Bazaarvoice’s Social Commerce Summit London

I was pleased to be asked to speak at Bazaarvoice’s Social Commerce Summit in London. A characterful, fun and engaging day, held at The Magic Circle’s premises near Euston.

The slides from the session are available on my SlideShare.

I was pleased to be invited to an ‘in conversation’ and Chairing session at The Walpole’s  Luxury eBusiness Forum, held at the RAC on 8 October.

The Walpole British Luxury

Some great speakers and an interesting and engaged delegate list. As ever, the real value was in the 1:1 conversations over coffee. The take-away for me is that in these difficult times there are opportunities for brands whose focus blends quality and service. At the higher price-points value is more important than price to the more affluent customer. Empty brand promises are exposed ruthlessly online so the opportunity for strong multichannel sales can be damaged by timid or inept online activity.

Having won a temporary pass from IR Towers to a seaside retreat with cable TV, Ian Jindal is watching Olympic synchronised diving as the rain beats against the windows and thinking of peak season…The Olympics are an extraordinary event. Not solely for the obvious (and barely-understood) commitment and expertise of the athletes but for the emergence of a new form of human being: Homo Potatum Sofum Expertatis, sometimes known by its common name, the ‘couch potato’.

Being inactive while watching telly is not that remarkable. Rather, it’s the peculiar quadrennial transformation into a sporting expert that defies accepted ideas of evolution. I’d never seen synchronised diving before, but I can note with great accuracy the differences in body line, the perfection of the piked position and the miniscule timing differences in breaking the surface… Humans have evolved to be able to identify tiny differences in patterns, even if most of us lack the ability to make our bodies work to those fine tolerances.

My mind slipped back to thinking about retail, and I realised that the armchair critic is no match for the uncaring, critical, always-right customer!

In the battle to extract cash from the recession-constricted wallets of our visitors etailers are resorting to a near-permanent sale, free delivery, deeper additional discounts… and all the while Christmas is coming and we need to gear up for peak.

Is this our Olympic relay race? We have the highly-honed and much practised disciplines of logistics, buying, marketing and technology, all at peak form after over 4 years of “working” ecommerce. However, if the team play and baton-passing is not the equal of the individuals then the customer notices. “98% performance”” gains no credit for the hard work and expertise: rather, the ‘2% deficit’ is noticed and punished.

Characteristic of the ‘mature stage of ecommerce’ is that customers have now experienced expertise – either from you or (painfully) from your competitors. Unfortunately, the expert etailer gets little explicit praise, save for an increased retention and net promoter [tm] ranking. That retailer’s competitors however suffer silently – the silence of being shunned. Customer may still come to your site, from habit, curiosity or expensive CPA tactics but upon arrival your site suddenly seems to lack lustre, that certain Gold Medal je ne sais quoi, the allure of the champion. Second division. Vauxhall Conference. Amateur.

The first symptom of underperformance is a perplexing drop in conversion rates. Blame the recession, blame holidays, wait for the new season’s stock, fire up another affiliate… Somehow, though, the medal positions are always filled by your competitors… While we all clap politely and are pleased with ecommerce’s resilience – the ‘rise in popularity of our sport’, if you will – it’s of zero consolation to the true competitor, for whom it’s medals or nothing.

With peak season imminent, what are our options? The first point is not to start anything new or risky: this is a time for a perfect drill rather than a  practice match. The next is to coach each of your skilled players in working to their maximum capabilities – practice at peak enables performance at peak. Finally, make sure that your training camp includes cross-discipline practice and communication. With high pressure and high stakes it’s all too easy for people to fall back into their own areas and leave the overall problem to ‘someone else’. But as Potatus Expertatis knows, it’s the tiny cracks and flaws that mark the teams down from gold, rather than the the flashes of isolated brilliance moving them up.

Peak success will be from Gold-standard teams, working flawlessly and consistently together to deliver under pressure against the etailing elite. No amount of free delivery and empty promises can win the Christmas Olympics.

To the victor the spoils.

I was invited to speak at a breakfast briefing hosted by Clearwater Corporate Finance by Jackie Naghten on “What makes a successful online business”. The presentation was to a group of Clearwater’s clients and contacts in the private equity space – either investors, investment managers or entrepreneurs (pre- and post-funding). Given the short time and the knowledge of the audience I focused on what I see to be the fundamentals involved in appraising a business for investment or in running an online business with a ruthless focus on value and growth (or, in today’s challenging climate, value and surviving long enough to be able to realise that value!).The presentation covered:

• The retail context – continued growth in online, but no longer ‘free growth’ nor a ‘rising tide floating all boats’. We discussed changes in consumer buying patterns.
• “There’s no middle in eCommerce” – average, “OK” and ‘sufficient’ businesses have no place online
• Sustainable competitive positions: customer insight (if you know viscerally what your consumers want, you have a chance to survive where other companies would flounder); product (whether exclusive access or unique knowledge, presentation or pricing); and Operations (the best sausage machine). Unfortunately, there are now companies who excel in all areas, so the ‘no middle’ comment above is reinforced
• We considered the origin of ‘retail’ – slicing and dicing, retailoring and fitting to the customer, and draw from this an origin founded in service and closeness to the customer
• I emphasised that ecommerce lives as part of a multichannel world: even pure-play businesses have contact centres, logistics, sometimes print and increasingly consider shops…
• Service is fundamental to customer retention and profitability. We considered at a high level service issues from contact centres through delivery and returns and how failure in these areas is costly – and unnecessary.

It was a great session and my thanks again to Jackie and Clearwater for the invitation.

