preview edition - Internet Retailer

Transcription

DECEMBER 2014 | WWW.INTERNETRETAILER.COM
PREVIEW EDITION
THE
WORLD’S BEST
RETAIL WEB SITES
Brought to you by:
Symantec,
FreightCo Logistics,
Smartling and
Brink’s Checkout
December
2014
Internet
Retailer
A match made in
heaven
Hot 100 retailers
have learned that
success in e-retailing
today requires
a marriage of
customer research
and service.
BY ALLISON ENRIGHT
2015 will be a milestone year
for e-retailing. Using Amazon.com
Inc.’s first-ever web sale in July 1995 as
a starting point, modern e-retail celebrates its 20th birthday in 2015.
And like people as they turn 20 shake off their
youth and get a grasp on adulthood, so too is
e-commerce as it matures. As adults, competition gets
tougher, expectations greater and the stakes higher.
The 110 online retailers (100 web sites and 10 mobile
commerce sites and apps) profiled as part of the 2015
Hot 100 understand this, regardless of their own
e-retail age. These retailers take on e-retailing like
adults, not like kids who either don’t really understand or don’t particularly care about consequences.
The hard work Hot 100 e-retailers are doing today is
rooted in their gaining a deeper understanding of customers and in translating that knowledge into the triggers and services that will convince consumers to buy,
and buy again. The relationship between research
and action is tight for these retailers. In our interviews
with executives at Hot 100 retailers this year, time and
again we heard about merchants’ emphasis on getting
to know more about their customers and their needs.
Hot 100 retailers are putting the effort in to gain that
understanding. Wine e-retailer NakedWines.com, for
instance, has 35 customer representatives manning the
phones, a third of whom are tasked with reaching out
to dormant customers. (NakedWines.com’s customers
bank at least $40 a month in an account with the e-retailer, which they can redeem at any time to buy wine.)
The e-retailer calls these wine advisors “shepherds”
because they help guide consumers along. “These
are customers who should be buying but aren’t,” says
winemaker Ryan O’Connell. “We call to find out what’s
wrong—if it’s a delivery issue, a wine issue or a service
issue.” Once NakedWines.com understands the issue, it
tries to resolve it and get consumers back into a repeat
buying pattern. “Those who get treated better, stay
better and then order on their own,” O’Connell says.
Hot 100 retailer Sur La Table Inc. meanwhile uses a
mix of technology and focus groups to ascertain the
consumer preferences that will drive sales. In October,
for example, it had 183 A/B tests running, experimenting with such things as wording and colors on the web
site and in e-mail messaging. “To improve the customer
experience we have to listen to what [customers] tell
us, whether that’s through surveys or usability sessions
‘To improve the customer experience we have to
listen to what [customers] tell us, whether that’s
through surveys or usability sessions or whatever.
Respond, and lo and behold, it pays off.’
or whatever,” says Kevin Ertell, senior vice president of digital.
“Respond, and lo and behold, it pays off.”
It is not unusual for a customer service representative at
jeweler Blue Nile Inc. to spend 30 or more minutes on the
phone talking to a customer in China about a piece of jewelry.
It’s through those conversations that Blue Nile gains an understanding of what consumers want from the global e-retailer,
and service calls from everywhere inform the retailer’s site
developments, says CEO Harvey Kanter. The e-retailer has
three call centers spaced evenly around the world (Seattle,
Dublin and Shanghai are eight time zones apart) to provide
24-hour support in 12 languages. One frequent trigger for a
call into customer service is from customers who can’t see or
get the information they want from the e-retailer on a mobile
phone. Responding to that demand, Blue Nile is in the process
of redesigning all its web site pages to make them responsive,
so they render properly across all devices. It expects the percentage of sales coming from mobile devices, currently more
than 20%, will grow after the new pages go live in 2015.
The increasingly global nature of web retailing, as Blue Nile
can attest, is challenging e-retail executives to understand
and meet the needs of consumers whose online shopping
behaviors and preferences may differ from their own. The
work of one e-retailer on the Hot 100 this year exemplifies
this. Huawei Technologies Co., a major Chinese manufacturer
of smartphones and consumer electronics, has been successful at selling online in its native China; it generates 20% of its
revenue via the web and is No. 14 in Internet Retailer’s 2014
China 500, which ranks Chinese merchants by online sales.
But when Huawei decided this year to launch GetHuawei.com,
an e-retail site targeting U.S. shoppers, it used fresh consumer
research to learn about U.S. online consumers’ preferences.
The resulting site is altogether different than Huawei’s
Chinese e-retail site, Vmall.com. Rather than focus directly
on the product, as Vmall does, GetHuawei takes a storytelling
approach that’s designed to reflect the daily lives of consumers age 18 to 25, one of the Huawei’s targeted U.S. consumer
segments, says Ashley Heai, senior marketing director.
It is retailers’ willingness to put in the work to marry
customer insights with technologies and services that distinguishes this year’s class of Hot 100 retailers. l
[email protected]
@AENRIGHTIR
December
2014
Internet
Retailer
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Logo and the Norton Secured Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.
SPONSORED CASE STUDY
Cyber security tool helps drive innovation
I
n the past few years, headlines about data breaches and
cyber security concerns have become common. From
large retailers exposing data from tens of millions
of their customers to smaller companies experiencing
breaches of the large amounts of data they collect and
store, seemingly no one is safe.
