The eCommerce job site to find that right candidate.

A new eCommerce job site has launched that specialises only in jobs for eCommerce. If you are a retailer, e-tailers, Solution Integrator or eCommerce software firm then they are currently offering 20 free job posting. As other sites are currently charging £100+ per job posting, posting jobs on eCommerce-jobs.co.uk will save you £2000.

Making money from last seaon's stock

Last season’s stock has always been a sticking point for retailers, but there are ways to maximise profit in this area.

Retailers like TK Max and MandM turn over large revenue from other brands’ last season stock. But if you are a brand or manufacturer, what can you do to maximise your revenue?

The traditional route of having end of season sales is one method that has worked very well for bricks and mortar retailers. Yet while this works for stores, it does not translate well for eCommerce. For eCommerce, there are a number of problems that need to be overcome to make last season’s stock sales effective.
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Traditional eCommerce shoppers will typically be looking for a specific product; they will have arrived at the site by some marketing mechanism such as search engine, affiliate and email campaigns. It is likely that the product is not in clearance, and the way to attract the shopper to the clearance section is with merchandising assets. Using merchandising assets to promote a clearance sale is never the best use of limited space on an eCommerce site, when you want to be promoting items that will provide you with the highest margin. Of course, a merchant could use product recommendations (cross sells, up sells, etc) to promote the clearance, yet the greatest return would never be achieved by using this with clearance items.

The second problem is that all products on a traditional eCommerce site are subject to marketing costs, specifically from affiliates. What might have started out as a healthy margin on a clearance item will quickly get reduced when all costs are taken into account.

The third problem is that if clearance items are put on at the end of each season, the eCommerce platform will have to handle the spike in traffic. Shoppers often wait until the clearance sale before they purchase an item, which happens in both eCommerce and bricks and mortar stores. If the items are put on regularly (weekly or monthly) then the impact of these items can be lost in the normal look of the site, and shoppers may ignore the clearance section.

There is nothing stopping a retailer/manufacturer offloading their last season stock to another retailer who specialises in this area, but the returns made from this are not great. And worse still, the retailer/manufacturer will not know who is purchasing their product, which is very valuable data.

So what other options are there? Well, one that I am most passionate about is online Private Sales, also known as Flash Sales. Private Sales eCommerce sites allow a retailer or manufacturer to offer last season’s stock to an exclusive club of shoppers. There is virtually no marketing cost, as members of the Private Sales site promote the site virally and get rewarded when they do! Each item of clearance is grouped in an Event and each Event has a start and end time; this not only encourages shoppers to participate in the Event on the website, but also encourages imhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifpulse purchasing, which is normally hard to achieve on traditional eCommerce sites. Typically, Private Sales sites see a conversion rate of 10%. The margins achieved from Private Sales sites will be more than a traditional eCommerce site offering clearance items as Private Sales sites do not promote products on affiliate sites or price comparison sites. Lastly, and most importantly, Private Sales eCommerce sites are designed to handle very large peaks of traffic, as each Event can have over one million shoppers attending.

If you are interested in seeing retailers who are using Private Sales for clearance and latest fashion items effectively, then look at online only fashion retailer/manufacturer www.medwinds.com

To learn more visit: inventCommerce

Expanding internationally with eCommerce

Whether you have customers, fans or members, the international market can be very lucrative; but dealing with an International eCommerce channel can be very challenging for some retailers. So what are the right steps to global reach eCommerce?

If you have an eCommerce site that is doing well with your local market you may have looked or have already had interest further afield. The International market can propel your company and dramatically increase your revenue. You may have something that is not available elsewhere and there could be a large international appetite for your products or services. But you may be asking “What is the best way to expand my eCommerce channel internationally and what are the costs?”

When a retailer tries to expand internationally they sometimes run into these common problems: language, currency, payment, delivery, marketing, tax and call centre. This may seem a lot and may put you off international expansion, however the end reward is worth a little investment. And here are common areas that I normally recommend that retailers investigate:

1. Territory expansion: First thing is to understand and plan is which territories you are going to offer to your international eCommerce offering. The first territory that you expand into will be the most important as this will be your basis for expanding into other territories. The first choice should be based on your decision over language, carriers, marketing, tax and other factors. One of the common choices for UK retailers is to expand into Europe; because of it closeness and single currency it is an easy option. However one problem with Europe is that revenue rewards may not be as great as expanding into China and the number of languages that need to be supported will mean hiring either a multi-lingual merchandiser or using a 3rd party to perform all the translations.

