Retail Ecommerce
The increasing need for UK retailers to adopt retail ecommerce
Retail Ecommerce has taken off in a big way over the past couple of years, with more and more retailers trading online. Yearly reports from the Office of National Statistics show that between 2008 and 2009 there was a 24.9% increase in non-financial institution sales via ecommerce websites, giving in 2009 just in the UK a total sale value of £408.3bn.
The national take-up of retail ecommerce is now such that nearly 15% of all UK businesses actively trade online, with over 75% of UK businesses having some sort of online prescence. This level of adoption by UK retailers has even more impact when compared to just 5 years ago, when only 65% of businesses had any sort of online prescence.
Retail ecommerce vs 'bricks and mortar' retailing
Traditionally, retailers in the UK depended heavily on the high street 'bricks and mortar' store. Footfall was controlled and heavily driven by traditional advertising and marketing methods such as local and national advertising (utilising a variety of mediums such as radio, tv, magazine and newspaper), flyering, 'word of mouth' and of course reputation built up over many years.
With the emergence of the Internet, suddenly a whole new channel of advertising became available and as the Internet continues to grow and evolve, this initial online channel has split into many different sub-channels. Now there are multiple ways a retailer can benefit from trading online, utilising ecommerce through both their own retail ecommerce website and through third party websites.
Whilst the appeal of traditional 'bricks and mortar' stores for consumers shows no sign of abating, the financial implications and overheads associated with trading on the high street show that in order to continue profitable trading, other trading channels are useful and may even be essential. The use of retail ecommerce websites for traditional retailers in most sectors is becoming more of a 'must do' rather than a 'would like' strategy as the pace of online trading accelerates.
Utilising online resources and trading channels such as retail ecommerce websites and auction sites gives the traditional retailer the opportunity to sell more, sell quicker and cut down considerably on advertising costs. Some online channels (such as Ebay, Google Products and Amazon) give a retailer an immediate chance to 'clinch a sale' from a global marketplace, something that smaller local retailers traditionally never got the chance to do in the past.
Exploring retail ecommerce channels
As mentioned, retail ecommerce channels are changing and evolving constantly, with new channels coming online and others declining. Channels which have shown to be resilient and continue to grow include:
- Ebay
- Started in 1995, Ebay has now grown to the trading giant we know today. Essentially an auction site, where highest bidder wins, Ebay has evolved to offer fixed-price auctions ('Buy It Now') and even fixed price 'dealer listings' for automotive and other products
Ebay offers an easy, resilient and fast way for traditional retailers to utilise retail ecommerce, complementing and adding to their other online retail efforts.
- Amazon
- Amazon was also launched in 1995 and has been trading continuously ever since. Started as an online bookstore, Amazon soon branched out into CD's, games and DVD's, but has since expanded to offering clothing, furniture, food (so far only in the USA) and toys amongst other things. The Amazon marketplace offers the facility for Amazon members to easily list products for sale using ISBN numbers and barcode numbers for books and barcode numbers for many other items, making selling on Amazon quick and easy (as product information is already stored on Amazon's systems).
- Google Products
- Google products is a retail ecommerce website offering to sell products from any retail ecommerce website. Offering a direct feed into the Google Products system by means of a formatted text file, Google Products is another selling channel to complement any online retailers own ecommerce website.
As Google Products is free to use and these products (in Google Products format) appear on first page of results in Google, this is a 'must do' for any online retailer and infact many online retailers rely heavily on this free service from Google.
- Retail Ecommerce websites
- Retail Ecommerce websites present a storefront online which may mirror the storefront of the traditional 'bricks and mortar' high street store. The difference with the online retail ecommerce website store is that the reach of that store is global, offering retailers the opportunity to sell far outside of the normal marketplace.
Retail ecommerce websites such as those produced by Intelligent Retail give the retailer the opportunity to present a categorised listing of products for sale, meaning that quick and easy purchasing decisions can be made by consumers. As every product is offered on the ecommerce website with multiple pictures and a good descriptive text, the consumer can get a good idea of what can be purchased without lengthy conversations with the shop owner.
As mentioned before, a good retail ecommerce website can not only present a wide range of products for sale to a worldwide audience, the data contained in the website (for products) can feed into other online channels such as Google Products to further widen the selling opportunities.
Multichannel/Cross Channel retail ecommerce
For quite a few years now (given the explosion of online selling opportunities) the buzz-word has been multichannel (or more recently cross- channel) selling.
Multichannel selling means (not surprisingly) selling via a variety of channels, both offline (such as the shop till) and online (such as a retail ecommerce website). Multichannel retail is now becoming more and more popular - so much so that most retailers in the UK see a real need to utilise this type of integrated technology.
Utilising many different selling channels does however present problems when using traditional EPOS / stock control systems as unless the system being used is a true multichannel system, overselling and stock control, not to mention time needed to populate each channel with products for sale becomes a huge load on time for already time-poor retailers. Using a well designed multichannel system designed from the ground up to trade via many different channels both offline and online negates all of these problems, meaning that selling becomes easy, time load is drastically reduced and sales are increased.
The future of retail ecommerce
The ongoing march of retail ecommerce shows no signs of slowing down - if anything the uptake and usage of online channels is accelerating, with some retailers moving to online stores only. We can all expect more and more online sales in the future as online shopping via retail ecommerce channels becomes even easier, with moves into traditionally 'bricks and mortar' only lines like food now being strongly adopted by retailers.
For the smaller retailers in most selling sectors, it's now beyond the time where trading online is a necessity - retail ecommerce for these smaller retailers is now an essential revenue stream and not one which can any longer be ignored.