As hackers become increasingly sophisticated, it’s more
important than ever for companies to take every measure
possible to protect their data. And this is especially true for
online retailers, which collect troves of personal customer
information, such as credit card numbers and e-mail
addresses, that criminal hackers covet.
For online retailers, a data breach of any size doesn’t
just threaten their reputations, it could also spell the
demise of their businesses.
“Awareness of cyber security risks by end customers
has never been higher than it is today,” says Rob Hoblit,
senior director for product management at Symantec, a
producer of security software and support services. “Now
more than ever, e-commerce companies need comprehensive solutions to help protect their end customers.”
Hoblit points to Symantec’s Norton Shopping
Guarantee (NSG) as an example of one way retailers could
not only safeguard their businesses and offer substantial
protection to their online customers, but also drive
innovation.
“With NSG, really what we’re providing is a guarantee
for end customers, which in turn allows the retailers to
drive their business and increase sales,” Hoblit says.
Retailers that implement NSG on their e-commerce
sites can offer their online shoppers three guarantees.
First, if a customer purchases a product, NSG guarantees he will receive that product. Secondly, if the price
of a customer’s item goes down within 30 days of his
purchase, NSG guarantees that he will receive a refund
of the difference up to $100. And finally, if a customer’s
identity is stolen 30 days after a purchase, NSG provides
compensation for any out-of-pocket expenses that
resulted from the identity theft.
“Using the Norton Shopping Guarantee Seal
throughout the entire shopping process, the online
retailer persistently reminds shoppers that they are
shopping on a safe site—guaranteed,” Hoblit explains.
For retailers considering implementing NSG, there’s
minimal risk. “NSG is a product we allow online retailers
to try for free,” Hoblit says. The software takes about one
hour to implement into a retailer’s site and it allows the
company to conduct an A/B split test to assess whether
it’s the right product for their business. If the retailer
doesn’t experience benefits when using NSG, it is not
obligated to purchase it.
“However, we haven’t seen that as an outcome,” Hoblit
says. “The retailers who have tried it consistently see
improvement to their business.” In fact, Symantec has
tested more than 400 e-commerce sites that use NSG, and
on average, those sites experience a 7% improvement in
revenue.
“In today’s online retail landscape, customers are
more concerned with security than ever before,” says Bill
Aicher, chief marketing officer of Musicnotes, a publisher
of downloadable sheet music. “This is why we are happy to
have partnered with Symantec for their Norton Shopping
Guarantee. It gives customers additional protection
and peace-of-mind knowing their information is safe
and protected, so much so that we regularly receive
‘thank you’ e-mails from our customers for providing
this added benefit.”
Other ways online retailers could protect their
customers is through Symantec SSL certificates. With one
of these Extended Validation certificates, retailers’ web
sites receive daily malware scans as well as critical vulnerability assessments, which identify where on their web sites
retailers may be vulnerable to cyber attacks.
As data breaches and cyber attacks become more
frequent, retailers must ensure they protect their
customers’ private, and highly valuable, personal information. “Symantec is there to help with that,” Hoblit
explains. “One of our priorities is to help solve the cyber
security challenges online retailers face so they can focus
on moving their business forward. Feeling safe to try new
things is what drives innovation.”
About Symantec
At Symantec, we protect the world’s information,
wherever it is stored, accessed or shared. To learn more
go to www.symantec.com or connect with Symantec at
go.symantec.com/socialmedia.
December
2014
Internet
Retailer
What’s
‘hot’
around
the world
MEXICO
2013 web sales: $3.0 billion
2014 web sales estimate: $3.6 billion
Growth: 20.0%
Source: eMarketer Inc., includes the sale of digital
and physical goods and ticketing (excluding travel)
Mexican consumers:
Demand local options.
Accepting cash on
delivery or offering local
payment capabilities
is essential. Just more than a
quarter of Mexicans age 15 and
older have a bank account,
and only 13% have credit cards,
according to the World Bank.
Roberto Rodarte, CEO of Mexican
online apparel e-retailer Gaudena.
com, says 60% of shoppers pay
with cash on delivery through a
program it began offering with
FedEx last summer, noting it has
helped the e-retailer reach new
customers. “For us the sales are
incremental sales. It’s not that
the customers who paid with
credit cards switched. These were
new people who never bought
from us before.”
UNITED KINGDOM
2013 web sales: $61.6 billion | 2014 web sales estimate: $71.3 billion | Growth: 15.7%
2014 average web spending per online shopper (estimate): $1,697
Source: Centre for Retail Research, includes the sale of digital and physical goods (excludes ticketing and travel)
U.K. consumers:
Prefer in-store pickup. Commonly called “click
and collect” in the United Kingdom, research
shows online consumers pick up about one in five
web purchases in a store. E-retailer Next Plc says
more than half of U.K. web orders are picked up in stores,
with many of those retrieved the day after they’re placed.
BRAZIL
Source: eMarketer Inc., includes the sale of digital and physical goods and ticketing (excluding travel)
Brazilian consumers:
Want to know who they are buying from.
Web-only retailers in Brazil work hard to build
trust with consumers and demonstrate they are
legitimate businesses. This comes through in the
attention they pay to design (see LaBellaMafia’s Hot 100 entry
on page 33) and navigation, and to the perks they offer consumers. “In the beginning we would get lots of calls into our
call center just to see if someone would answer,” says Malte
Huffmann, co-founder of Brazil-based fashion e-retailer Dafiti.
