new London office. Although it’s only one floor up from where we were before, it’s nice to have a place that feels like our own. So, here are some pictures from our new home…
Our “Wonderwall”
Where the magic happens…
The forest wall
Our board room
Some staff hard at work (or so they say!)
“Training” in action
We’d love to show you around - pop in for a cup of tea if you’re in the area!
News just in: Magento launching Magento Developer Certification
Magento have recently announced that they are launching a qualification for Magento developers. For the first time, Magento developers will be able to get recognition for their skills.
Ed van Beinum, Software Engineer at Session comments: “Having a certification scheme is a positive step for the Magento community. For employers it will provide a useful yardstick with which to rate a developer’s experience with Magento, and it will be fun for nerdy developer types, like me, who enjoy taking tests!”
What we know so far…
- The exam has been written by Magento Gurus (nice of Magento to describe us in those terms!) from across the globe
- The exam will last two hours and contain multiple choice questions
- There will be two versions of the exam: Magento Certified Developer and Magento Certified Developer Plus
At the X Commerce Innovate developer conference in San Francisco next month developers will be able to sit the exam. This exam will be in beta form, with results taking 4-6 weeks. Once the certification exam has been tried and tested it will roll out to 10,000 test centres across the globe.
Andy Todd, Session’s Professional Services Director, is pleased with the announcement of the certification program. “One of the biggest challenges we face at the moment is in the recruitment process - basically getting enough quality candidates - as the leading UK implementer of Magento we have exacting standards and whilst potential developers often claim to have experience with Magento, the reality is this can vary hugely.
“We establish a candidates experience level using our own entrance exams, but we are confident that the certification will help drive standards higher. We look forward to seeing it in action - it can only be a good thing for Session and the wider Magento Community.”
“Almost half of consumers prefer shopping for fashion online than offline, while 64% consult a fashion retailer’s website before making a purchase.” Econsultancy reports on interesting stats on what customers are looking for when shopping online - whether it’s social media, use of images on product pages, and effective filters for product selection.
Fun Fair Time
We recently had our very own funfair here at Session Towers. We’re a social bunch, you can often find us out and about in the general Soho area but once a month we like to have an in-house social event. This month the idea came from our newest creative talent Kirtika to have a circus-inspired get-together. Imaginations ran wild and we did have to impose some limitations purely for health and safety reasons - suggestions came in of learning to ride a unicycle and fire-eating, among other things…
We ended up deciding on some (slightly) tamer funfair attractions; a coconut shy, face painting, fortune telling, balloon making, candy floss & popcorn, and the surprisingly popular shoot the ducks. Naturally, you can’t have a funfair without the circus staples; the clown, the ringleader, the mystic, and the bearded lady!
All the stalls were run by our own staff; we seem to have some talented BBQ chefs, bottle-juggling bartenders, and an accomplished face painter:
Arguably the most popular attraction was the ‘shoot the ducks’ stall run by Barney (no drinks allowed).
As the night came to a close we all sat down for a Punch and Judy style story time: ‘The Curse of Asbo’ by Alex and Eddi - quality entertainment.
Over the last year we have gone through a period of rapid growth and these in-house events really help everyone to get to know each other socially, which leads to a happier, more comfortable office environment.
Shop your values with GoodGuide’s Transparency Toolbar
GoodGuide have recently launched a new Transparency Toolbar, that gives customers access to ethical information that is not always readily available when shopping online. It is a quick way to “discover whether products are safe, healthy, green and socially responsible.”
The toolbar allows you to shop according to 12 ethical values, including labour and human rights, animal welfare, fair trade, organic etc. It allows you to create a personal filter based on issues that you care about, and apply that to shopping on any ecommerce site.
How it works
Once the toolbar has been installed, you can customise the options as to what you feel is critical or important, and which values you’re not too concerned about. The toolbar is simple and unobtrusive, appearing at the bottom of the web browser only when visiting ecommerce sites.
Products are given a rating according to the values that you care about. The toolbar will also show other products that compare to the one you initially selected, but that have higher ratings in the areas you’ve marked as ‘critical’. By clicking the Full Rating button, you’ll be able to see a full product analysis and ‘top alternatives’ that might better match your ethical values.
What it means for shoppers and retailers
The great thing about this toolbar is that it allows users to shop based on what they want to see and what they look for in a product, rather than what retailers want them to see.
For retailers this could be a wake-up call to make sure that products are fair trade where possible, and that products are made, transported and sold in an environmentally-friendly way. For fashion retailers, an area of high impact is likely to be labour and human rights. If it’s so easy for shoppers to see that an item of clothing has been made by a child in a sweatshop, it is likely to deter some consumers from buying - especially if ethical alternatives are on offer.
At the moment the toolbar is only supported by amazon.com in the UK - but other retailers are following soon (Target, Walmart and Google products, among others). We expect it to hit the UK very soon.
One of our directors, Richard Jackson, presented at the Figaro Digital E-Commerce Seminar at the Hospital Club in Covent Garden.
Rich demonstrated how to deliver large-scale, cost-effective e-commerce with the Magento Enterprise platform. You can watch the presentation on Figaro’s website (slides included).
CSS3 techniques used for Kookai.co.uk Magento site
Kookai has over 25yrs of heritage as both a fashion and advertising brand. Its personality is internationally renowned, based on its creative collections, high quality products and heritage.
In July 2010 Session were engaged to create and develop the UK online store, which for the first time allows UK customers to purchase Kookai clothing online directly from this globally recognised French brand.
In this article, we outline some of the CSS3 techniques we used in the site as well as applying fallback methods for browsers which currently don’t support these properties.
Online Commerce: The Saviour of High Street Fashion
What’s the point of selling luxury goods online? Our Creative Director Alex argues that seeing digital as a way to delight and surprise customers, as part of a cross-channel strategy, is the way forward. Read the full comment on Internet Retailing.