Five e-commerce companies tell E-Business Review how they overcame
initial teething problems
Simon Lubin
Marketing director and founder of Quip!
Following the launch of Quip!, an internet based telephony
company, we experienced phenomenal growth, reaching over 80,000
customers in less than six months. Each day we were receiving
between 1,200 and 1,600 emails from prospective customers, with a
promise to respond to all enquiries within 24 hours. The volume of
mail meant that additional functionality was needed.
Quip!'s objectives were to implement the system in less than
four weeks in order to substantially reduce email volumes. The
solution had to be externally hosted to avoid the need for a system
and database administration resource. We implemented Zerotouch and
RightNow Technologies. The system, which is fully integrated,
comprises of web self-service, email management and live chat.
After one month, the number of emails had been reduced by 33%
whilst the volume of sales had significantly increased. The
decision to implement this technology was crucial as we had just
embarked on an expensive marketing drive to secure new
customers.
Branding
Lawrence Lawson
Commercial director of Teletext
One of the principle problems facing e-commerce directors in
established companies within the B2C sector, is the potential brand
erosion that can occur as new services and technologies are rolled
out. A classic example was the launch of Teletext football scores
service on SMS. At present 15 million people, every week, look at
football scores on their analogue TV's. They use the service
because they trust it to be accurate, so naturally expect the same
trusted relationship with the SMS service.
Unfortunately, problems can occur when you are reliant on other
people's delivery platform. Initially the football service
experienced some problems, with many goal updates not being
delivered to users phones until after the game. The situation was
unfortunate as the delivery mechanism was out of our hands, and it
left us with a serious dilemma. Do we run with services that are
not running to maximum potential and suffer brand erosion, or do we
not run and leave ourselves open to the accusation of not being a
cutting edge service?
By forging stronger third party relationships the problems were
resolvable. The pilot service has now become a fully live service,
highlighting the continued need to work hard towards excellent
third party relationships.
Order Delivery
Mark Fane
Co-founder of crocus.co.uk
The initial market research that we undertook showed that a
number of customers were worried about buying garden plants over
the internet. Their concerns were focused on the quality of the
plants and, in particular, how they would be delivered.
We were also concerned that relying on third parties to deliver
our goods would water down the brand impact and reduce customer
loyalty.
Our solution was to turn this significant liability into a
massive asset. We established a delivery infrastructure of trained
gardeners in Crocus vans around the country. It allows us to
deliver the brand right to the front door of the customer. It also
allows us to sell other services that no other company can, such as
a planting service and a maintenance service.
As a result, customer satisfaction is very high, repeat ordering
is strong and product returns very low.
Site Design
Jason Gleave
Chairman of FlyOnTheWall.com
As a webcam and streaming video Internet Portal, it was
important that the site design for FlyOnTheWall.com reflected its dynamic and
leading-edge content. However, at launch, despite all the
investment that was put into sourcing content and enabling its
availability, it was only too apparent that the design was
seriously undermining the brand.
Users were failing to discover areas of the site and its
functionality - all too often those of us closest to this industry
assume a level of knowledge that most Internet users just don't
possess. As our marketing partner, Carlson Marketing Group
developed three design options all of which were a marked
improvement from the originals. But having already gone through two
site re-designs in its short life span, we needed reassurance that
the option chosen would have longevity.
CMG enlisted Incite Consulting who put the designs through focus
research groups and also solved many of the navigation issues that
FlyOnTheWall.com had been unable to resolve.
We have learnt an important lesson - investing in design and
usability research before launching is money well spent.
Marketing
Charlotte Johnston
The Gentleman's Shop
We originally developed www.gentlemans-shop.co.uk as an advert for our
traditional shop in Hungerford by putting the url on all our
stationary.
At the start we submitted the site to search engines, first by
ourselves and then using a professional outfit. However, because
the software we use, Actinic Catalog, is search engine friendly,
all our catalogue pages get indexed and rank in excellent positions
on searches.
At the moment all the shopping sites we have links from are on a
commission only basis and produce little, if any, sales. We have an
affiliate programme that has also been a waste of money as the
quality of our affiliates is particularly poor. Later this year we
will look at changing this programme and will look more closely
into the programme provider. Hopefully, then we can appear on some
more prominent sites, and not chancers' homepages.