Pod1 Blog

This week Drapers has launched their ‘Ask the Expert’ online forum, which not surprisingly does exactly what it says on the tin. Readers have the opportunity to put their questions to a panel of experts from across the industry, including Pod1’s very own Fadi Shuman. A selection of e-commerce questions currently on the site cover topics from whether online sales will go up or down, how much should you pay for online photography to how do you go about selling ad space on Facebook and MySpace applications.

If you have a question you would like to put to the panel just ‘Ask the Expert’

You can read the article in full on the Drapers website

Great post from eConsultancy:

”

I recently attended an event in Amsterdam which gathered together senior etailers from across Europe (kindly sponsored by Fredhopper – I owe them at least that plug…).

For me the most fascinating talk was by the VP Merchandising & Buying at a major European multi-channel retailer. It reminded me just how much we still have to learn about how online selling works, and how much we can apply from offline.

The focus of the talk was about (offline / in-store) Category Management.

Now this a BIG topic. There is even a “Category Management Association” focused on “Advancing professional standards in category management”. Within category management you have all sorts of sub-areas e.g.:

- Category Definition
- Category Role
- Category Scorecards
- Format Management
- Assortment Breadth & Depth
- Customer Decision Trees…

We were talked through this supermarket’s key categories: “Destination”, “Traffic”, “Routine Volume”, “Routine Assortment”, “Impulse”.”

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Pod1 has been commissioned to design, build and SEO a ground up online art gallery website for new client Murmur Art.

The aim of Murmur ART is to provide an online platform for new and emerging artists to display and sell their work and increase their individual online exposure. Murmur Art will provide the opportunity for prospective art buyers to view and buy the work of some of the most exciting emerging artists from around the world without leaving home.

The concept is that the artwork will be displayed on a well designed, highly consumer centric website with a sophisticated on site search facility to enable visitors to browse or buy the pieces by artist, colour, materials, style, price etc. Professional art copy text will accompany each picture, coupled with a detailed bio of each artist, which will allow first time and seasoned art buyers alike to make an informed decision on each piece.

SEO will prove to be an essential part of the marketing plan in attracting visitors to the finished Murmur Art site. To aid this process the Murmur Art blog is destined to go live any day soon, this will keep potential artist and buyers up to date on developments while starting to build the first stage of an online presence for this new domain.

Pod1 founder, Fadi Shuman discusses the changing world of online retailing and ecommerce, with a specific focus on the innovation of the single-page checkout.

The online retail market has grown and become more refined in the last few years and many online retail companies have not adapted to that growth. This has resulted in loss of revenue from a channel that has contributed the majority portion of the £26 billion increase in retail sales over the past 5 years. The acceptance of the need for second generation of e-commerce sites is necessary for offline retail giants to make the most of online retailing.

Fadi focused on the checkout process of e-commerce sites, detailing the problems that many potential customers face when attempting to buy items off the site. This can lead to a 50% drop visitors finalising sales, which equates a potential loss of millions of pounds. This loss can be reduced drastically by just altering the checkout process. Pod1 did a multi-variant testing to determine the formation of a checkout process which was easiest for visitors to complete.

Fadi talked about the results of this testing which lead Pod1 to create the single-page checkout for the fashion retailer UNIQLO. While it may not always be the perfect solution, it has helped to greatly reduce the drop off rate during UNIQLO’s checkout process. This checkout format is now being used across multiple online fashion retailers that Pod1 works with.