February 22, 2023
•
A whistle-stop tour of our favourite e-commerce websites that utilise best-practice and are active in the United Kingdom.
The department store that is "Never Knowingly Undersold" stays true to its upmarket pedigree with a state of the art new website that recently "passed the significant milestone of £1 billion annual online sales on a rolling 52-week basis - a full year ahead of target".
They also observed that:
Over 40 percent of traffic now comes from mobile phones or tablets. In July, we relaunched our transactional mobile app and since then sales via the app have grown quickly and we are preparing for what we anticipate will be the UK’s first mobile Christmas
Astonishing and a true indicator of what we've been saying for a while, that mobile and tablet commerce is fast becoming the main method with which the British public shop. The habit of sitting on the sofa in a "multi-screen room" - that is, with TV on, mobile to hand and tablet on lap - is extending to shopping.
If your website is not optimised for mobile you could be missing out on vital sales.
Interestingly, the company has embraced online technology instore, providing website access points throughout the store and therefore welcoming "cross-channel commerce", something we are sure to see more of in the future as the schism between online and offline commerce resolves itself.
What we like:
Quick tip: If you are a wholesaler and don't have big traffic but still want to show reviews for your site, you could consider a service like Reevoo which can syndicate reviews between retailers, giving you instant reviews on your site for the products you stock.
Do you want to see this man dance?
So did Currys staff in one branch that insisted he did in a recent job interview, along with other hopeful graduates looking for service sector work in the hour glass economy.
'Zany' isn't it - but does this character rub off on their website? Well it's quite sales-y but in this industry it works - people typically already know what they want and are shopping based on price.
If you've never fully understood why it's not Curry's, it's a aesthetic choice to lose the apostrophe in the vein of Starbucks or Selfridges .
Anyway, the website.
Why do we like it?
Quick tip: Include 'free shipping' as a default special offer when you have no others on the go. This is a real conversion booster and sometimes you can ever price your cheapest shipping rate in to your products.
On to the next one.
Who's next? As Seen on Screen, more commonly known as ASOS are trend setting not only in their product but in their online practices.
This website IS their business, with no bricks and mortar heritage they are free to define their brand as they need online.
If you've ordered from ASOS you'll know it's a slick process and the starting point for that is their state of the art website.
What do we like about it?
Excellent all round.
Disclaimer: One of our own clients!
So how did we smuggle it in?
Well it's an example of a smaller retailer using some of the big tricks like personalised product recommendations and powerful faceted search to make it easy on customers whilst they do their shopping.
If you want a bespoke e-commerce like this please get in touch.
Why do we like it? Not just because we made it!
A flashy site for the smart and stylish menswear brand.
What we like...
Quick tip: Another way to encourage email address capture is to use a wish list that can be used by visitors without them creating an account. Once they've added products to their wish list, you can prompt them to enter an email address to save their wish list, otherwise it will be lost when they navigate away. Ensure you add this email address to your mailing list and any remarketing software you use.
The Daddy of e-commerce, Amazon has continued to ruthlessly trample the competition in almost every retail sector (and beyond - Kindle for Books and Amazon Web Services for cloud computing to two other facets of its empire).
It looks slighted dated but that's because it works and has become a key indicator of future e-commerce best practice.
One difference Amazon has with a typical retailer is the sheer size of its product portfolio - therefore the primary purpose of its front page is to a) show special offers and advertisements and b) get you to the department you need.
Another difference to a typical e-commerce store is that Amazon sticks with some elements of its design because its broad audience is used to them. For smaller retailers this is rarely an issue.
What we like about it...
Quick tip: You can use Amazon's extraordinary success by using Amazon Payments to power your checkout. This allows your customers to sign in, pay and retrieve payment and delivery addresses from their Amazon account. Literally hundreds of thousands of people are registered with Amazon so it's likely your customers will be. Remember one of the main reasons people use Amazon is they know they can checkout quickly because their details are already stored securely with them.
I bet you thought it would never end.
We will add to this list in future - who knows where best practice will go next.
