In today’s Internet Retailing newsletter we have the latest updates on Christmas trading not only from retailers including Debenhams, boohoo.com and House of Fraser but also from the British Retail Consortium. While some retailers have more upbeat results to share, the overall picture that is steadily emerging seems to be one of strong online sales growth – that is not compensating for slow, or even falling, in-store sales.
The way we shop continues to change, with almost 20% of retail sales now taking place online but with services such as click and collect gaining both in popularity and use. That makes it still more important that in-store services must live up to the online promise: research that we cover today suggests that they are as yet falling short of customer expectations. But at a time when store sales are flat or falling, getting the online services that bring shoppers into the high street right is key to expanding the business across its sales channels.
Elsewhere today we report on the first Internet Retailing Expo to take place outside Europe, in Indonesia, while today’s guest comment comes from John Coulston of Vend, who considers the six big mistakes that retailers must avoid when it comes to dealing with customer data.
Our webinars
Our next webinar is on January 19, when Grant Coleman of Zmags and Ketan Shah of Lyons Consulting Group will join us for a session on creating shoppable content. The two will discuss how retailers can best approach creating an immersive and personalised customer experience that keeps shoppers’ attention. How to create the shoppable experience that customers crave is at 3pm on January 19. Find out more and register for the free event here.
Click to visit the Internet Retailing webinars page to catch up on any that you may have missed, while you can also view them on our IRTV channel.
Event presentations and interviews
In today’s newsletter we’re featuring an interview with Christine Bardwell of Oracle at Internet Retailing Conference 2015. You can also catch up with presentations and other interviews from IRC 2015 on the event website now.