2. Language: As I mentioned previously language can be huge barrier to International expansion, it requires merchandisers and marketers to be fluent in the language. 3rd party translators could be used be this can be expensive. Even though online translators are an easy and cheap option they can create mistakes which may insult or put off buyers. One of the easy options is to go for territories that already speak the same language.

3. Tax: Within the EU this does not change, so the price including VAT in the UK is all that needs to be paid. However if you are shipping goods outside the UK then VAT does not need to be charged, so you can offer products to shoppers outside the EU a cheaper priced product then EU customers get. However to adjust the price you need to obtain where the shopper is to be able to change the price. Another thing to bear in mind for taxes is that some countries may charge an import tax to product.

4. Delivery: Just as a shopper in the UK expects a quick and multiple of delivery options so does an international shopper. So selecting a carrier that allows different delivery options is very important. Of course price point will be a key factor as the international shopper will not want to pay over the odds for delivery, yet as a retailer you will need to make a profit from the delivery charge. The carrier will also need to handle the product returns and provide tracking on all international parcels.

5. Currency/Payment: To engage with international shoppers the price of products needs to be in their local currency. As mentioned earlier, one of the easiest currencies to choose would be the Euro, as this covers a lot of countries across Europe. One of the challenges with currencies is figuring out the best way to price each product. This could be a fixed amount that you monitor each month, or be based in real time on the currency markets.
Payments can be very critical for conversion of international shoppers and being able to accept their payment method is essential. This would be easy if every country used the same payment methods of credit and debt card but unfortunately they don’t, so selection of a good payment gateway that accepts the majority of payment methods is essential.

6. Marketing: When entering into new international territory marketing is essential to ensure that you can make a success of this market. Understanding the best approach will either mean doing lots of research or hiring an expert for that territory. Of course using free SEM techniques like speaking to local bloggers will save you a lot of money.

7. Call Centre: It is very easy to forget that shoppers will have difficulties and they will to call up to sort out these difficulties, so having call centre staff that can speak the local language will cut the call time down and also keep the international customer happy. It is possible to use a Live Chat system with in-built translation to handle this type of inbound enquires but this may lead to translation issues.

Expanding internationally can be very rewarding and it is well worth every retailer exploring all options of the best way to approach this. As always the customer should come first and the experience that they receive should be engaging and responsive to encourage them to return time and time again.

If you need help with international expansion then we have experienced experts and systems to help a retailer at different stages of international expansion. To find out more visit: InventCommerce

Medwinds creates a ground swell with the UK press

I had a great day yesterday helping Medwinds promote their new brand, as an online only retailer, to the UK press. There was a great interest from the press in the way that Medwinds have high quality goods and at a price point that other exclusive and fashionable brands cannot achieve.


It was also a great opportunity for me to share how Optaros with the OCentric product is providing Medwinds with an On-Demand scalable platform that can be used across multiple countries and currencies.

The press were impressed with the way that the OCentric platform easily allowed Medwinds to create a community and use this community to understand their customer needs.

The first of these articles were published yesterday on www.InternetRetailling.net

Medwinds clothing, footware and accessories are for both men and women using high quality materials, but at a price point under £80.


The site will launch on 14th Feb in Spain and the UK and with further countries being included later this year.

Using Community to drive revenue on a Retail eCommerce site

I'm running a short webinar this Tuesday 8th Feb at 2pm on how to use Community with eCommerce. To sign up use the following link: http://bit.ly/hkCLZQ

Lush have shutdown their eCommerce site.

Lush.co.uk eCommerce site has been shutdown due to hackers attempting to gain access.
Lush have made the correct decision in shuting down their website so that they can find out how hacker have managed to access the site, even though the loss of revenue will be affecting their bottom line.

What this shows other Retailers is that they need to constantly test for security issues and hack attempts on their eCommerce sites. I know of very few retailers who have employees who's sole role is to validate security on their eCommerce site. If you have your eCommerce solution run by a partner then you should get your partner to validate your website for security problems.

Recommendation of things to do today:
1. Review all software and check for any security updates.
2. Check log files for hackers attempting to access your site.
3. Check all admin/merchant accounts( delete old employees and unused accounts) and validate all passwords are being changed on a regular bases.

Social and Community site for Surrey Mummy's.

For the past 6 months I have been helping my wife launch a social and community site for mothers (and fathers) in Surrey. SurreyMummy aims to offer parents the ability to see what is going and what activities they can do with their children in and around Surrey.
Parents can also chat about their experiences and problems as well as rate and review activities in Surrey.

This site is currently is the Pre-Launch phase and will be officially launched shortly.

It is great to use my community knowledge, learnt from retail eCommerce, and apply this to a non-retail site.