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RETAIL TRENDS REPORT2017 UK Edition
An overview of our report findings from
2016; the top brands in multi-channel
and how to future proof your retail
strategy.
amp.co
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The expansion of multi-channel retail has changed how
we shop. Consumers are a moving target, traversing across
the different channels throughout the shopping journey.
Retailers are recognising that all shopping channels, from
stock management to marketing functions, delivery options
and accounting, are intricately interwoven and should be
approached as such. Multi-channel is now the minimum
standard expected of retailers, omni-channel is what retailers
should be aspiring to, with retailers taking a truly holistic
approach to business operations. By this we mean putting
the customer at the centre of the approach and treating
all channels (mobile, store, desktop, email, social) as one
experience. Over the course of 2016, our reports have looked
at how retailers are approaching these challenges and which
retailers are winning at multi-channel retail. We assessed over
160 top UK retailers and reported on where they are found
wanting in their offering. Features including geolocation,
form adaptability and live stock information, were all a part
of the assessment criteria. As we start 2017, the gap between
the retailers who are getting it right and those that are trailing
behind becomes clearly visible.
This report addresses these features and the other cross-
channel technologies we predict will come to the fore of
multi-channel retailing in 2017.
Read on to find out what will keep you ahead of the
competition in 2017.
Omni-channel is what retailers should now be aspiring to.
Darryl Adie
Managing Director, Ampersand
foreword
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2016A Year in Review
3%2 Hour
41%
More than 1 day
Retail 2016 / General
Offers faceted navigation
Offers non-store collection Offers automatic geolocation (on desktop)
Offers automatic geolocation (mobile)
Click and collect offering and fulfilment speed
high streetretailers
sells online & has stores in UK
Home Delivery Offering
Source: Ampersand Retail Matrix February 2016
Offers persistent cart
Offers real time stock info
72%
15%
35% 15%
23%9% 9%28%
76%28%
59%
72%
41%
9%
71%
63% 37%
28%
29%
85%
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
No
No offering
SundayEvening Same DayNamed Day Next Day
Same dayNext day
YesYes
No
No
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0
20
40
60
80
100
stock checkNumber of retailers that allow users to check stock in a particular store.
Yes No
33%
67%
Can you check stock in a specific store?
save or share a basket
Is there a save/email basket functionality?
Source: Ampersand Multi-channel Retail Report
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0
20
40
60
80
100
stock checkNumber of retailers that allow users to check stock in a particular store.
Can you check stock in a specific store?
Retailers offering save or share a basket options.The nature of mobile shopping is disjointed with interruptions to the shopping journey. Save or share a basket options allow
customers to return and pick up where they left off at a later date.
save or share a basket
27.7%
72.3%
Is there a save/email basket functionality?
Yes No
Source: Ampersand Multi-channel Retail Report
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RETAILEveryone is getting in on the action
UBER FOR EVERYTHING
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RETAILEveryone is getting in on the action
2016 was the year that “uberization”, the phase “it’s like
Uber but for…..”, became a short cut to explaining how a
new technology would revolutionise the approach to a
product or service. What would “uber but for retail” even
look like? Uber allows users to order a taxi at the touch
of a button from their smart phones, track the journey of
the taxi until it reaches them, and complete the journey
without the need to use cash as part of the transaction as
the payment details are already stored within the app. All
the benefits that Uber offer, such as geolocation, stored
payment methods and up-to-date delivery information,
should be built into the mobile strategy of any retailer
hoping to stay at the forefront of multi-channel retailing.
This isn’t a new dawn of online retailing – it’s a standard
that many retailers were already meeting in 2016.
Uber are already stealing the march on many retailers
and applying their model to the retail market, rolling
out a B2B offering to retailers in New York, Chicago and
San Francisco. Uber are offering a pay-as-you-go delivery
service for retailers, with the same real-time monitoring
features and an easy to use set up and installation
that ensured their “taxi” service was so successful. As
consumers put pressure on retailers to offer instant
gratification, even when buying online, this new delivery
service looks set to be another success story.
