Category archive: Sales

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Icône vs House of Bath

This is the first in an occasional series, Battle of the E-commerce Sites, where I will test two e-commerce websites in the same vertical.

After seeing it in their print catalogue, I waited the requisite 24 hours, and still I found myself thinking every hour, on the hour, about owning the large version of this pitcher from House of Bath. Fed up of wasting my brain space on such a matter, I shifted over to the House of Bath site to buy it.

What a nightmare. House of Bath wants to know your date of birth before you can register to buy. House of Bath also wants to know how long you’ve been at your current address. But only online; telephone ordering doesn’t pose any of these irritating questions. By the time I was finished, I almost resented the company for offering such a pretty item through such a horribly annoying website.

I was really in the mood for domestic purchases tonight. Once I’d found Icône (via Nigella), there was no hope left for me. Within moments, I’d bought this - talk about a sexpot. And, as everything in the Nigella range seemed to be on sale, I also bought this curvy creamer (in duck egg blue, of course).

The experience of shopping on Icône could not have been a bigger contrast with shopping at House of Bath. It was easy, took less than a minute from checkout to registration to completed purchase, and the specials-via-email update option was opt-in. I opted in.

House of Bath’s stuff is generally less appealing, with a few stand-out items (like my new jug, and the pink and baby blue enameled steel colanders they offer), while Icône is very design-centric and full of gorgeous things. All told, I know which one will get my custom again soon.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Mothercare, HMV, and creating strong digital communities

Commercial success in the digital age will belong to those businesses that attract, engage and organise digital communities to meet multiple social and commercial needs. By creating strong digital communities, businesses will be able to build customer loyalty to a degree that today’s marketers can only dream of.

Think of HMV and Mothercare. Would they struggle as much had they developed a community strategy which was embedded into all that they did? Could they have beaten the big supermarkets and internet players by revising their bricks and mortor strategy?

Rosabeth Moss Kanter in her book Evolve says

One company’s loyal community of empowered users is another one’s nemesis.

Cross-posted from the blog for the book Communities Dominate Brands

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Re-invigorating bars and eateries in the online age

New Media Age editor Michael Nutley - who I deal with professionally and also on a friendly basis (we have a mutual friend in Engagement Alliance advisory board member Adriana Cronin-Lukas) - has a surprisingly negative post on the NMA website. The headline proclaims:

Online shopping damages specialist retailers

The piece talks about how the increase in online socialising is hurting the revenues of restaurants and bars. I couldn’t resist dropping Mike an email about this, and here’s what I had to say in response to the piece and his headline. 

"Re-invigorating bars and eateries in the online age" continued...

Friday, February 10, 2006

The c-word

No, not that one.

Consumer is an industrial-age word, a broadcast-age word. It implies that we are all tied to our chairs, head back, eating ‘content’ and crapping cash.

So sayeth Doc Searls. I’m sure there is room for debate here, but I have found it nearly impossible to use that particular c-word since I read this. (The quotation was also well-employed by Jeff Jarvis, former president and creative director of Advance.net, Condé Nast’s online arm, when he wrote about his Dell hell customer service experience for the Guardian.)