He says offering free, speedy delivery helped consumers get
over their hesitation to click and buy.
E-retailing’s increasingly global nature is reflected in the e-retailers that appear in the 2015 Hot 100 list.
The Hot 100 has 17 retailers whose headquarters and primary market are outside North America, but the
boundary-decimating nature of the Internet—and a growing variety of international services provided
by vendors—is enabling many more merchants to capture international sales by understanding those
consumers’ needs. (See Hot 100 entries for Missguided, page 34; Blue Nile, page 48; and 11Main.com,
page 66; for examples of borderless merchants.) Here are key e-commerce statistics for some major
international markets along with insights into how consumers in these countries prefer to shop online.
RUSSIA
2013 web sales: $16.5 billion1 | 2015 web sales estimate: $27 billion2
2013 average web spending per online shopper: $5502
Sources: 1. Data Insight, includes the sale of digital and physical goods and ticketing
2. East-West Digital News, includes the sale of digital and physical goods and ticketing
GERMANY
Russian shoppers:
Don’t expect home delivery. Russia lacks a
reliable national postal service or shipping carrier;
that shapes shoppers’ fulfillment expectations.
Ulmart.ru, Russia’s largest online retailer by sales,
ships about 10% to 20% of its orders to consumers’ homes.
About half of customers pick up their orders at a fulfillment
center, and 30% to 40% retrieve their orders from one
of 300 Ulmart outposts, small stores in 150 cities where
consumers can also place orders.
2013 web sales: $45.9 billion
2014 web sales estimate: $56.1 billion | Growth: 22.2%
2014 average web spending per online shopper (estimate): $1,515
Source: Centre for Retail Research, includes the sale of digital and physical goods
(excludes ticketing and travel)
German consumers:
Avoid using credit. The German
word “schuld” has two meanings—
debt and guilt. Many German
consumers act as though putting
off payment is something to be ashamed of
and reserve their credit cards for emergencies.
They rarely use them to shop online, and
often pay by direct bank transfer after
receiving an invoice.
CHINA
Source: iResearch Consulting Group
Chinese shoppers:
Shop socially. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. provides merchants selling on its Taobao marketplace
flexible tools to extend their storefronts onto popular social networks, giving consumers the ability
to complete a transaction with a Taobao merchant without leaving the social networks. Retailers
also sell to consumers through storefronts on mobile messaging service WeChat, part of Tencent
Holdings Ltd. Smartphone maker Xiaomi (a Hot 100 e-retailer last year) sold 150,000 devices in less than 10
minutes during a promotion it ran on WeChat last year.
Ask for a deal. Haggling with customer service representatives on price is common. For example,
Forrester Research Inc. analyst Kelland Willis negotiated down the price of a pair of shoes for sale
on one of Alibaba’s marketplaces by about 20% via live chat.
Shop A LOT on Nov. 11th. Known as “Singles’ Day” for the way the date appears on the calendar
(11/11), Nov. 11 is the biggest online shopping day in the world. Consumers bought approximately
$9.32 billion in goods on Alibaba-owned marketplaces alone on Singles’ Day last month, up 62%
from $5.75 billion on Nov. 11, 2013.
December
2014
Internet
Retailer
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E
ffectively managing inbound deliveries typically requires retailers to hire and manage
dedicated personnel to work directly with
freight carriers to track orders in transit and when
they will arrive so the receiving dock can be properly
staffed to move shipments into the fulfillment center.
Many e-retailers, however, either don’t have the
personnel and resources to dedicate to managing
inbound logistics or instead prefer to put those
employees to use in other ways to gain greater
operating efficiencies.
Intent on bringing a higher level of automation
to its global supply chain, online shopping destination GILT.com sought a partner with the requisite
systems to integrate and manage its inbound logistics
processes so that personnel assigned to those tasks
could be assigned other duties more focused on the
core business needs and growth.
“We had several people just comparing freight shippers whose talents we could put to use elsewhere,” says
Christopher Halkyard, chief supply chain officer and
general manager of distribution for Gilt. “Finding new
ways to streamline operations through technology
is a big part of a retailer’s business. Our goal was to
automate this part of the supply chain so we no longer
needed dedicated staff to manage it.”
Enter FreightCo Logistics, which provided Gilt
with FreightIQ, the technology answer needed to
manage freight shipments online from the time the
order is placed to when the merchandise arrives at the
fulfillment center. “Once we enter a purchase order
into FreightCo’s web portal, they handle the rest,”
Halkyard says.
FreightCo then communicates directly with
Gilt’s product-providing vendors, arranges pickup of
shipments with sufficient time to make the required
delivery date, and coordinates with each carrier used
in order to provide constant real-time updates on
order status. In addition to tracking the expected
arrival date, advice such as weather or mechanical
delays, quantity changes by vendors and other developments are also annotated and updated in real time.
FreightCo can also hold orders that arrive earlier
than expected. Gilt often utilizes this service so the
e-retailer can receive product on its targeted arrival
date and never at the whim of random carriers’ unannounced schedule changes. “We know the maximum
number of SKUs we can receive per day, and if we
exceed that number merchandise can be left sitting
on the receiving dock,” says Halkyard. “This lets us
optimize our capacity for inbound deliveries.”
By completely taking on the management of the
complexity of inbound logistics, FreightCo frees
up valuable resources retailers can apply to other
areas of their business to better manage growth and
improve efficiency.