UBER FOR EVERYTHING
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In September this year a group of Vogue editors had
a public spat online with fashion bloggers and came
away looking out of touch with the new way of doing
things. American Vogue’s Creative Director wrote “Note
to bloggers who change head-to-toe paid-to-wear outfits
every hour: please stop. Find another business. You are
heralding the death of style.”
In an age where an Instagram user with over 5000
followers can earn upwards of £150 just for posting a
picture, retailers need to take note on who is most likely to
engage with their target market. Alpha Influencers such
as Chiara Ferragni have over 7m Instagram followers, UK
Vogue has a circulation of around 200,000. The platform
and method of communication may differ but which is
more relevant to a retailer when looking where to spend
their advertising budget?
In November, Facebook owned Instagram announced
that they were expanding their retail offering, rolling
out enhanced adverts with 20 selected partners in the
US including Kate Spade, J Crew and Abercrombie and
Fitch. The adverts include product details such as price
when tapped within the picture. The “shop now” button
then loads the retailers site within the Instagram browser
allowing the shopper to complete the sale without ever
leaving the app.
Whilst Twitter haven’t officially killed the “Buy” button,
several news sites have reported that development on
it has ground to a halt and the development team have
been disbanded. Will Instagram have more success than
Twitter with its social media selling offering in 2017?
Social Influencers Are Shifting The Power Balance
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Facebook has already taken their in-app advertising to
the next level, offering personalised in-app chat bots to
communicate with buyers when they click into an advert
on Facebook. In October 2016 Facebook allowed these
chat bots to take in-app payments, something other social
media sites have struggled to implement with any degree
of success, with the exception being the Chinese owned
WeChat. WeChat has an estimated 800 million users with
an estimated 300 million using its payment facilities, at
present there is nothing in the West that can compare
with this level of success. After high profile security
blunders at Facebook, it will need to work hard to prove
that it can be trusted before its ecommerce offering will
be attractive to shoppers.
Snapchat is another social media giant using its
popularity to make a power play in the retail market.
No longer the preserve of teens, Snapchat’s market
share continues to grow with an estimated 217 million
users by the end of 2017 (as predicted by eMarketer).
In February 2016, it announced plans to roll out an
ecommerce platform. Building on the popularity of
its “Discovery Platform”, a story telling platform well
suited to fashion retailers and the “Snapcash” service,
a payment feature, it’s a natural step to combine the
two elements to produce a shopping platform. So far
this is limited to shoppable adverts within the discover
platform, where users can “swipe up” to see more details
from an advert and then go on to purchase without ever
leaving the app.
CHATTER-BOTS
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CHATTER-BOTS
As all social media companies continue their bid for
world domination it makes sense that they will continue
to develop and refine their ecommerce offering. In the
future, it’s likely that group chat features, in app payments,
social advertising and chat bots will come together to
allow groups of friends to shop together online without
ever leaving their favourite social media platform.
What retailers need to remember is that, ultimately, it’s
about usability for shoppers. Is the experience enjoyable,
secure and integrated? Is it a good place to shop?
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Pokemon Go was the phenomenon that ensured that
Augmented Reality (AR) entered the wider public
consciousness in 2016, even though many retailers
have been using the technology to enhance shopper
experience for several years. For example, Ikea introduced
the technology back in 2013 to help customers visualise
how something may look in their own homes before they
buy. Beauty brands have also been using augmented
reality technologies both in-store and on their mobile
apps to demonstrate products, often combining AR with
other technologies such as face scanning or geolocation.
Virtual Reality takes augmented reality to the next level.
Augmented reality layers’ virtual elements onto the real
world, whereas virtual reality creates a totally immersive
experience, creating a virtual world around the user.
In the ecommerce market, virtual reality gives pure-
play retailers an opportunity to provide shoppers with
a virtual 3D channel and create some of the benefits of
being in-store. This could give pure-play retailers a way to
compete in the one area that bricks and mortar stores
currently can’t be beaten in: having a physical bricks
and mortar store. One huge blocker to this at present is
the fact that the customer would need to invest in a VR
headset to use this feature, whereas bricks and mortar
retailers can invest in bringing VR into store, enticing
customers in-store and using the technology to add to
the omni-channel journey through gamification and
personalization.
