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As someone who relies on the health of the online retail market to pay his rent every month, I’m probably not the first person you’d expect to welcome a forecasted slowdown in the annual growth in online sales. However, Verdict have recently announced that this growth is currently in the neighbourhood of 30% which, whilst still robust, ...

A recent blog entry by my colleague Richard got me a bit worked up recently, and as usual I'm keen to add my two cents. His experience with Empire Direct is a perfect example of a multiple channel business not working as a genuinely integrated multichannel retailer, something that’s unfortunately all too common. Whilst the business ...

Reading through the blogs on this site, you'll notice a good few mentions of UCD - User Centred Design - as a design practice that we're pretty hot on. Although my colleagues on the Interactive Media teams are much more qualified than I am to go into detail about it, core to the technique is ensuring that the users and their needs are clearly ...

It's heartening, in this day and age, to see numerous top-flight retailers making significant investment, both in terms of cash and resource, in their online business. Recalling conversations which took place in the early days of this century, when a website was often seen as little more than an indulgence on the part of the marketing ...

When a retailer's business hits the rocks, everyone and his dog has an opinion. It's a rare industry whose dirty laundry is so publicly aired as that of high street retail. The announcement earlier this month that Ethel Austin was to go into administration, with the attendant loss of 181 head office jobs and 33 store closures, provoked a fair bit ...

Now, at the risk of sounding terminally uncool, I've got to kick this blog off with a bit of down-to-earth reality checking. There's a huge buzz at the moment across the new media and technology industries about the unbounded possibilities afforded to retailers and consumers by the wonder of Web 2.0, and whilst there are indeed numerous ways ...

Interesting snippet from Forrester European research in 2006 suggests that of the people who aren't actually shopping online, the majority avoid ecommerce for two major reasons: They want to be able to see what they're buying and they're worried about financial security. For retailers and ecommerce site designers I'd ...

Post Summary: Part 3 of the High Street 2.0 discussion, outlining ideas that retailers could consider if they want to create the next generation high street shopping experience where their consumers can enjoy the benefits of online shopping instore, and which will allow them to compete against online bargains and specialist pure-plays. In my ...

Post Summary: An outline of what I mean by the High Street 2.0, which is essentially the idea of real world high street stores providing a richer customer experience by focussing on the customer, and enabling seamless integration and cross-over with the benefits of shopping both offline and online. In my last post on The High Street 2.0 (Part 1), ...

Post Summary: Part 1 of a discussion around the next generation ''High Street 2.0'' concept, and the drivers that are likely to lead us there. In my last post on The Virtual High Street, I mentioned that depending on what I'm shopping for, like many users I sometimes identify the product offline and then look for a bargain online, but as that ...