“Managing inbound deliveries is becoming so
complicated and time-consuming that problems creep
up fast,” says Chuck Cain, president of FreightCo. “We
provide the technology that lets retailers automate
this part of the business and match inbound delivery
with their desired volume.”
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APPAREL & ACCESSORIES
December
2014
Internet
Retailer
Leading by example
A
pparel and accessories retailers continue to thrive on the
web. The North American apparel and accessories e-retailers
ranked in the 2014 Top 500 Guide collectively increased
their online sales by 20.00% last year, while overall clothing
sales increased only 3.37%. With web sales growing strongly, the
largest online apparel merchants increased their share of total
apparel sales by 1.71 percentage points, the third-largest gain
among the categories applied to retailers in the Top 500 Guide.
(It trailed the growth of Books/Music/Video and Mass Merchant
e-retailers, who increased their market share by 4.91 and 2.39 percentage points, respectively.) The online sales of Top 500 apparel
merchants accounted for 12.40% of total apparel and accessories
sales in 2013, up from 10.69% in 2012.
These figures reflect the gains apparel and accessories merchants are making on the web, but not how they are making that
headway. For that, we can look to the apparel and accessories
retailers profiled as part of this year’s Hot 100. It’s the creative, and
often unconventional, approaches these merchants are taking to
technology, design and service that are convincing more shoppers
to buy more of their clothing and accessories on the web.
There are 30 retailers on the following pages, and many are
making a number of moves to improve their online fortunes.
Look, for instance, at Zappos.com. The Amazon.com Inc.-owned
e-retailer that consistently ranks highly for service in industry
surveys figured out yet another way to please customers, this
summer launching Ask Zappos to provide one-on-one personalized recommendations. Consumers take a photo of a shoe or
product they’ve seen and liked, and send it to Zappos by text
or e-mail, or by tagging it on Instagram with #AskZappos. A
Zappos stylist replies with information on the same or similar
products culled from the Zappos catalog—and from other online
retailers. Zappos started with a two-person team of stylists, but
quickly had to hire in more to keep up with demand.
U.K. retailer Asos also is working to create relationships
with consumers in its newer e-retailing markets by offering a
downloadable monthly magazine available via a smartphone
and tablet app; the magazine is shoppable and available in
three languages, English, French and German.
Meanwhile, Rent the Runway, which rents designer gowns
and jewelry to women for about a week at a time, is taking
another tack to satiate the fashion-hungry consumer base
it’s built up over its first five years in business. It worked with
seven top designers, including Oscar de la Renta and Monique
Lhuillier, to this year create a 25-piece “5Y Collection” available
only to Rent the Runway customers. Consumers visiting the
e-retailer’s blog also get a behind-the-scenes look at the collection and can learn about Rent the Runway’s history.
The apparel and accessories merchants selected for this
year’s Hot 100 are leading by example, showing how e-retailers
can persuade shoppers to move more of their fashion
purchases to the web.
VENDOR RELATIONSHIPS
Affiliate marketing
management: NA
Comparison engine feeds: NA
Content delivery network:
Amazon Web Services,
CloudFlare Inc.
Content management: NA
Customer relationship
management: NA
Customer reviews and forums:
NA
Customer service software: NA
E-commerce platform: NA
E-mail marketing:
Clean and cool
URL: 31PhillipLim.com | Company name: 3.1 Phillip Lim Retail LLC
Date launched: 2012 | 2013 web-based sales: NA
2014 unique visitors (monthly average): NA
D
esigner apparel brand 3.1 Phillip Lim requires shoppers to exert
virtually no effort to get to know its products. Organized by
seasonal collections and product categories, consumers click
from the home page to explore whatever appeals to them, and
the page then displays only photos of the corresponding products.
Consumers can hover over any image to see its name, price and an
alternative view of the product—no click required. Some collections
incorporate photos from the brand’s runway shows, which shoppers
can e-mail or share from a module built into the image. The result is one
of the cleanest, most clutter-free sites we came across in our Hot 100
research. 3.1 Phillip Lim’s only been selling on the web since 2012, but
it’s clear it has a firm grasp on what works to sell designer goods online.
Fulfillment: NA
International Services:
International Checkout
Live chat/click-to-call: NA
Marketplace management: NA
Mobile commerce: NA
Order management: NA
Payment security: NA
Payment systems: NA
Personalization: NA
Rich media: NA
Search engine marketing: NA
Security certification: Comodo
Shipping carrier: FedEx
Site design: NA
Site search: NA
Social media marketing/
consulting: NA
Web analytics: Chartbeat,
Google Inc., Rapleaf
Web hosting:
Amazon Web Services
Web performance monitoring:
NA
December
2014
Internet
Retailer
SITE PERFORMANCE
2015 HOT 100 Availability:
ISSUE
99.92% | Response time: 2.030 seconds
3
Measured by Dynatrace Benchmarks
The full edition of Internet Retailer’s
“Hot 100” featuring the world’s best
retail web sites is available now online.
Affiliate marketing
To order your copy, click
here.
management: Google Inc.
