The sun shone on most of the UK for yesterday’s bank holiday, and plenty of retailers will be taking stock today of their sales over the long weekend, but from here it will be Christmas on the agenda for many. That’s particularly true in the world of pure ecommerce, where cold weather, busy shops and a great experience online is pushing ever more customers to their mobile devices and laptops for their festive purchases.
We’ve a slightly frivolous piece on the Christmas dynamic in today’s newsletter, with the first sightings of Christmas displays in the supermarkets, but it’s still an important part of the retail landscape, of course.
These days, though, there are so many other dynamics to talk about too, and our snapshot of activity in multichannel retail over the past few days illustrates the point. Our collection of stories includes plans for a new online-food depot for Tesco, a security upgrade for Ryanair’s online payments, Boohoo’s potential plans to list and Rakuten’s investment in a US tech startup that analysises customer purchases by scanning email inboxes in order to make useful recommendations. Not much thematic overlap there, but all important developments nonetheless.
Webinars
Alongside the news we have some upcoming dates in our series of free-to-attend webinars to let you know about.
On Thursday September 5, Nuance focuses on customer service in, Creating satisfied customers – meet Nina Web, the new face of online customer experience. Tim Atkinson, business development director at Nuance, is the speaker for this event, to be held at 11am. He’ll be showing how Nuance’s intelligent virtual assistant can talk to, serve and listen to customers around the clock, and demonstrating how it works for existing customers including Coca Cola and Michelin. Click here for more information and to register.
And on Wednesday September 11, Silverpop explains how personalised multichannel experiences will ensure your customers love you to death in Behavioural marketing and how to get your customers to love you. The event takes place at 3pm – register and find out more by clicking here.
More information about our webinar programme is available here.
Events
The 8th Internet Retailing Conference will be held on October 16 in London, when keynote speakers will include Sir Stuart Rose, chairman of Ocado and Dressipi, and Laura Wade-Geary, executive director, multichannel ecommerce, Marks & Spencer. For more details, visit
www.internetretailingconference.com.
Today’s stories
Tesco secures planning for another online food depot
Boohoo ‘exploring stockmarket listing’
Gap’s ecommerce growth outpaces rising store sales
Ryanair beefs up payments security
Rakuten leads funding round in tech startup Slice
Christmas chocolates ahoy! The retail countdown begins
