Multi-Channel Commerce & Retailing

Green with Intimacy

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 01:04:21 +0000

For this post, I’d like to get a little more concrete on the potential of using the new channel framework to analyze & optimize a marketer/seller-customer relationship.

One company I like that deals with a potential retail “channel” in many different ways is Recellular.com. Recellular is in the perhaps unglamorous but important business of "electronics sustainability"--they work to keep the millions of cellphones, PDAs, and related accessories that get replaced annually out of landfills. How might they adopt our framework?

Can you direct me to E Commerce Street?

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 02:49:49 +0000

I was recently going through some old digital photos and came across the following I thought readers of this forum might get a kick out of:

One page check-out and perpetual shopping cart: an opportunity not to be missed!

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:56:54 +0000

Imagine a world where more than a third of the visitors of a store would start their shopping and fill their trolley and then, all of a sudden, leave the store with all these baskets lying on the floor. It looks more like science-fiction that anything else, but unfortunately for online retailers this is still the daily routine: according to a recent report from Jupiter Research only 64% of shopping carts filled on a site will result in a purchase!

Assortment & ranging in a multichannel context

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:28:41 +0000

Multichannel retailers are confronted with the challenge of assortment and ranging across their online and offline channels. What's the overlap between the merchandise mix offered online vs in the stores? There are signficant implications to the merchandising decisions because it affects the customer experience, synergy between what the consumer sees online and finds in the stores, the cross-channel capabilities that allow customers to buy merchandise online from store inventory etc. These are not easy decisions and affect issues that transcend people roles, responsibilities, metrics, business processes and technology integration.

Flying Blind

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:38:21 +0000

I am often called upon to review a design. The first things that I ask for are the performance goals and the scaling assumptions, often called the Load Model. More than half the time, they don’t exist, or they are pure fantasy. (I have heard business types specify sub-second response and infinite scalability.) The Load Model tells us how many transactions, page hits, orders, etc. a system will be experiencing per unit of time for a certain number of years in the future, often the next 5 years. This table or graph will determine the type of design that you have to create. Without it you are “Flying Blind”. For example, if you are told that you will have 45 orders per hour at peak then you have any number of ways that a system could be built. In fact, almost any design can handle such a light load. On the other hand, if you are told that you will have 45,000 order per hour you will have to examine every aspect of the design to detect bottlenecks as quickly as possible. Many times, no one really knows what the load numbers will be. Often, the business people will try to pawn the estimation off on the technical people. Resist this! You must make the business people take the bottom line for this. If you don’t, you will be accepting the risk that the business people are paid to accept. If you create the Load Model yourself, you will be ultimately responsible for its correctness. This is especially important when the load is unknowable. In that case, the business must pick a number out of the air. Once picked, you should ensure that everyone agrees to design to it. Later, if your approach is correct for the assumed load, but incorrect for the actual load, you will be able to defend the design.

3D Commerce: A Toy or a Trend

Thu, 22 May 2008 12:46:15 +0000

Virtual worlds, like Second Life, have carved a niche in the hobbyist world. In these worlds participants earn “Linden Dollars” by creating and selling clothes, furniture, cars, land, etc. to each other. All of this is very nice for those who share this hobby, but of little use to the rest of the world. However, there are some features of that world that make it interesting to those of us who specialize in more traditional eCommerce models. First, there is a floating, but fairly stable exchange rate between the Linden Dollar and the US Dollar. Second, there is no restriction on what type of commerce takes place in the virtual world. You could, for instance, sell music downloads there, collect money for the transaction in Linden dollars and exchange them for US Dollars. The question that arises is why would someone sell in that world when the tradition eCommerce sites already do a good job of selling many products. Several reasons come to mind. First: Browsing. Traditional eCommerce is essentially like going to the hardware store. You sign in, search for an item, pay for it and leave. In the brick and mortar world, you can do that too, or you can “hang out” in a store to see what’s new. Many stores like American Eagle and Target are laid out and merchandised to appeal to this type of shopping. (Their sales numbers speak for the appeal of this strategy.) Second: Not all products are easy to sell in a traditional eCommerce site. Furniture, clothing and office furnishings sell better when the user can “experience” the products, not just look at a picture of them. Perhaps the ability to configure a room, an office, or a mannequin in a 3D world would be superior because it allows a customer to “walk around” the choices and modify them until they get it right. Third: Youngsters. The rising generation of shoppers is not like us. They are a wired group who prefer texting to talking on the phone, and playing Internet video games against their friends to having them over to the house. Will 3D Commerce have more appeal to them than the current user experience once they become young adults?

eCommerce Strategy is Hard (Too)...

Mon, 05 May 2008 05:12:04 +0000

Regarding Steve’s posting, “eCommerce Engineering is Hard”, I have to put in a couple cents about the up-front strategy portion of an eCommerce project, which in my experience is just as hard—and often not sufficiently addressed by many companies.

eCommerce Engineering is Hard

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:34:25 +0000

What makes it hard? First, you have to write or acquire an eCommerce engine, integrated it with an order management system, a content management system, and a payment service. Then you have to interface these products with 20-40 legacy applications so it fits into your corporate structure. You have to design a user experience that is better (or at least no worse) than you have on your old site. Finally, after you have managed to get all of the projects, and subprojects done, it must perform well today and scale well over time. If it won't perform, then you have to go to your boss and get $X million more for additional licenses and CPUs. This is clearly in the hard category!

Are B2B websites facing an identity crisis?

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:12:50 +0000

Increasingly, companies that have a B2B business model are realizing that their current websites are not designed to provide a rich, interactive and user friendly shopping experience.

Social Commerce

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:17:25 +0000

Retailers are increasingly considering the use of social commerce technologies to enhance and personalize the customer shopping experience online.

Ecommerce Implementation Pitfalls

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:45:12 +0000

Ecommerce implementations programs are complex and challenging. Not all retailers have the internal capabilities or scale to execute on them successfully. Interestingly, a leading research analyst confronted me with the question - "So what are the challenges that we need to be aware of before embarking on ecommerce implementation programs?"

Role of ecommerce in Multi-channel retailing

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:29:07 +0000

A leading research analyst who covers ecommerce and multi-channel retailing asked us about our point of view on the role of ecommerce in the overall multi-channel retailing strategy and which of the two is a driving/determining force.