Mobile commerce: NA
Payment security: Comodo
Payment systems: NA
Personalization: Rapleaf
Rich media: NA
Search engine marketing:
In-house
Security certification: NA
Shipping carrier: NA
Site design: In-house
management: NA
Customer reviews and forums: Site search: NA
NA
Customer service software: NA consulting: NA
E-commerce platform: Invobe, Web analytics:
Adobe Systems Inc.,
Ve Interactive
Compuware, CrazyEgg,
E-mail marketing: In-house
Google Inc., Webtrends
Fulfillment: Metapak
Web hosting: NetBenefit/
International Services: NA
Peer 1 Hosting
Live chat/click-to-call: LiveChat Web performance monitoring:
NA
Akamai Technologies Inc.,
Amazon Web Services
Big spending pays off
URL: US.Asos.com | Company name: Asos Plc Holdings
Date launched: 2000 | 2013 web-based sales: $1,280,118,080
2014 unique visitors (monthly average): 847,095 1
I
t’s been a big year for Asos, which grew its online sales 27% in
fiscal 2014, after spending 15.1 million pounds ($24.4 million) on
technology. The U.K. retailer launched Australian and U.S. versions
of its Android and iOS apps and plans to roll out localized apps in
France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia. It also launched a multilingual monthly fashion magazine for tablet readers and hired a team of
personal stylists who share personalized product recommendations
and other content on Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus and Pinterest.
Asos also focused on improving its site by adding new checkout and
order processing functions to its site. The retailer doesn’t plan to stop
its spending: It plans to spend 75 million pounds ($121.1 million) on
technology over the next two years.
1. Internet
Retailer
estimate
based on
unique
visitor
data from
Compete
Inc.,
measured
Jan-Sept.
2014.
2. Internet
Retailer
estimate
SITE PERFORMANCE 3
Availability: 99.87% | Response time: 4.455 seconds
3. See
page 10 to
understand
how these
measurements
were
taken.
Your next customer
could be anywhere.
Madrid
Stockholm
London
Seoul
Paris
Milan
Sao Paulo
Tokyo
Now, make it easier
for them to buy.
Consumers are six times more likely to make a
purchase from a website in their native language.*
Use technology to localize your website or mobile app,
more quickly and easily than you ever thought possible.
.
www.smartling.com
* “Speak to Global Customers In Their Own Language,” Harvard Business Review
Nothing lost in translation
N
o matter how comfortable non-English
speaking consumers may feel shopping on an
English-language web site, studies show they
feel more inclined to buy on web sites translated into
their native language.
Successfully translating a web site, however,
requires overcoming three main obstacles: extracting
all content from the web site, including landing pages
and search marketing campaigns, in an automated
fashion; returning translated content to its appropriate place without recoding web pages; and making
sure nothing is lost in translation when it comes to the
contextual nuances of the words used.
“Content for web site and mobile apps come from a
lot of disparate sources, such as content management
systems and text HTML files, so manually collecting
that data, getting it into the proper workflows to
ensure accurate translation, then returning the
translated copy to where it belongs without the help of
a developer is extremely time-consuming and can cost
more than the translation work,” says Jack Welde,
CEO of Smartling, a provider of localization software
for e-commerce web sites and mobile apps.
Smartling integrates its software across a
retailer’s entire platform to automatically gather
existing content, and new content as it is added. Once
gathered, content is translated using the business
rules and vendors set by the retailer. Terms and
conditions, for example, may be translated by certified
legal translators and manually reviewed by the legal
department before being posted on the web site.
On the other hand, retailers may want product
descriptions, which might change frequently and
contain a large volume of content, translated using a
machine translation tool and reviewed for accuracy
by human professionals. Retailers can choose to use
their own internal or external translators or use those
provided by Smartling.
When using Smartling, human translators and
reviewers can see how the translation will appear to
online shoppers, which helps avoid contextual errors.
“The aim is to provide retailers the tools to create an
atmosphere native to the customer’s language and
culture,” says Welde. “Consumers are six times more
likely to make a purchase on a web site that is translated in their native language.”
In addition to increasing conversions through
better translations, Smartling can help retailers
shorten the time it takes to translate their web site.
Camera manufacturer GoPro Inc., which sells directly
to consumers, launched six translated web sites in
less than three weeks through Smartling, which has
several clients on Internet Retailer’s Hot 100 list.
Adding culturally relevant images, such as showing
local models and scenes from the shopper’s country
and culture, can enhance the shopping experience.
The same is true of pricing products in the local
currency and offering local payment options. “The
more localized retailers make their web site, the less
friction there is in the sales process,” says Welde.
To help retailers measure the return on investment
from multilingual sites Smartling provides analytics
to display the traffic and conversion volumes companies obtain for each new language, as well as tracking
translation cost savings from repurposing similar
translations, along with other business metrics.
“We provide the agile infrastructure retailers
need to achieve the gold standard in global customer
experience,” Welde says.
About Smartling
Smartling’s cloud-based enterprise platform for
translation management helps companies reach a
global market by accelerating the translation and
localization of websites, web and mobile applications.
MASS MERCHANT
Old dogs, new tricks
December
2014
Internet
Retailer
T
he old saying goes that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
But for several of the mass merchants in this year’s Hot 100, it’s the learning of new tricks that’s
enabling them to thrive in an increasingly competitive online retail world. The nearly 90-year-old
British retail holding company Shop Direct Group, for example, invested $170,000 in an on-site lab that
lets employees observe consumers shopping its sites so they can understand what’s working or should
be improved. That allows the e-commerce team to show upper management how shoppers actually
interact with its several retail sites, says Jonathan Wall, e-commerce director.
