One last blog post before I head off for Christmas and overdose on mince pies and mulled wine. The national media aren’t nearly as interested in retail this Christmas as they were last year, are they? They worked themselves up into a frenzy over the collapse of Borders, but other than that it’s been a bit of a damp squib.

Ah well, whilst I kind of miss all the ‘High Street will be a barren wasteland in 2009′ scaremongering, the lack of interest proves one thing. Namely that by and large, online and on the High Street, the retail sector is ticking along nicely this festive season. And there’s also good news courtesy of the IMRG, which predicts that an estimated 4.3 million shoppers will go online on Christmas Day and spend £120 million. This compares with £102 million spent online on Christmas Day 2008

Merry Christmas!

In 80s teen classic, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the titular hero observes: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

It’s a quote that came to mind when someone recently pointed out the following: 2009 has seen the 130th anniversary of the cash register, the 60th anniversary of the barcode and 30 years of online shopping. Plus notable landmarks for a number of retailers including Marks and Spencer, which celebrated its 125th anniversary year, and Woolies’ first year as an online-only operation.

The retail technology sector moves at a breakneck pace and there is much to admire in that. But, these being the dying days of 2009, it’s as good a time as any to stop for a minute and consider past achievements and, most importantly, how much progress has been made in recent years. Amazon only recorded its first full year in profit in 2003-4. Today, an online presence is considered vital to compete in a tough market. Elsewhere, the Nectar card launched just seven years ago but now loyalty schemes are everywhere, whilst self-service kiosks and mobile PoS have moved from being pie in the sky stuff to standard practice for many retailers.

With that, I shall sign off for 2009. Our December/January issue has just gone to press and, bar a few bits and pieces, my work is done here. It just remains for me to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Have a great break.

‘We’re making some changes to give you more control of your information and help you stay connected. We’ve simplified the Privacy page and added the ability to set privacy on everything you share, from status updates to photos. At the same time, we’re helping everyone find and connect with each other by keeping some information - like your name and profile picture - publicly available.’

So goes the chirpy message that greets you as you log in to Facebook. It’s a move that has provoked the wrath of campaign groups everywhere. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that campaigns for the rights of internet users, has labelled some of the changes “plain ugly.”

“These new ‘privacy’ changes are clearly intended to push Facebook users to publicly share even more information than before,” Kevin Bankston, a senior attorney with the EFF, wrote on the organisation’s blog. “Even worse, the changes will actually reduce the amount of control that users have over some of their personal data.”

I’m not sure what the big deal is here. Facebook users are given the chance to alter settings on items they upload to the site, such as photographs and videos. All status updates are now automatically made public but you can specify otherwise. This smacks somewhat of the guy who cries foul play when he discovers that the postman could be reading his postcards.

Following on from this morning’s post about Cyber Monday, Keynote Systems monitored the performance of the UK’s top retailers’ sites to measure their speed and reliability on Monday, 7th. It would appear that many of them are making a concerted effort in this area.

Results as follows:

Performance (seconds)

Selfridges 0.97
BHS 1.26
Argos 1.55
Toys ‘R’ Us 1.57
Debenhams 1.78
Hamleys 1.82
Littlewoods 1.99
Tesco Direct 2.00
House of Fraser 2.06
Amazon 2.38
John Lewis 2.65
Play 2.77
HMV 4.73

Availability (%)

Argos 100.00
BHS 100.00
Debenhams 100.00
Hamleys 100.00
House of Fraser 100.00
Play 100.00
Selfridges 100.00
Tesco direct 100.00
Amazon 98.64
John Lewis 98.61
Toys ‘R’ Us 98.17
HMV 97.33
Littlewoods 93.67

So, another Cyber Monday has come and gone. The IMRG stats certainly make for impressive reading: £1.4 million was spent online on Monday in just one minute (13:43). Between 13:00 and 14:00, retail sales peaked at £33 million, an increase of 21 per cent on last year.

All the same, it’s tempting to side with the argument that Cyber Monday is merely a gimmick with two main aims - to keep PR companies busy in the run up to Christmas and to get people spending. The theory goes that people decide what they are going to buy over the weekend, then head to work on Monday, get online whilst the boss isn’t looking and make their purchases. Yet I can’t help thinking of Grandparents Day - an attempt by marketing bods to create a commercial holiday that becomes a hit with marketing bods everywhere but never really clicks with consumers.

In the US, Cyber Monday takes place on a public holiday and on the Monday immediately following Black Friday. The UK’s version, however, happens on a random day in November/December. Figures from Experian Hitwise show that 6th and 7th December have been the joint busiest days for online retailers so far this year. This means that the pre-Christmas peak in visits to online retailers has moved one week closer to Christmas compared to 2008, when the busiest day was Sunday, 30th November. Who’s to say there won’t be another shift next year?