The take up of both virtual and augmented reality by
consumers will depend on whether retailers work out
how to use it to improve the shopping experience rather
than as a gimmick. With over $658 million invested
in this area in the last year, per the Harvard Business
Review, this may happen sooner rather than later.
KEEPING IT UNREAL
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Under half of all the retailers assessed in our 2016 multi-
channel research had an app in the app store, and of
those 79, only 24 had a link to the app on their website,
with even fewer actively promoting it through pop-ups
or banners on the page. However, this isn’t the end of
the App story. Retail apps are not just limited to brands
providing another place to shop; apps that bring together
several different retailers, such as ShopStyle or Groupon,
are becoming more popular with consumers and with
retailers looking for another channel to access the market.
Retailers and consumers alike want apps that make
shopping easier and frees up their time. For consumers, it’s
all about UX – the experience when using the app, but for
retailers it will be about how easy it would be to integrate
a third-party app seamlessly into their current systems.
For retailers looking to sell their products through a
third-party app it would be wise to see which ones are
most popular with their customer base and whether it
will easily integrate into their existing systems.
Apps: Evolve or DieAMBIVALENT ABOUT APPS
Retailers with and without an app
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Apps: Evolve or Die We surveyed 159 leading retailers to see if they had an app.
AMBIVALENT ABOUT APPS
0
20
40
60
80
100
With Without
79 80
Retailers with and without an app
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Payments is seeing continued disruption as non-banking
payment service providers, such as Apple, Amazon
and Facebook and smaller tech start-ups, like Chain
and Ripple, grows. Innovations such as Apple Pay or in
app payment systems like Uber are making it easier for
consumers to leave their credit cards at home and still go
shopping. Furthermore, Apple is expanding their Apple
Pay service beyond bricks-and-mortar stores, to both
mobile and desktop Apple devices. Google have also
announced that they are bringing a competing service,
although a release date for this is yet to be announced.
Near Field Communication (NFC) technology means that
any enabled device can be used with contactless payment
terminals, continuing the trend for wearable technology.
Last summer Visa used NFC to equip its sponsored
athletes at the Brazil Olympics with payment rings, that
were water resistant, didn’t need charging (unlike a
phone) and essentially acted as a wearable contactless
credit card.
The challenge for retailers will be in adapting their
back-end systems quickly enough to keep up with new
technologies. Retailers will also need to decide whether
the work involved in offering multiple payment options
to their customer base is worth the return. At this stage
the debit or credit card is still by far the most popular
method of payment, particularly online. In 2017 we
predict that mobile payments will continue to move
towards becoming the new standard for consumers to
make purchases, in-store and now also on a desktop.
As this method of payment becomes the new standard
it’s likely that the term “mobile payment” will seem
unnecessary and we’ll simply call it payment.
Disrupting the payment status quo
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Disrupting the payment status quo
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EMERGING TECHNOLOGIESIN ECOMMERCE
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EMERGING TECHNOLOGIESIN ECOMMERCE
A Product Information Management system (also known
as PIM, PCM or Products MDM) is a tool that helps retailers
to centralise the information about their products in one
place and share it across all retail channels. It’s an essential
tool for any retailer aiming for omni-channel success.
Traditionally, each channel might require a different
version of product information for each item. One version
for in-store, one for online, one for print, one for the UK
market, one for the US market and so on. A retailer with
thousands of products, across multiple categories, with
different variants, in different countries and languages,
should not be managing product data in unwieldy
spreadsheets when PIM tools are readily available.
A PIM isn’t just about admin efficiencies and product
information accuracy, it also enriches product
information with detailed product descriptions, high-
res photos, and embedded videos to guide customers
toward their purchases.
