Retail-Blog

During a recent Webcast focused on improving conversion rates in online retail, Rob Garf, Vice President, Retail Strategies for AMR Research stated that 73% of retailers recently surveyed by AMR Research say that improving online conversion rates is their top priority this year. Online conversion occurs when a website visitor becomes a buyer. A conversion rate of 5% means that 5% of the new visitors to the site have searched the site, found the item or items they want and have made a purchase. Even small changes in conversion rate translate into big revenue dollars. For example, if a site doing $20 million in revenue increases its conversion rate from 3% to 4%, revenue would increase by almost $7 million.

AMR Research also identified the top customer acquisition method during its recent survey. The Top 5 customer acquisition methods are:

1. Direct Mail/Catalogs
2. E-Mail Marketing
3. Search Engines like Google and Yahoo
4. Affiliate Marketing
5. Brick and Mortar Stores and store displays

Also interesting was the fact that retailers surveyed said that traditional advertising such as print and TV advertising has the lowest effectiveness in gaining new customers and actually decreased in effectiveness since 2001 as an acquisition method.

Like so many retailers these days, Foot Locker has seen a substantial growth in the eCommerce channel. In 2006, the retailer posted web sales of $270 million, an increase of 11.1% from web sales of $243 million in 2005. The web is now the main direct sales channel for Foot Locker Inc. jogging far ahead of catalog sales.

Internet sales were only 5% of total sales in 2006, but 71% of total direct sales of $380 million. Some of the gains in Internet sales were offset by the decrease in catalog sales by 20.3% to $110 million in 2006 from $138 million in 2005. According to the company’s annual report, customers are browsing and finding products in the catalogs and then making purchases on the Internet. This seems to be a major trend for many leading retail catalog companies.

According to Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, Google accounted for 64 percent of all US searches for the four weeks ending March 31, 2007. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 22, 9 and 3 percent respectively. The remaining 48 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 5 percent of U.S. searches.

Redcats is a subsidiary of PPR, a nearly €18 billion corporation headquartered in France. Besides Redcats brands that include Woman Within /Lane Bryant, and Jessica London, PPR’s collection of well-known brands includes international retailers such as Printemps, Gucci, YvesSaintLaurent, and Stell/McCartney. Recently, Redcats participated in a global eCommerce Webcast for online retailers.

Redcats brands are ranked number 3 worldwide in home shopping and the 19th largest retail cataloger just behind JC Penney and Sears. Redcats statistics are impressive with sales of €4.4 billion in 26 countries, 60+ e-commerce websites, 30 catalogs, 100+ stores and 38 million active customers. According to Redcats USA, they have been able to advance their lead as an agile competitor in online and catalog-based retailing leveraging site search, navigation and merchandising technology .

Martec International's report called IT in Retail 2007 just came out with detailed systems profiles for the leading 100 UK retailers. The report is build on five years of data to show trends in the market.

A brochure or a sample company systems profile can be downloaded at:
http://www.martec-international.com/technology_vendors/tv09_it_in_retail.htm