Department store chain Macy’s Inc. meanwhile is positioning itself to serve shoppers wherever and
however they wish to shop. The retailer this year completed a chain-wide rollout of order online, pickup
in store, and for time-crunched consumers it is also testing same-day delivery in several markets.
At a time when web-only retailers are steadily luring more shoppers away from physical shops, it’s
essential for store-based retailers to learn, and to implement consumer-pleasing technologies. Chinabased Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd., freshly off its $25 billion initial public offering on the New York
Stock Exchange and looking to make inroads in markets outside China, this year unveiled 11 Main, its
first e-commerce site aimed at U.S. consumers. It seeks to provide an online home for independent
retailers who often struggle to compete with bigger merchants.
Meanwhile, e-retailing market leader Amazon.com Inc. expanded its same-day delivery service.
Amazon’s same-day delivery service in the United States covers about 17% of the population. In
November, Amazon began offering same-day delivery to consumers in Toronto and Vancouver, which
represent 9% of Canada’s population. Amazon is also developing its heavily hyped delivery drone
program. And while it remains to be seen whether delivery by drones will (ahem) fly with consumers,
it’s just one innovation in Amazon’s seemingly bottomless bag of new tricks.
Main Street stroll
URL: 11main.com | Company name: 11 Main Inc.
Date launched: 2014 | 2013 web-based sales: NA
2014 unique visitors (monthly average): NA
1. Internet
Retailer
estimate
based on
unique
visitor
data from
Compete
Inc.,
measured
Jan-Sept.
2014.
2. Internet
Retailer
estimate
3. See
page 10 to
understand
how these
measurements
were
taken.
1
1 Main is Chinese e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba’s first
consumer-oriented play in the United States. The e-marketplace,
which launched in June, gives visitors the feel of virtually strolling
down a small town Main Street. It hosts boutiques—many of which
do not sell online via their own sites—that sell unique goods, such as
a Swiss Army-like iPhone case that holds tiny pens and tools. Each
merchant gets its own web boutique to showcase its brand and its
mission. For example, a wooden eyeglasses shop plants a tree for each
purchase. 11 Main also visits boutiques to film videos about merchants.
“Well over 10,000 merchants requested invitations in the first few
months,” says Mike Effle, president and general manager. “Collectively
these shops offer more than 1 million products already.”
Affiliate marketing
management:
Commission Junction
Comparison engine feeds:
In-house
Amazon Web Services
Content management: In-house
management: Salesforce
In-house
Customer service software:
Zendesk
E-commerce platform: In-house
E-mail marketing:
Fulfillment: NA
SITE PERFORMANCE 3
Marketplace management:
In-house
Mobile commerce: In-house
Order management: In-house
Payment security: Stripe
Payment systems: Stripe
Personalization: In-house
Rich media: NA
Elite SEM
Security certification: Qualsys
Site design: NA
Site search: NA
consulting: In-house, Kenshoo
Web analytics:
Adobe Systems Inc.
Web hosting:
Amazon Web Services
Cloudwatch
Mobile commerce: NA
Payment systems: In-house,
Chase Paymentech Solutions
Personalization: NA
Rich media: In-house,
Adobe Systems Inc.,
Easy2 Technologies
In-house, iProspect, Kenshoo
Security certification: Symantec
Shipping carrier: DHL, FedEx,
UPS, USPS
management: In-house
Site search: In-house
In-house
consulting: Kenshoo, Shoutlet
In-house
Web analytics:
E-commerce platform:
Adobe Systems Inc., SAS
In-house,
Amazon Web Services
E-mail marketing: In-house
Fulfillment: In-house
Web hosting: In-house,
Amazon Web Services
Live chat/click-to-call:
Web
performance monitoring:
Oracle Corp.
Compuware
Affiliate marketing
management: In-house,
Commission Junction
In-house,
Limelight Networks
Nonstop movements
URL: Amazon.com | Company name: Amazon.com Inc.
Date launched: 1995 | 2013 web-based sales: $67,855,000,000 2
2014 unique visitors (monthly average): 126,732,222 1
T
he soda wars came to Amazon.com this year, with both PepsiCo
Inc. and Coca-Cola Co. launching new beverages exclusively
through the e-retailer. Having that type of clout was just part
of what made North America’s largest e-retailer hot this year.
Amazon worked with the U.S. Postal Service to deliver online grocery
orders in select cities, and in a separate project to deliver orders on
Sundays. It let consumers craft wish lists through Twitter. It added
more streaming music and a referral program to its Prime two-day
shipping program. It even launched a store for more than 300 products
created using a 3-D printer; after the shopper personalizes the item
and completes the purchase, the item is 3-D printed on-demand by a
manufacturing provider and shipped directly to the customer.
December
2014
Internet
Retailer
SITE PERFORMANCE
2015 HOT 100 Availability:
ISSUE
99.97% | Response time: 4.597 seconds
3
Affiliate marketing
here.
Startup fairy tale
URL: Flipkart.com | Company name: Flipkart.com
Date launched: 2007 | 2013 web-based sales: $300,000,000 1
2014 unique visitors (monthly average): 157,555 1
F
lipkart.com is a site designed for utility, not aesthetics, and that’s
OK. It is the largest e-commerce and marketplace site today in
India, where online sales grew 35% in 2013, according to yStats. In
July it raised $1 billion in new venture capital, the largest venture
funding round for an e-retailer in India on record—and that followed
$750 million in previous investment. At that time gross merchandise
value was on a run rate of $1 billion for 2014. During a “Billion Dollar
Day” sale it ran Oct. 6—about two weeks before the Hindu holiday of
Diwali—it generated $100 million in sales in 10 hours from 1.5 million
customers. The site, which suffered outages from the traffic, recorded
more than 1 billion hits, the founders said the next day, as they apologized to consumers for the performance problems.