Using the right PIM means that retailers can reduce
duplication of effort and take a nimble approach to
product management across multiple channels. The net
result for consumers is accurate, up to date information
on which to base their purchasing decisions and, as
such, a more pleasurable shopping experience. The
result for retailers is increased loyalty from customers,
increased spend across all channels, and reduced
resources in managing product data.
Using an integrated PIM for a successful multi-channel strategy
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Google sums up the importance of speed in ecommerce
in their explanation of AMP accelerated mobile pages;
“AMP is a natural fit for e-commerce because AMP makes
web pages fast, and fast pages help with purchase
conversions.”
AMP, or accelerated mobile pages, was launched
in October 2015 and a little under a year later they
announced that they would be using AMP across all
mobile search results, identifying which sites have been
“AMP’d”.
The question retailers should ask themselves is whether
they want to run two versions of their site (a mobile and
non-mobile site) or whether developing a responsive
web design that adapts to any device would be a better
solution.
Another factor that can impact page loading times is
where the user is located and where the server hosting
website is located. Someone in India using a site hosted
in the UK for example, is going to experience some lag
in loading times. Technologies such as Fastly are being
used by retailers to help with this issue. This is particularly
important for fast changing sites with dynamic content.
Fastly uses a combination of device recognition,
geolocation and caching relevant data to provide fast
personalising shopping experiences for consumers with
the most up to date product information.
THE NEED FOR SPEEDMobile Speed
Number of retailers, separated by mobile speed score.Mobile speed scores still have room for improvement with only 3% achieving top scores of 76 – 100.
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THE NEED FOR SPEED
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20
40
60
80
100
0 - 50 score 51 - 75 score 76 - 100 score
Mobile SpeedNumber of retailers, separated by mobile speed score.
Mobile speed scores still have room for improvement with only 3% achieving top scores of 76 – 100.
30%
2%
68%
Source: Ampersand Multi-channel Retail Report
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Integration is key to the success of any multi-channel
operation. Using a disconnected ecommerce platform
guarantees a retailer won’t have a single view of your
customer or understand how they shop. An integrated
strategy ensures that whatever you have online represents
exactly what you have in-store, making life easier for
consumers and for in store staff to serve shoppers and
provide accurate information. Consumers regularly hop
between channels in their purchasing journey, browsing
online, then having a look in a physical store before
going online again to review and assess pricing and
delivery options and perhaps even getting a shopping
app involved along the way. If retailers want to mirror this
shopping behaviour they need to architect solutions that
provide up-to-date information across multiple systems.
It isn’t realistic for most retailers to simply start their IT
architecture all over again, so any new systems will need
to integrate with legacy systems that are likely packed
with important data about the consumer. An integration
platform makes this happen by allowing heterogeneous
systems and applications to communicate with each
other without the need to develop expensive and
problematic custom integrations.
Why all retailers need an integration platform
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Website design, particularly in retail, have established rules
and boundaries that at present are standard across the
board. Having a pre-existing set of rules and conventions
to follow when designing an ecommerce site certainly
makes our job a lot easier as we can design beautiful
looking websites with a layout that retailers and their
consumers are familiar with. These conventions have been
developed and honed though years of user testing with
designers and developers working together to establish
which design conventions work best.
Indeed, many UX experts would advise against moving
away from the standardised framework of a menu across
the top, a scrolling screen and items presented in neat
boxes stacked on top of each other. However, whilst
this homogenisation of design may be the best option
for most retailers now, new developments in CSS grids
are opening possibilities for designers to come up with
something new stylistically speaking. It will be much
easier for web designers to use these developments
to create exciting and ground breaking layouts,
transforming user experience rather than conforming
to the status-quo. In 2017 this rule breaking approach
is for the brands that want to push boundaries and are
brave enough to accept the impact on their online sales
as they test uncharted waters. Other retailers will likely
wait until the mistakes are made and learned from by
others before upsetting the design apple cart. What all
web designers will benefit from is the ease with which
developers will be able to build more complex layouts
and design features. This can give designers more
confidence to try innovative layouts and test new ways of
providing optimal user experience.
