Search
Close this search box.

From the editor-in-chief – November 2017

Welcome to our 2017 snapshot of the customer experience, in which we aim to understand the service that retailers are currently giving their customers and, by doing so, to understand how retailers of all sizes can improve their offerings to compete with the leaders in the field.

In this IRUK Top500 The Customer Performance Dimension Report, InternetRetailing researchers run the measure over the shopper’s experience of a brand – from the speed at which a desktop or mobile website loads, to the time taken to respond to an email or social media message, to the ease with which customers can find products, and find out about products, and with which, if necessary, customers can return unwanted orders. Through this research, we aim to understand what puts leading retailers ahead of the wider Top500 and what are the most strategic steps that traders should take to improve performance. We look in detail at the practical measures that leading retailers use to turbocharge their performance in this Dimension through our 12 practical approaches feature, as well as a series of case studies and interviews with retailers Evans Cycles , Currys PC World and Rakuten Europe .

Through this unique combination of research and practical examples we aim, as with all of the IRUK Top500 series, to understand and share best practice in ecommerce and multichannel retailing. As we continue to map the customer experience over time, we’re certain we’ll see it improve, so that the examples we’re reporting on today soon become not best practice, but common practice – and simply what shoppers expect.

This report is the last in our 2017 series of IRUK Top500 reports. As with the others, we’ve benefited in this report from the generosity of our Knowledge Partners in making available data and resources to help us understand the customer experience still further. Our thanks go to both Ghostery and Hitwise for their contributions to this report. Indeed, we are grateful to all the Knowledge Partners that have worked with us over the last year, as we’ve explored modern commerce through the Dimensions of Strategy & Innovation, Merchandising, Mobile & Crosschannel, Operations & Logistics and Brand Engagement as well as this final focus on The Customer.

From this report, we move on to research all of these Dimensions for the 2018 IRUK Top500 report. As always, we’re keen to hear from retailers, industry experts and those who may have datasets that can help us to report the ongoing development of retailing and how it is changing the way we both shop and sell.

THE IRUK TOP500 DIMENSION REPORTS SERIES

Don’t forget that this The Customer Dimension Report forms part of our wider series analysing the performance of UK retailers.

Reports each year that focus on:

• Strategy & Innovation

• Operations & Logistics

• Brand Engagement

• Mobile & Cross-channel

• Merchandising

Once registered, we will also send you the latest Dimension Reports as they are published, allowing you to keep abreast of the latest developments in the industry.

Read More

Register for Newsletter

Group 4 Copy 3Created with Sketch.

Receive 3 newsletters per week

Group 3Created with Sketch.

Gain access to all Top500 research

Group 4Created with Sketch.

Personalise your experience on IR.net