Whatever your take on Cyber Monday, it can’t be denied that online retail is set for a bumper Christmas. The IMRG says that online sales in December could well exceed its forecast of £5 billion. And, as we approach the end of a tough old year, I think we can all drink to that.

Interesting article in The Sunday Times, claiming that Amazon is planning to launch on the High Street.

The e-tailer has said that there’s nothing in the story, but in many ways this move would make sense. The blurring of the lines between bricks and mortar and pureplay retailers has continued apace in 2009. And as the company continues to branch out from its roots as a seller of books and other items that fit easily through the letterbox, it needs more than ever to address the delivery side of its business. Many retailers that invest in the shiny front-end of their online offerings still ignore the last few yards - i.e. the journey from the delivery vehicle to the doorstep and the ensuing customer experience.

It can only, therefore, be a matter of time before someone like Amazon sets up collection centre-style outlets on the High Street.

The run up to Christmas means one thing at Retail Systems (well, two things if you count excessive alcohol consumption, but I digress). From late October onwards, I always receive an onslaught of press releases that fall into the following two camps: a.) It’s going to be a bumper Christmas for online retailers and b.) Online shoppers beware: the e-criminals are lurking!

So it made a refreshing change to see someone take a different tack - namely eCommera whose CEO, Andrew McGregor, makes the following point: “Predictions of epic spending in the run up to Christmas will be music to the ears of many embattled retailers who have suffered a second year of unprecedented turmoil and tough times in 2009. However, online retailers cannot afford to allow the gloss of increased sales in the pre-Christmas period detract from what really matters to their business… PROFIT. Whether 30 November or 7 December turn out to be the busiest days for online retailers is ultimately of no consequence. The real question is, were they profitable days?”

“Many retailers either set KPIs that misunderstand the key profit drivers of online retail or that are simply too complex to be effectively monitored. Subsequently, they do not have a clear view of how profitable their operations are and where simple inefficiencies, such as stock control, exist. Christmas sales success will not be measured in hits, traffic or turnover…it will be measured by profit.”

As a retail consultant recently said to me: “We always hear about how much stock so and so shifted over the Christmas period. We never hear about the returns in January.”

Now that would make for an interesting press release…

This post was guest written by Neil Barton, director, Hostway

Last December, UK shoppers spent £4.6 billion online and this looks set to rise this Christmas. In fact, according to the IMRG, 93 per cent of UK shoppers intend to buy at least some of their Christmas presents online this year. This means that retailers are likely to see unprecedented levels of internet traffic in the run up to the festive period - excellent news, but how can site administrators ensure they are ready for the Christmas rush?

As shoppers continually look for their online shopping experiences to mirror their offline shopping experiences, sites are using more rich content than ever before. However, such content, which includes video and a heavy use of images, can also slow down the loading speed of web pages, making the user experience painful if sites don’t have the correct infrastructure to cope with it. Therefore, sites need to find ways to ensure visitors do not leave either through impatience, or because a website has collapsed under the pressure of high user volume. So how can sites be exciting and engaging, whilst still offering the ultimate user experience?

Traffic shaping has been talked about as a solution in the past, and now it is a reality. Websites can give preferential treatment through the profiling of online traffic, optimising the user experience for ‘premium’ visitors. For example, if many visitors try to reach a particular web page at the same time, they can be profiled so that those with an item in their basket will get through before someone just browsing, encouraging them to get to the all important checkout.

There are many other ways that e-commerce sites can ready themselves to deal with heavy traffic. Load balancing is a common technique, ensuring that traffic is spread across a number of servers. However, it is now becoming more ‘intelligent’, allowing administrators to inspect and route traffic based on the visitor type. Imagine a busy motorway, where one lane is blocked - with traditional load balancing, drivers automatically manoeuvre their vehicle into other lanes to avoid the delay; whereas with intelligent load balancing, there is a traffic warden guiding cars to the fastest lane according to their size.

When it comes to delivering content, businesses can utilise servers according to location. Content delivery networks can replicate data to servers across geographies so that it is more locally stored for users everywhere, and so takes less time to load. Caching popular content on websites is another way to cut loading time. This means that while something like a video will take a while to load the first time it’s clicked on in a day, the load is then taken off the main web server, leading to performance improvements and an enhanced user experience, as the content no longer loads from scratch.

E-commerce sites are in a Catch 22 position. They are perfectly placed to benefit from the enhanced user experiences available on web sites today, and at the same time too much rich content - particularly at times of heavy traffic such as the lead up to Christmas - could be the reason behind a collapse of their site. Techniques like load balancing, content caching and traffic shaping are great ways to helps sites avoid collapsing, and so increase their conversion rates - however heavy the traffic - and can be the difference between e-retailers having a happy Christmas or not…