Going off grid
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Going off grid
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running a heavily discounted campaign online, needs to
able to forecast the impact on in-store staffing and react
according.
CIO’s need to be as involved as Ecommerce Directors,
Marketing Directors and CEO’s when developing a retail
strategy and making decisions. Technology can’t replace
people, but by understanding what can be achieved
through using it effectively it can help retailers deliver
world class experiences for customers.
Darryl Adie
Managing Director, Ampersand
da@amp.co
+ 44 161 236 5504
Conclusion
Our research supports the view that the key to multi-
channel retail success is the seamless integration
of systems that make it possible to adapt to new
technologies quickly and harmoniously. Make no mistake,
technology disrupters such as Uber, soon become the new
normal as customer expectations change based on their
experiences. When one retailer raises the bar, the retailers
that can’t or don’t respond quickly enough soon look out
of touch. Brand reputation and brand loyalty suffers.
Investment in an Integration Platform is an essential part
of ensuring the legacy systems can still operate when
new systems are introduced, future proofing your multi-
channel offering. A siloed approach to each retail channel
is the wrong approach. Treating the online element of
a retail business operates totally separately to the bricks
and mortar element is to misunderstand how consumers
want to shop. A retailer offering in-store click-and-collect,
Methodology
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Darryl Adie
Managing Director, Ampersand
da@amp.co
+ 44 161 236 5504
Conclusion Methodology
Whether retailers provided clear information on payment
options and returns policies
Website navigation and product information including
clear signposting, imagery, faceted navigation and
alternative payment methods
Geolocation information – whether customers can find the
nearest store by using geolocation
Real-time stock information for online orders and the
ability to check stock in a specific store
Persistent cart across different devices and whether the
retailer has a transactional mobile website
Delivery options, Click & Collect, non-store pick up options
and communication of free returns
To create the list of retailers, we first aggregated various
existing lists including but not limited to IMRG, Experian
and Sitemorse. This gave us over 2,000 retailers to research.
We eliminated retailers that had no ecommerce presence
and/or no physical stores in the UK. The remaining retailers
were split into their appropriate sectors.
The Ampersand Retail Matrix criterion is our view of
the core tenets of multi-channel retailing. These tenets
cross the boundaries of digital and physical customer
experiences. Within the research there are scoring criterion
and non-scoring criterion.
The scoring criterion include:
Page load speeds and performance on desktop and
mobile using Google Developers PageSpeed Tools
We awarded 4 points for the following criteria:
• Transactional mobile website
• Persistent cart
We awarded 3 points for
• Stock check in-store
We then calculated the final score to be out of 100:
=100/29*SCORE.
When publishing percentages, numbers have been
rounded to the nearest whole number.
The survey was conducted online, independently by
Ampersand, in Manchester, UK on an iPhone 6s using the
Google Chrome browser on iOS9 between 20 January
2016 and 20 February 2016. The research covered desktop
and mobile websites, not apps.
Copyright
All research, Ampersand Retail Matrix and criterion is
intellectual property of Ampersand Commerce Ltd.
Data findings or copy in this report can be quoted in any
medium but requires credit either by name (Ampersand)
or link back to the company website, amp.co.
Non-scoring criterion include:
Delivery method availability for reserve and collect, same
day, next day, named day and evening including costs and
thresholds
Availability of guest checkout and gifting
Ability to login or with social media
Availability of wishlisting and whether or not login is
required
Scoring
Retailers were then scored against the criterion and with
a weighted formula, ranked in the Multi-channel Retail
Matrix.
To calculate the base score marked out of 29 possible
points from 50 criteria, a retailer was awarded points if it
scored positively for each of the scoring criteria mentioned
above, with these specifics:
• Offering click and collect same day
• Desktop Speed >81
• Mobile Speed >71
• UX Score =100
Ampersand is an award-winning commerce agency that
helps established high street retailers build better online
stores. Ampersand works with multi-channel retailers, such
as Harvey Nichols, Poundland and Bensons for Beds to help
increase conversion and efficiency through the strategic use of
technology.
amp.co | +44 161 236 5504