Amazon Web Services
management: NA
NA
Customer service software: NA
E-mail marketing: SendGrid
Fulfillment: NA
LivePerson Inc.
Mobile commerce: NA
Payment systems: NA
Personalization: NA
Rich media: NA
Security certification:
Entrust Inc.
Site design: NA
Site search: NA
consulting: NA
Web analytics:
Adobe Systems Inc.,
comScore Inc., Google Inc.,
Vizury
Web hosting: NA
NA
1. Internet
Retailer
estimate
based on
unique
visitor
data from
Compete
Inc.,
measured
Jan-Sept.
2014.
2. Internet
Retailer
estimate
SITE PERFORMANCE 3
3. See
page 10 to
understand
how these
measurements
were
taken.
A web and mobile payment
service that truly spans the globe
W
ith the booming growth of cross-border
e-commerce, many e-retailers are growing
by expanding internationally. The ability to
accept payments in a way that works well for consumers
is critical for retailers seeking to sell overseas via the web.
In addition, consumers want to pay using credit and debit
card brands and local payment options they know and
trust. They also want to see prices in their local currency
and the checkout page translated to their native language.
For example, Brazilian-based Bikinner.com, an
online-only bikini retailer, needed a payment solution to
reach the worldwide market, including the United States
and Mexico. That’s when Onestic, the retailer’s global
international e-commerce and web site partner, turned to
Brink’s Checkout.
“In Brazil, we didn’t find other payment providers
offer an all-in-one international solution. Retailers in
Brazil usually have to set up multiple relationships with
acquiring banks, gateways and fraud prevention specialists, then open a legal entity in another country, and then
integrate each provider to their platform,” says Fernando
Laudino, CEO, Onestic Brazil. “It can take months to pull
all those relationships together. Having a single provider
means one connection and one relationship to manage,
which is faster and easier for the retailer.”
Prior to working with Brink’s, Bikinner.com had
delayed its plan to sell internationally by eight months
while searching for the right payments solution.
“Bikinner’s international expansion was held up by
how to accept online payments, but in a short period of
time we helped them solve it,” says Ian Kraskoff, global
product head for Brink’s Checkout, an international online
payment processor and part of the Brink’s Company. “We
walk merchants through every step of the process, and
they can be selling in one to two days. They don’t have any
commitment or fixed fee, paying only a simple, low cost, per
performance pricing. Plus, our platform is the only provider
that has 15 years of experience selling internationally.”
For Bikinner.com, one advantage of selling outside
its home country, according to Laudino, is that it is not
required to pay some state taxes on international sales,
which helps boosts margins. In addition, Brink’s further
bolsters Bikinner’s profits since Brink’s does not charge
merchants a currency conversion fee.
Brink’s enables merchants worldwide to sell to
consumers in 196 countries. It also supports 26 currencies
and 15 languages and offers a service and checkout (inline
and API) that are pre-integrated with more than 100 shopping carts, requiring no coding to integrate to a retailer’s
platform. “Offering the right mix of currencies and payment
methods is important for global retailers because when
shoppers don’t see their preferred way to pay, they are less
likely to convert,” says Kraskoff. “International shoppers
also want to see the amount of the transaction in their
preferred currency so they know the actual cost to them.”
Brink’s also provides a global fraud-detection solution,
which is a must for retailers that sell internationally as
fraud patterns vary from country to country. “Brink’s
offers a global fraud database, while most payment
providers can only address domestic fraud,” says Laudino.
With a variety of fraud-detection services, including
address and device verification, device piercing and
transaction velocity checks, Brink’s patented fraud-detection technology examines more than 300 variables to
authenticate a transaction.
“Brink’s is a trusted brand that has the experience
in global payments we need to help internationalize our
retailer clients,” Laudino says.
About Brink’s Checkout
Brink’s Checkout’s all-in-one solution is the fast and
easy way to accept international payments online.
Accept multiple currencies and languages with
exceptional international fraud prevention.
MOBILE COMMERCE
December
2014
Internet
Retailer
Hot mobile retailers
ride a wild mobile wave
2
014 was a big year for mobile commerce as retailers
surpassed one mobile milestone after another.
In February, research giant the Nielsen Co. reported that
U.S. adults now spend more time on the Internet on smartphones
than on desktop computers. A typical U.S. adult spends 34
hours and 17 minutes a month on the Internet on a smartphone
compared to 27 hours and 3 minutes on a computer, Nielsen says.
That translates to 1 hour and 8 minutes a day on smartphones
and 54 minutes a day on computers. And those mobile-wielding
consumers love shopping: 87% of owners of smartphones or
tablets use their mobile devices to shop, Nielsen says.
Smartphones trumped TV in 2014. In April, research and
marketing firm Millward Brown Digital reported the average
U.S. TV viewer spends 2 hours and 27 minutes a day watching
TV, while the average smartphone owner spends 2 hours and
31 minutes using her smartphone. The average tablet owner
spends 43 minutes a day using her tablet and the average laptop
owner spends 103 minutes a day with her computer.
