Critical Review. By Larry Eeles

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Hannah Poole
5 years ago
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1 Critical Review By Larry Eeles

With many customers now opting to buy via the internet, there has been an emergence of independent online only stores, and in this market Not on the High Street.

Site Overview In its current iteration, The White Company website is a good example of a clean, minimal design, with focus on the customer journey and the gallery- like

2 Market Placement Online & High St Competitors: Online Only: As a midmarket, affordable brand, selling luxurious and aspirational products, The White Company stands alongside such high street competitors as John Lewis, Habitat, Harrods, Next Home and Selfridges. With many customers now opting to buy via the internet, there has been an emergence of independent online only stores, and in this market Not on the High Street.com would prove a key competitor. Target Market year old, affluent women. Site Overview In its current iteration, The White Company website is a good example of a clean, minimal design, with focus on the customer journey and the gallery- like presentation of its products. It is key that this uncluttered tone remains, whilst developing and moving the site forward with the clever integration of well chosen technology to enhance the users experience. These improvements should be implemented in an agile approach throughout the year. The White Company Critical Review Larry Eeles ( 2

Ideas and improvements Quick Fixes Wedding Lists A quick win for the site would be to build upon the existing wedding category and integrate a Wedding List database, similar to that of your key

3 Ideas and improvements Quick Fixes Wedding Lists A quick win for the site would be to build upon the existing wedding category and integrate a Wedding List database, similar to that of your key competitors. Customers would be able to purchase the goods from a predefined list, determined by the happy couple, either instore or online. Not only would this act as a marketing tool to highlight the brand to all the wedding guests, but by creating a link between the store and the online portal, the customers would be able to experience the ease of shopping online and having their goods delivered to their door. Lifestyle Photography As the majority of the products available are aspirational, it is key that the site aims to market a specific and very stylised tone. Through some well directed lifestyle photography, the site could develop its current look to add to the individual product shots and create whole room sets, that link sell multiple products at once. This way the customer buys into a lifestyle and a theme rather then just key products. This type of targeting is currently adopted by Next Home online, and provides the site with very visually dramatic and stunning effects, alongside the multiple marketing of many products at once. Longer Term Planned Development 360 Images and Video For many customers, the advantage of instore shopping is the ability to see the product either from a multitude of angles, or in terms of clothing to try the item on and see how it looks. With the integration of 360 images, the customer could rotate the product, seeing it from every angle and in the case of clothing it might be nice to have a model moving in the outfit to show the flow and fit. This technology has been adopted by an existing online only brand ASOS.com and could work well here to animate the site further, moving it from its existing magazine style feel and propel it forward from merely appearing as a print based media ported across the web. Larry Eeles ( 3

4 Personalisation Personalisation is the next big thing in the online world. As the company continues to track the shopping habits of its customers, it is key to develop this knowledge to provide each user with a unique and tailored experience. By monitoring their purchase history, they should receive targeted s on key products relative to their buying trends. Through clever manipulation of the database, they should receive relative link selling marketing in the style of Amazons customers who bought this also bought recommendations. And as part of this personalisation, the customer should receive the latest in CRM technology, in which their name is incorporated within the image a marketing tool currently used by gettingpersonal.co.uk. This technique alone could potentially increase the response rate by as much as 40%. Customer Reviews As the online market grows, so too does the need to create an experience for the customer when online. Through the creation of a customer review section, the site develops a more community type feel. Products are discussed and given genuine reviews, allowing the customer to feel they are getting an unbiased view of their selected purchase. This in turn helps promote trust and loyalty in the site itself. iphone / ipad / Android App The integration of an IOS and Android App would allow for a stylish website/brochure amalgamation. This platform would present the ideal canvas for both the new lifestyle images and the 360 animation that is missing from the site currently. Incorporating new technology such as QR codes could provide a direct link from offline to online, and this development could be rapped into the application. Social Media A key tool to develop brand recognition further is Social Media. Creating a Facebook page that is updated and regularly monitored is an easy way to highlight promotional events, key product pieces and to build upon the customers recognition of the brand. Alongside this, the company should create account on sites including Twitter, Google + and Pintrest, all of which should further highten the brands awareness. Larry Eeles ( 4

5 Technology Looking at the websites source code, you currently use Google Analytics alongside TagMan. Google Analytics will give you a comprehensive overview of site traffic, but unfortunately you only get what you pay for. A paid for service can give you a lot more granular detail as well as the facility to back up your data. Heat Mapping Heat Mapping gives a new dimension to analytics. Heatmaps visualize the stream of visitors on the website showing hot and cold click zones. This provides an overall view of the activity and helps show every mouse movement and every click. It improves web usability, conversions and revenue. Clicktale is a company I have used before and proved key at highlighting future areas of development. Live Chat Something that sets the White Company apart is its personal touch. The ability to contact you the company via telephone is becoming more and more unique. To build upon this more friendly approach, live chat enables the customer to communicate directly without the cost of a phone call. This service can easily be integrated as an optional extra on the existing site. Customer Monitoring From a customer service perspective, having a system monitoring and recording the sales and views of the website, can be very useful. This can be implemented at a server level, so listens to the traffic, and causes no delay with added code to the page. AB Testing+ AB testing is a great tool for the Marketing team, that can help you improve small elements of the site that will increase overall sales. New systems are now available that can deliver results minute by minute, rather then the traditional longer lead time of up to 30 days. This means that you can react to the market a lot quicker with the rules that you define. I.e a Red button may provide better results in the morning, and a green button in the afternoon. Overall Monitoring Historically, the problem with implementing many of these systems is that the volume of code on the page may often slow the load times and reliability on 3 rd party systems. It is now possible to for one company to implement these amends and load them through a single piece of code. This can then be tweaked to give personal dashboards that can be monitored in real time. Larry Eeles ( 5

PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS IN RETAIL:

TOTAL BUSINESS VISIBILITY PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS IN RETAIL: The next stage of the retail analytics journey The next step in this journey is predictive analytics. INTRODUCTION Analytics is already a common