Online department store Bol has put value and convenient, sustainable fulfilment at the heart of its ecommerce offering, according to the RetailX Europe Top1000 360° report.
Bol, ranked Top50 in the Europe Top1000 2024, flags up discounts and ‘top promotions’ on its landing page, while ‘speed of delivery’ is a navigational filter on its product page, allowing shoppers to find those items that can be delivered as quickly as next-day.
Bol opened on 30 March 1999 as an online bookshop, Bertelsmann OnLine (BOL), with a range of 140,000 books. It started selling other products, such as entertainment, electricals and toys, to shoppers in the Netherlands in 2004.
Today, it serves 13.6mn active customers in the Netherlands and Belgium. As of 31 March 2024, it offers a range of 38mn products and 50k sellers who sell through the Bol platform. The Utrecht-based pure-play now employs 2,900 people and sells categories including beauty, homewares, DIY and fashion.
Now owned by Dutch-Belgian multinational retailer Ahold Delhaize and led by chief executive Margaret Versteden-van Duijn, Bol won B Corp status in 2023. Its fulfilment centre runs on 100% green electricity that’s generated by its own solar panels and wind turbines.
In 2022, it was the first ecommerce company in the Netherlands and Belgium to achieve the Climate Neutral standard. Bol labels products as ‘sustainable choices’ and is exploring how it can guide customers to make more sustainable choices.
At the same, Boukje Taphoorn, chief marketing and sustainability officer at Bol, said: “As one of the largest webshops in the Netherlands and Belgium, we believe it is important to take responsibility by making more sustainable choices and facilitating more sustainable options for everyone in the chain. That doesn’t stop at the environment, by the way. We also want to do so in terms of corporate culture, transparency and social impact.”
On its landing page, Bol flags up delivery options, including same-day, evening or weekend delivery. It offers free delivery when shoppers spend at least €20, while 30-day returns are free. Shoppers can opt to join its Select loyalty club for €11.99 a year for services including home pickup of returned items and free same-day, evening and Sunday delivery when shoppers order before midday, regardless of order size or cost.
It’s easy to find a product on Bol, with dropdown search suggestions and navigational filters including size, number of star ratings, offers and delivery times. On the product page, shoppers can view a range of images, see when an item would be delivered, and see what ‘others also viewed’, including both similar, complementary and more expensive items.
Our first RetailX Europe Top1000 360° report brings together two strands of RetailX research. The first is the Top1000, now in its ninth year of ranking ecommerce and multichannel retailers by performance. The second is the more recent 360° reports, which explore markets in the round, from the economic context for retail to retailer performance and how shoppers buy, or would like to buy.
The Bol profile is one of 11 in the report, with Argos, Asics, Carrefour, Decathlon, Douglas, H&M, Hugo Boss, Ikea, Sainsbury’s and Zalando also profiled.
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