Mobile then went on to conquer online video. In May, research
firm eMarketer Inc. found that U.S. consumers spend more time
watching video on mobile devices than on desktops and laptops.
On average, consumers spend 33 minutes a day watching video
on mobile devices and 22 minutes a day watching video on
desktops and laptops, eMarketer says. Of time spent with video
on mobile devices, 20 minutes a day is on tablets and 13 minutes
a day is on smartphones.
Internet Retailer in August published the Internet Retailer 2015
Mobile 500, which reported that mobile commerce sales will
jump 80% in 2014, sales via apps will make up 42% of mobile
sales in 2014 and that the number of retailers in the Mobile 500
with responsive design sites grew 164% year over year.
Then came the biggie: In September, m-commerce technology
provider Branding Brand, the leading vendor to retailers in the
Mobile 500, reported 50.7% of total traffic to the retail clients
it tracks stemmed from mobile devices, and web and mobile
measurement firm comScore Inc. reported 56% of the time spent
with online retailers occurs on a mobile device. Internet retailing
reached a mobile tipping point.
Also in September, Apple Inc. released two new, bigger
iPhones, iOS 8 (the latest version of its mobile operating
system) and, quite significantly, Apple Pay, a smartphone-based
payments system that has the potential to spark (at long last)
mobile payments in stores (and one-touch checkout in apps).
The 10 retailers in the Mobile Commerce section of this
year’s Hot 100 were well prepared for 2014 and demonstrated
innovation and ingenuity in the face of an increasingly mobile
customer base, deploying technologies and strategies that make
the most of mobile.
Mobile throughout
URL: eBay.com + apps | Company name: eBay Inc.
Entered m-commerce: 2007 4 | 2014 mobile commerce sales: $34,000,000,000 4
2014 mobile monthly visits: NA
T
he numbers are
staggering: 282 million
consumers worldwide
use eBay’s suite of
mobile apps; apps are
available in eight languages
and 190 countries; 59% of
buyers shop using multiple
screens; 7.4 million new
listings are added via mobile
weekly. And Internet Retailer
estimates that eBay will
rake in $34 billion in global
m-commerce sales this
year. “We’ve designed our product organization around the customer
journey with mobile embedded throughout—we’re past the days of
mobile being a separate department,” says R.J. Pittman, chief product
officer of eBay Marketplaces. And it’s on top of the future, being one of
the very few merchants with a smartwatch app. “Our commitment to
multiscreen commerce runs deep,” Pittman adds. “We believe there is
tremendous potential with new platforms like wearables.”
Payment systems: NA
Personalization: NA
Rich media: NA
Security certification: NA
Site design: NA
Site search: NA
consulting: NA
Technology provider (site):
In-house
Technology provider (app):
management: NA
In-house
Web analytics:
NA
Adobe Systems Inc.,
Customer service software: NA ChannelAdvisor, comScore Inc.,
Google Inc.,
Lotame Crowd Control,
E-mail marketing: SendGrid
MediaMath
Fulfillment: NA
Mobile commerce: NA
Web hosting: NA
NA
Affiliate marketing
management: NA
WordPress
December
2014
Internet
Retailer
SITE PERFORMANCE
2015 HOT 100 ISSUE
3
Affiliate marketing
Mobile commerce: In-house
here.
management: In-house,
Mobile fanatics
URL: Fanatics.com + apps | Company name: Fanatics Inc.
Entered m-commerce: 2012 4 | 2014 mobile commerce sales: $290,000,000 4
2014 mobile monthly visits: 15,692,600 4
S
ports apparel e-retailer
Fanatics has a team of
mobile fanatics that
in 2014 completed a
comprehensive upgrade of its
m-commerce offerings. The
merchant hired Groupon Inc.
m-commerce pro David Katz
and made him senior vice
president and general manager
of mobile. Katz opened up a
second mobile-focused office
in San Francisco (close to
Silicon Valley talent) to add
to the team the merchant
already had in place in Boulder, Colo. Katz and company updated the
retailer’s mobile sites, launched apps (5 stars in the app stores) and
drove the company to a mobile-first mind-set—especially now that
more than half of its traffic is mobile. “You have to be geographically
close to talent,” Katz says. “We pivoted the company to mobile and
we’re able to see ourselves now as a retail leader. All in 12 months.”
Payment systems: NA
Personalization: In-house
Rich media: In-house
Comparison engine feeds:
In-house
In-house, ChannelAdvisor
Security certification: McAfee,
Symantec
In-house
Site search: In-house
Customer reviews and forums: Social media marketing/
consulting: In-house
ForeSee
Technology
provider (site):
In-house
In-house
Technology provider (app):
E-commerce platform:
Pivotal Labs
In-house, WebLinc
Web
analytics: In-house,
E-mail marketing: ExactTarget
Adobe Systems Inc.,
Fulfillment: In-house
Google Inc., IBM
Web hosting: NA
Oracle Corp.
Marketplace management:
NA
AvantLink,
Commission Junction,
eBay Enterprise, ShareASale
SITE PERFORMANCE 3
Availability: NA | Response time: NA
1. Internet
Retailer
estimate
based on
unique
visitor
data from
Compete
Inc.,
measured
Jan-Sept.
2014.
2. Internet
Retailer
estimate
3. See
page 10 to
understand
how these
measurements
were
taken.
4. Internet
Retailer
2015
Mobile
500

preview edition - Internet Retailer

Transcription

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