I was invited by the IAB to chair their ATE session on “Affiliate Marketing: Loyalty and Cashback” on Wednesday 24th.I know from my recent speaking on Affiliates that the changing landscape as a result of the rise of cashback sites has created some controversy and concern, and equally from a retail perspective there’re questions as to the relative tactical versus strategic aspects of cashback. There’s no denying the responsive, even pavlovian, effects on sales that cashback promotion can achieve – but the question is about brand value, who has the relationship with the customer and whether there’s “loyalty” to anything or anyone other than getting cash back and therefore habitually cheaper prices.

To put perspectives we had:

• Richard Yendall, Chairman, The Loyalty Association (speaking as a cashback affiliate, as well as for that association)
• Helen Southgate, Head of Affiliates, DGM (looking from an agency/network perspective at issues and considerations)
• Peter Wakim, Head of Business Development, Quidco (speaking for one of the most well-known and powerful of the cashback sites)
• Matt Bailey, Head of Affiliates, iLevel (asking questions from a merchant’s perspective, but also sharing research showing that cashback vs ‘normal’ affiliates’ performances are not as generally accepted).

Beer afterwards ensured that the questions continued well after the close of formal proceedings.

The IAB’s venue is a handy, well-appointed and nicely-sized one for these 50-person events and I hope that they’ll be doing more of them in future.

Details of the event, along with speaker presentations, are on the event page, while you can see their events programme here.

I was pleased to accept an invitation from Dr Julia Gaimster to address the Faculty at the London College of Fashion on the topic of the impact of ecommerce and recent internet developments in customers’ approaches to buying fashion. In an hour’s session on 19 September 2008 we covered competitive positioning in a digital age, rich media and aspects of customer behaviour.On an enrolment day, with the newer of the LCF’s 5000 students thronging the hallways and staircases, it was a visible and pertinent reminder of the ever-changing trends and faces in fashion and the need for the business, production, teaching, logistical and technological aspects of such an important industry to keep up with behaviour – as well as setting future trends.

It was a lively and fun session and I’m looking forward to future sessions with the wider team at LCF.

“Retailgreen.eu – challenges and issues in green and sustainable ecommerce”

I’ve been interested for a while in the tension between “retail” (encouraging customers to buy more) and sustainability or ‘green’ sentiments (encouraging people to buy less – “reduce, reuse and recycle” being the operating mantra).

There are many benefits and challenges for retailers in considering sustainability as a part of their strategy and this group on LinkedIn is a first step to exploring this topic.

Mired in conflicting claims, in questions of how far to trace and cost impacts and benefits, and struggling to reconcile customer expressed claims with their measured behaviour, we expect some lively debates!

I invite you to join the group and help shape the debate.

Editorially, Retailgreen will look at the following areas:

1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – lessons for efficiency and saving in sustainable commerce

2. The sustainable customer – market pressures on retailers to ‘go green’. Following the ‘green dollar’

3. Profiles of companies and their green activities, tribulations or market positioning.

You can join the group directly from this link:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/150191/365DA86DD491

Promoting good practice in the management and support of aid personnel

People In Aid is an international network of development and humanitarian assistance agencies. People In Aid helps organisations whose goal is the relief of poverty and suffering to enhance the impact they make through better people management and support

Ian Jindal: People in Aid – Board presentation – 8 July, 2008

view presentation (tags: speaking board people in aid pia)

Retail Summit

Google UK have convenened an interesting and senior morning on etail and ecommerce. You can see the list of speakers at the website – quite a gathering.

I’m pleased to be moderating a session on “Scaling and Managing the $1bn Online Business”. I do this with some humility since the last ecommerce business I ran (while Group eCommerce Director at Littlewoods Shop Direct) was “only” £405million. The current £:$ rate is flattering of my efforts though – $800m sounds like a lot more – but failing a slump in the value of the dollar (!) I currently do not qualify for membership of the $1bn-club. Not yet, at least 😉

The panellist will include Bruce Fair (MD, Kelkoo), Matthew Hardcastle (MD, Shopping.com) and Peter Fitzgerald (Retail Industry Leader, Google UK).

It’s been a busy time on the speaking front, culminating in a ‘double decker’ for Adobe and then Sky.Adobe’s Scene7 folk have initiated a series of retailer briefings and, having spoken at the first, it would have been rude not to speak again when invited 😉 The topic of this presentation was “Excellence in Online Retailing”. I opened proceedings, then Ijaz and Marty shared some of the Scene7 roadmap. Michael Ross of eCommera then gave a presentation on the “The 10Ps of eCommerce“. This was a great presentation. Michael’s dry and direct delivery was really engaging and certainly brought the 10 Ps to life. I’d read these (since we published an article on them in Internet Retailing Magazine last issue – you can see the PDF here), but seeing the presentation was certainly more fun.

I’ve put the presentation on slideshare.

Then on to Sky University for an afternoon opener on “Online Selling – a customer experience”. The day was organised by Sky for their top teir affiliates and my session was an opportunity to take a broader look at the customer landscape. It was also a good opportunity for me to ponder further the affiliate landscape – an area of increasing interest to me, to which I’ll return in later posts.

A real eye-opener for me though was a presentation from Joost de Valk, a search strategist at OnetoMarket in the Netherlands. Joost is engaged in “white hat” SEO (ie legal, well-behaved, effective SEO activities) for some major brands. Joost also knows a lot – from hearsay, no doubt – about “black hat” SEO: the sort of activities for which the word “naughty” was coined. I spend a bit of time working with client teams to improve their SEO, but I had no idea of the scale, complexity and cunning of the operations attempting to outfox Google, searches and credit-card owners. It’s an area I need to look at! Hopefully, with Joost’s help rather than a DIY remedial course in high-contact, combat SEO!

Here are my slides on Slideshare: