Highlights: Online Retailer Expo
Online Retailer 2011 Highlights – Sydney 26th to 29th September
www.onlineretailer.net
I have just returned from Online Retailer 2011 in Sydney, there was a very large attendance at this event from traditional retailers to online pure plays. I thought I would share my highlights from the Key notes and conference tracks that I attended:
- Flash Sales (called Daily Deals in Australia) remain a popular business model and continue to grow. Retailers continue to have problems with overstock and therefore companies like Catch of the Day, Beyond the Rack, Brands Exclusive are taking advantage of this opportunity and are now leaders in the overstock flash/daily deal sales industry.
- Customer Service remains a focus and challenge for online retailing. Engaging with and satisfying the customer seems to be key to online retailing success. I think alot of this is motivated by fear of negative online customer reviews which can really hurt a pure play online retailer. Companies such as StyleTread are offering 100 day returns, free shipping etc to keep customers happy. Walmart will do just about anything for a customer as shown in their delivery options: pick up in store, guaranteed delivery windows, deliver to home, rush shipping (same day), they want the customer to be 100% satisfied with delivery and believe the investment in this sees a higher repeat sales rate.
- Big Numbers, but any profits? Online pure play retailers love throwing big numbers around, eg. X billion in turnover, X amount of visitors, X amount of orders out every minute, however they seem reluctant to talk about profits. I believe alot of the online retailers are not posting profit’s, they are in such aggressive growth mode that profits would be hard to come by. I also believe the next couple of years will see the online space consolidate leaving only solid and profitable online business models.
- Venture Capital, Venture Capital, Venture Capital! – if you have not got it, then give up now! That was the message from the successful online retailers. Just about every keynote and presentation talked about how they could not have started or grown without a cash injection and many of them have had 4-5 rounds of cash injections to feed the growth. Goes back to my earlier point, online retailing is growing rapidly but is it profitable?
- Google Shopping Australia – get ready for Google to dominate the online shopping comparison space, if you are an online retailer get your product feed into Google Shopping now!
- Mobile e-commerce – it has arrived, Google Commerce presented some pretty convincing numbers on how much mobile is used as a purchasing channel. Google are also investing heavily in payment options for mobile (the final hurdle for mobile commerce widespread acceptance) with Google Wallet. My advice, get your website mobile friendly immediately. [Notes: A report by ABI Research found that mobile online shopping in the United States rose from $396 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2009. The same survey predicted that mobile would bring in $119 billion by 2015]
- Net Promoter score – This was mentioned alot by the big online retailers, seems to be the accepted standard score on how to rate how well your store is going and how well you are treating your customers. http://www.netpromoter.com/np/calculate.jsp
- Repeats from 2010 – Affilate marketing, shopping portals, product reviews, vrials, facebook, analytics, customer insight and targeted email marketing – basically all the stuff an online retailer you should have been doing since 2005.
In Summary: Online Retailer is a good event, it can get the idea's flowing and also provide confirmation that you are doing the right stuff, but I must say a lot of the time it is purely an opportunity to for people to SELL themselves and brag about how big their warehouse is, how many orders they send out each day, how many children they have, if they wear suits in the office or not, how happy their staff are, how good they are at everything and please watch a cool video which our Venture Capitalist helped pay for (Branding!) about us! If you listen closely you can pick up some insights but in my honest opinion the keynotes and conference tracks lack alot of substance, insight, collaboration, tools and detailed ideas, which in my eyes is what it should be about.
Kevin Paterson
Director – Simple Net
Tuesday, 4 October 2011
[Return to Latest News]